The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-05-16 00:00:00

THE ROAD MURDER AND THE
CONFESSIONAL.

The Road murder, and the fact of Constance Kent's
original confession having been made to the Rev. Mr.
Wagner, priest of "St. Mary's Home" (a Protestant
nunnery), at Brighton, has led to a consideration of the
lawfulness of auricular confession in the Church of
England. One gentleman writes to the Brighton
Observer, in the following terms:—" The efficacy of
absolution from the lips of an ordained priest is nowhere
more plainly asserted than in the Prayer Book of the
Church of Eiigland. The act of ordination is accom-
panied by the words : 'Whose sins thou dost forgive,
they are forgiven.' The exercise of this ministry is
provided for in the Daily Service, in the celebration of
the Holy Communion, and, in a still more emphatic)
form in the Order for the Visitation of the Sick. The
words is the latt.r office are : 'Our Lord Jesus Christ,
who loath left power to His Church to absolve all
sinners who truly repent and believe in Him, of Me
great mercy forgive thee thine offences: And by His
authority committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy
sing, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost.' Now, confusion is the necessary correlative
of absolution, since the penitent only are forgiven. The
public absolution in the Daily and Communion Service is
preceded by public confession; and in the semi-privacy
of the Visitation
•of the Sick the rubric directs that
before the absolutior "the sick person shall be moved
to make • special confession of his sins, if he feel his
conscience troubled with any weighty matter." To the
same effect is the conclusion of the notice to be given of
the celebration of the Lord's Supper: "If there be any
of you who cannot quit his own conscience, but re-
quireth further comfort or counsel, let him come to me,
or to souse other disoreet and learned minister of God's
Word, and open his grief, that by the ministry of God's
Holy Word he way receive the bentfit of ab,olu,lon,
together with ghostly counsel and advice, to the quieting
his conscience, and avoiding of all scruple and doubt-
fulness " In the face of these facts, n, one has any
right to accuse an English clergyman of unfaithfulness
to the Church he serves and by which he is supported,
if he admits such members of his flock as desire it to
oonfes-ion, and ministers to the penitent the word of
abst.lution.
Another writer, who is himself averse to the
cu4om, yet juat'fies it by the teaching of the Prayer
Book as follows :—" The Book of Common Prayer'
land every part of it is the Law of the Church,
and, as an Established Church, the Law of the
Land ! So long as this book contains too plain in-
vitations to coerces sins to a clergyman with eprivate
form of absolution, and the ordination service repeats
'whosoever sins ye remit,' &a., to each minister, so
long is it useless for you or me or any other Protestant
to single out Mr. Wagner or any other clergyman who
have sworn a solemn oath to use this Prayer Book and
none other. The word 'Protestant' does not occur
from one end of it to the other. The word Catholic' oce n
a dozen times. The Prefaces distinctly state that it is
compiled in accordance with Ancient Usages and Ancient
Breviaries, Missals, &a. Many of its compilers are
known to have used crosses, candlesticks, incense, &a
It was clearly not intended to be a fresh, pure, Pro-
testant composition ; one in accordance with the purer
gospel teaching and high moral religious tone of our
past Reformation period ! This being the case, we fall
short of the real point of our aim at anything but an
entire re-modelling and re-composiion of the Prayer
Book. Twist it as we may it will not it in with
advanced Protestant notions. Leave out a bit of the
Catechism or a piece of the Baptismal Service, still
there is the whole tone of it, the way in which it ties us
to a o.rtain yearly circle over and over again; there is
the very same doctrine re-appearing in the Collects or
Prayers that we wished to leave out in some other
services."