The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette. — 1865-05-16 (Dorchester, Dorset, England)

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 accompanied 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 requireth 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 doubtfulness " 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 invitations 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, Protestant 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."