The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-11-08 00:00:00

BISHOP ELLICOTT ON RITUALISM.

At the Bristol Cathedral, on Sunday, Bishop Ellicott
preached on the teaching of the Church of England on
the subject of Confession of Sins. Ile spike of the
extreme reluctance with which he took up the subject,
but said the times required personal feeling and predi-
lection. to be put aside and the clear call of duty to be
meekly obeyed. The subject had been forced
forward by strong, and novel demands, and still more
by the avowed prevalence of a system which affected
more seriously the personal relations of the sinner to
the Saviour than any other which could be named in
the realm of vital religion. Hence, for Chows whom
God had placed in responsible positions to be silent or
evasive was to incur he charge of heavy failure of
duty at a critical time, and of unfaithfulness, and even
disloyalty, to the Church in which they had been ap-
pointed to be teachers and guides of their fellow-men.
He then put the question, What is gathered from our
formularies or the teaching of the Church of England
on the subject of Confession, and especially on con-
fession ts a minister of God's Word and Sacrament.?
and said the answer was form I indirectly set forth in
the article, involved in the Ordination Service, and
rupee especially alluded to in the exhortation in the
Holy Communion and n the service of the Visitation of
the Sick. Proceeding to carefully analyze the teaching
in each of thews important particulars, his I ..or de bip came
to the conclusion, in respect to the articles, that they die-
tinctly excluded from the sacraments Penance or Abso-
lution, and also indirectlydissvowed any so-called sacra-
mental benefits or efficacies connected either with the
one or the other ; in fact, es the Upper House of Con-
vocation of that Provisce had rightly declared, the
Church of England knew no such term as Sacramental
Confession. The Ordination Service was then examined,
as to what might be fairly gathered from it alto the
meaning of the confessedly unreserved commission—
" Whose sins thou doet forgive they are forgiven, and
whose rine thou dean retain they are retained; "and
his Lordship remarked that, precise as were the ques-
tions in the service, incluaive, as wells. heart-searching,
as were the terms of the solemn charge that was ad-
dreamed to the candidates, no allusion was to be found to
Confession or to the receiving of Confession—not a line
that could justify the unreserved application of the great
words of the commission to the duty of hearing. And, he
asked, if the hearing of confeseions were to form the
great part of the priest's office, which now they were
told it certainly ought to form, if their people ought all
to be urged to confess before receiving the Holy Coin.
minion, was not the oudseion of all allusion to such a
weighty duty in a service so explioit as the O. dination
Servi.kt one of she most startling and inexplicable
omissions that could be poeibly conceived? Three
ministration, were plainly alluded to—the Word
and Doctrine of Christ, the Sacraments, and Dis-
cipline—and yet not one word on confession. Nay,
more; did not the very words in the concluding
part a the commi-sion, when read in connexion
with the remarkable words in the exhortation
of the Communion Service, added, he believed,
at the !set revision—" that, by the ministry of God's
Holy Word, he may receive the benefit of Absolu-
tion"—carry with them the true mind of the Church
of England in reference to the great quotation from St.
John which found its place in the priest's commission.
He came, therefore, to the conclusion that the solemn
words of the Ordination Service gave pawl- first to
exercise spiritual discipline as the formularies might
prescribe and their laws night sanction ;secondly, and
in the special matter of Confession and Absolution—
that they gave wathority to declare publicly God'. I
pardon to the penitent—to impart privati ly by the I
ministry of the Word the bropfit of Absolution to snob I
as might be recommended by the Prayer-book to apply I
for it, aid in the csse of micknea an i und--r certain
conditions car,ful!y eiociiied, to pronounce and
declare it. More than this could not possibly be
aisertscl or claimed. Then came the question, Who
wire those who were recommended by the Church I
of England to confess their sins to Cod's ministers?
and in reply the preacher tusked whether the judgment
of the Church was not fully expr, seed in the words of j
one of her wisest and most loyal sons--" Private non- I
fession to be made unto the minister is neither com-
manded by priest nor necessary to nitration." The sick
In body and the sick in soul—in a word a burdened
conscience—whether before approach to the Lord's
table or whether the shadow of Death might be
gathering round, WM the one ca,, and the only case,
in wh ch the Church England deemed that her heart-
searching public confession and absolution might be not
enough for inward woe of a distrusting, and ,
perhaps despairing, soul, and in which she al-
lowed, and in the case of the sick advised, the
confession of sin to her authorised minister. This, he
unhesitatingly asserted, was the only cue; and he
was prepared to go further, and to say that not only did
their Church thus restrict and limit the use of private
confession, but that they might collect by inference
that she meant to restrain and discourage it. In proof
of this contention the preacher pointed out that certain
words, such as "auricular confession" and " confes-
sion," and a rubric allowing a form of absolution to be
used in all private confessions, which appeared Informer
edition* of the Prayer-book, were deliberately removed
from the editions now in use ; and, fnrther, that the
placing of the forma of Public Confeaaion and Absolu-
tion at the beginning of the services was aignifi ant of
a deign that they should supersede the Private Confes-
sion and Absolution of the first Prayer-book. He argued
from this that they were juatified in saying that pri-
vate confession, except in the case of a deeply-burdened
conscience, wan not only not sanctioned by the Church
of England, but even inferentially discouraged. And
must not ('aid the preacher) our iinal and sorrowful
judgment be that all those who are enjoining general
or habitual confession, or who are directly or indirectly
encouraging it, are siting against the spirit and mind
of the Church of England, and are bites clueing among
us the moat destructive and dangereus characteristic of
an alien and repudiated system?