A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

Sacerdotal absolution does not necessarily require any particular or auricular confession of private sins; forasmuch as that the grand absolution of baptism was commonly given without any particular confession. And therefore the Romanists vainly found the necessity of auricular confession upon those words of our Saviour, Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them: as if there could be no absolution without particular confession; when it is so plain, that the great absolution of baptism (the power of which is founded by the ancients upon this very place) required no such particular confession. We may hence infer, that the power of any sacerdotal absolution is only ministerial; because the administration of baptism, (which is the most universal absolution,) so far as man is concerned in it, is no more than ministerial. All the office and power of man in it is only to minister the external form, but the internal power and grace of remission of sins is properly God’s; and so it is in all other sorts of absolution.—Bingham.

The bishops and priests of the whole Christian Church have ever used to absolve all that truly repented, and at this day it is retained in our Church as a part of the daily office; which being so useful, so necessary, and founded on holy Scripture, needs not any arguments to defend it, but that the ignorance and prejudice of some make them take offence at it, and principally because it hath been so much abused by the Papal Church. We may declare our abhorrency of these evil uses of absolution; though in that sober, moderate, and useful manner we do perform it, we do not vary from the prime intention of Christ’s commission, and the practice of antiquity: absolution was instituted by Jesus, and if it have been corrupted by men, we will cast away the corruptions, not the ordinance itself.—Comber.

Sin is compared to a bond, (Acts viii. 23; Prov. v. 22,) because it binds down the soul by its guilt and power, and hinders it from free converse with God, yea, makes it liable to eternal condemnation: but Jesus came to unloose these bonds, and actually did so to divers, when he was upon earth, and left this power to his apostles and their successors, when he went to heaven; and this unloosing men from the bond of their sins is that which we properly call absolution, and it is a necessary and most comfortable part of the priest’s office. But the sectaries do wholly disown this power, and are so bold as to deride us for the use thereof: yet it is certain that Christ did give his disciples the power of binding and loosing, (Matt. xvi. 19; xviii. 18,) or, as it is elsewhere called, of remitting sins, (John xx. 22, 23,) frequently repeating this commission, and solemnly promising to ratify in heaven what they did on earth. It is plain also, that the apostles exercised this power, (Acts ii. 38; 2 Cor. ii. 10,) and gave their successors a charge to use it also (Gal. vi. 1; James v. 14, 15); and the primitive histories do abundantly testify they did so very often; so that they must cancel all those lines of Scripture, and records of antiquity also, before they can take away this power. Nor can they fairly pretend it was a personal privilege dying with the apostles, since the Church hath used it ever since, and penitents need a comfortable application of their pardon now, as well as they did then: and whereas they object with the Jews, that “none can forgive sins but God only,” (Luke v. 21,) we reply, that God alone can exercise this power in his own right, but he may and hath communicated it to others, who did it in his name, and by his authority; or, as St. Paul speaks, in the person of Christ (2 Cor. ii. 10); so that St. Ambrose saith, “God himself forgives sins by them to whom he hath granted the power of absolution.”—Comber.

Calvin’s liturgy has no form of absolution in it: but he himself says that it was an omission in him at first, and a defect in his liturgy; which he afterwards would have rectified and amended, but could not. He makes this ingenuous confession in one of his epistles: “There is none of us,” says he, “but must acknowledge it to be very useful, that, after the general confession, some remarkable promise of Scripture should follow, whereby sinners might be raised to the hopes of pardon and reconciliation. And I would have introduced this custom from the beginning, but some fearing that the novelty of it would give offence, I was over-easy in yielding to them; so the thing was omitted.” I must do that justice to Calvin here, by the way, to say, that he was no enemy to private absolution neither, as used in the Church of England. For in one of his answers to Westphalus he thus expresses his mind about it: “I have no intent to deny the usefulness of private absolution: but as I commend it in several places of my writings, provided the use be left to men’s liberty, and free from superstition, so to bind men’s consciences by a law to it, is neither lawful nor expedient.” Here we have Calvin’s judgment, fully and entirely, for the usefulness both of public and private absolution. He owns it to be a defect in his liturgy, that it wants a public absolution.—Bingham.

Calvin’s own account of his facility merits attention. In his character, flexibility of disposition appears to be a lineament either so faint, or so obscured by more prominent features of a different cast, that it has generally escaped vulgar observation. His panegyrist, the learned translator of Mosheim’s Eccles. Hist., [Maclaine,] describes him as surpassing most of the reformers “in obstinacy, asperity, and turbulence.”—Shepherd.

This penitence our Church makes not a new sacrament, (as doth the Church of Rome,) but a means of returning to the grace of God bestowed in baptism. “They which in act or deed sin after baptism, (saith our homily,) when they turn to God unfeignedly, they are likewise washed by this sacrifice from their sins.”—Puller.

If our confession be serious and hearty, this absolution is as effectual as if God did pronounce it from heaven. So says the Confession of Saxony and Bohemia, and so says the Augustan Confession; and, which is more, so says St. Chrysostom in his fifth homily upon Isaiah, “Heaven waits and expects the priest’s sentence here on earth; the Lord follows the servant, and what the servant rightly binds or looses here on earth, that the Lord confirms in heaven.” The same says St. Gregory (Hom. 20) upon the Gospels: “The apostles (and in them all priests) were made God’s vicegerents here on earth, in his name and stead to retain or remit sins.” St. Augustine and Cyprian, and generally all antiquity, say the same; so does our Church in many places, particularly in the form of absolution for the sick; but, above all, holy Scripture is clear, (St. John xx. 23,) “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them.” Which power of remitting sins was not to end with the apostles, but is a part of the ministry of reconciliation, as necessary now as it was then, and therefore to continue as long as the ministry of reconciliation; that is, to the end of the world. (Eph. iv. 12, 13.) When therefore the priest absolves, God absolves, if we be truly penitent. Now, this remission of sins granted here to the priest, to which God hath promised a confirmation in heaven, is not the act of preaching, or baptizing, or admitting men to the holy communion. But this power of remitting sins, mentioned John xx., was not granted (though promised, Matt. xvi. 19) till now, that is, after the resurrection, as appears by the ceremony of breathing, signifying that then it was given: and secondly, by the word receive, used in that place, (ver. 22,) which he could not properly have used, if they had been endued with this power before. Therefore the power of remitting, which here God authorizes, and promises certain assistance to, is neither preaching nor baptizing, but some other way of remitting, viz. that which the Church calls absolution. And if it be so, then, to doubt of the effect of it, (supposing we be truly penitent, and such as God will pardon,) is to question the truth of God: and he that, under pretence of reverence to God, denies or despises this power, does injury to God, slighting his commission, and is no better than a Novatian, says St. Ambrose.—Sparrow.

Our Church has not appointed the indicative form of absolution to be used in all these senses, but only once in the office of the sick, and that may reasonably be interpreted, (according to the account given out of St. Jerome,) a declaration of the sinner’s pardon, upon the apparent evidences of a sincere repentance, and the best judgment the minister can make of his condition; beyond which none can go, but the searcher of hearts, to whom alone belongs the infallible and irreversible sentence of absolution. The indicative form, “I absolve thee,” may be interpreted to mean no more than a declaration of God’s will to a penitent sinner, that, upon the best judgment the priest can make of his repentance, he esteems him absolved before God, and accordingly pronounces and declares him absolved. As St. Jerome observes, the priests under the old law were said to cleanse a leper, or pollute him; not that they were the authors of his pollution, but that they declared him to be polluted, who before seemed to many to have been clean. As, therefore, the priest makes the leper clean or unclean, so the bishop or presbyter here binds or looses, not properly making the guilty or the guiltless; but according to the tenor of his office, when he hears the distinction of sins, he knows who is to be bound, and who is to be loosed. Upon this also, the master of the sentences (following St. Jerome) observes, that the priests of the gospel have that right and office which the legal priests had of old under the law in curing the lepers. These, therefore, forgive sins, or retain them, whilst they show and declare that they are forgiven or retained by God. For the priests “put the name of the Lord” upon the children of Israel, but it was he himself that blessed them, as it is read in Num. vi. 27.—Bingham.

Our Church maintains, appealing to Scripture for the proof of it, that some power of absolving or remitting sins, derived from the apostles, remains with their successors in the ministry; and accordingly, at the ordination of priests, the words of our Saviour, on which the power is founded, are solemnly repeated to them by the bishop, and the power at the same time conferred. We do not pretend it is in any sort a discretionary power of forgiving sins, for the priest has no discernment of the spirit and hearts of men, as the apostles had, but a power of pronouncing authoritatively, in the name of God, who has committed to the priest the ministry of reconciliation, his pardon and forgiveness to all true penitents and sincere believers. That God alone can forgive sins, that he is the sole author of all blessings, spiritual as well as temporal, is undeniable: but that he can declare his gracious assurance of pardon, and convey his blessings to us, by what means and instruments he thinks fit, is no less certain. In whatever way he vouchsafes to do it, it is our duty humbly and thankfully to receive them; not to dispute his wisdom in the choice of those means and instruments; for, in that case, he that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God.—Waldo.

The following remarks on our forms of absolution occur in “Palmer’s Origines Liturgicæ.”