The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-01-12 00:00:00

CORRESPONDENCE

CATHOLIC AND POPISH FORMS OF CONFES-
SION AND ABSOLUTION.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD,

SIR,—I am extiemely desirous, for the better understand-
ing of the subject under discussion, that your Episcopal
readers may not forgot that dissenters invariably, and
Papists when they would throw valican dust into " liberal
eyes," assert that there is no difference between the churches
of •Rome and England as to tile nature of the absolving
power attributed to the priest. It will be also well to bear in
mind that the editor of the Mercury—as may be seen by re-
ference to my first letter—broadly states that " Protestants
hold in common with the Roman Catholics, if there be any
meaning in words, the " doctrines of transubstantiation,
and the power of the minister to absolve penitents from their
sins." When after I had placed in juxta-position the Ca-
tholic and Popish forms, the editor of the above journal
politely writes thus, in his notice to correspondents :--
" Pacianus has made ' a distinction without a difference.' "

The distinction then is recognised at once ; and, if after
what has been cited, and vet remains to be cited—from
Popish documents, the difference be not palpable to the
editor of the Mercury—l shall, indeed, marvel at his in-
fidelity.

It has been shewn, then, sir, by reference to authorities—
authorities from which I defy any Popish priest, who holds
allegiance to the " Man of Rome," to appeal—that the Ro-
mish church lays imperative obligation upon her children,
under pain of damnation, to repair to the confessional, and
that the priest sits in the chair of confession not to declare
God's general promises to such as are penitent " by the mi-
nistry of God's holy word," but as a JUDGE to decide how
far God has been injured, and what bulk of compensation is
to be awarded.

But, sir, the poor Papist is much to be pitied, for he is
obliged to look upon his priest in such a light as, indeed,
makes one shudder when perusing Papal treatises on the
power of the priesthood : take the following as a specimen :
—" seeing the bishops and priests are, as it were, the inter-
preters and ambassadors of God, who in God's name teach
men the divine law, and the rule of life, and PERSONATE
God himself on the earth, it is evident that their function is
such as a greater cannot be conceived. Wherefore they are
worthily called not only angels, but GODS also, because they
hold the POWER and THE NAME OF THE IMMORTAL GOD
AMONG US."—Cat. Rona. p. 293, and Latin edit. p. 270.
The above extract, it will be remembered, is made from a
work out of which the priest is bound to instruct the souls
committed to his charge. Let, then, anything like the above
be culled out of the formularies of the Church of England—
anything so fulsome, so repugnant to God's word, and so
repulsive to Christian feeling—and then, and not till then,
will there be any truth in the assertion that the Church of
England attributes equal poyver,to the priesthood as does the
Church of Rome. But it is time I should introduce Dr.
Phillpotts in continuation.

" The words of the priest, I absolve thee,' are, I repeat,
the form of the sacrament, what makes it to be a sacrament.
And they confer, as is the property of the sacrament, the
grace which they signify. They confer reconciliation with
God, absolution, or remission of all sins, on those who receive

the sacrament with that contrition, or attrition, and that
confession, which have been described : and be it remem-
bered, that this grace of reconciliation with God (as I before
said) can be obtained by those who have fallen into mortal
sin after baptism, only in this sacrament, ordinarily, never
without the desire of it. ' For not, as under the old law, is
there now a power in the church given to priests ONLY TO
DECLARE any person to be absolved from sin : but they do
as the ministers of God TRULY ABSOLVE THEM : the SAME
thing which GoD HIMSELF does, who is the author and
father of grace and righteousness.' I quote from the Cate-
chism of the Council of Trent, Dublin Edition, faithfully
translated into Englisii by permission, page 211.
" The Council of Trent, indeed, distinctly and in the
strongest terms decrees that the priests are JUDGES, and
their absolution strictly JUDICIAL. And this is stated by it
to make an important difference between baptism and this
sacrament (and of course between the absolution respectively
given in the two). In baptism the minister ought not to
be a JUDGE, for the church exercises no judgment over those
who are not yet within it. But after baptism sinners are not
to be cleansed by a repetition of baptism, but they are to.be
made to STAND AS CRIMINALS before this TRIBUNAL, in
order that as often as penitents have recourse to it, after sins
committed, they may be released by the SENTENCE of the
priest.' Con. Trid., Secs.'XlV., c. 2.

" For, ' although the absolution of the priest be the dis-
pensation of a benefit belonging to another, yet it is not
merely a naked ministerial act of either announcing the gos-
pel, or declaring that sins are pardoned, but it is EQUIVA-
LENT TO A JUDICIAL ACT, WHEREIN SENTENCE IS PRO-
NOUNCED BY HIMSELF AS A JUDGE.' [C. 6. Ad instar
actfts judicialis, quo ab ipso, velut a judice sententia pronun-
ciatur.] And this in can. 9is afterwards re-affirmed with
an_anathema annexed on all who deny it."