The Special Purpose of this inquiry

balance of our formularies, and added to them no single word to imply that the Confession they counselled, and the Absolution they upheld, were other in character and purpose than that sober and Scriptural use of such means of grace as the compilers of our Prayer Book, Articles, and Homilies, had laid down. If they differed from their predecessors, it was on a matter not so much of doctrine as of practical expediency. They did not attempt to reconstruct the plain answer already given in the new Formularies on the nature and effect of such private and special ministrations.

The following pages are mainly devoted to the former of the above questions. What did Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer-what did their immediate supporters and successors teach to be the purpose of Confession, and the benefit of Absolution? In an attempt to unravel the difficult tangle of opinions in which this controversy has wrapped itself, this question must come first. If some settled agreement could be arrived at by all

sober, peaceable, and truly conscientious sons of the Church of England on the issue thus raised, it would then be possible to discuss, with some hope of mutual agreement, the place which this special method of ministry may be allowed to occupy, within the bounds of our pure and reformed Church," and in a spirit of loyal obedience to the words of our Homilies and Prayer

Book. But so long as we use phrases to which each school of thought attaches a different meaning, so long as we leave the purpose and nature of this penitential discipline vague and unsettled, so long will mutual misunderstanding and distrust remain.

The purpose, therefore, of this book is, in the main, a limited one. It is necessary at times to detach our minds from other aspects of a subject in order to concentrate attention on one special part of it. Such a method may for a time fail to supply completeness of view, but it is none the less essential, if we are to arrive at sound and permanent conclusions.

That there are hopeful signs of agreement among a large body of Churchmen on this central aspect of the question, the discussions at the Fulham Conference on Confession and Absolution give welcome proof. With few exceptions the acute differences which arose turned on the expediency of making a more or less frequent use of private Confession in the Ministry of Reconciliation. There was an unexpectedly wide consensus of opinion as to the purpose of special Confession, and as to the nature and effects of ministerial Absolution.

It is the earnest hope of the writer that the present endeavour may tend to the removal of misunderstanding, and to the promotion of truth. The work can only claim to be an honest study

of the writings of those men who were the first compilers of our formularies, and under whose guidance on this subject those formularies took their final shape.1

1 For changes made in 1662 see p. 273. They were very slight, and not material to the question here discussed.

CHAPTER I

The Reformers' Appeal to Scripture

WE

The Successive

E have first to learn what meaning the
Reformers placed on certain passages Commissions

in the New Testament. Their appeal was to
Scripture and to the Primitive Church; but the
former was their ultimate tribunal.

One obvious fact, that strikes the student of their writings, is that they group together a number of familiar passages, and refer them broadly to this subject, without much care to distinguish their meaning. Matt. xvi. 18, 19, and xviii. 15-18, are quoted indifferently with John xx. 21-23; and these again with Matt. xxviii. 18-20, Mark xvi. 15, 16, and Luke xxiv. 47, 48, passages which record the great catholic commission to preach the Gospel.

It is not within our purpose to discuss the exact difference between the significance

of "the keys" or of "binding

in St. Matthew, and that of "forgiving and retain

ing sins" in St. John.

binding" and "loosing "

We may accept the

1

consent of the Fulham Conference (1902) that

C.A.

1

given by

Christ

or

"allow

the former were well-known Rabbinical figures to denote the power of "forbidding ing" which belonged to the teacher, while the latter have a more limited reference to the momentous question of the forgiveness of sins, or, as St. Paul calls it, "the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. v. 18).

Now this distinction between the larger commission to teach or legislate, and that more defined authority to deal with individuals or classes as to the problem of sin, seems to a great extent unnoticed in these writers.

:

Tindale says that "Christ expoundeth Himself," and treats John xx. as expounding Matt. xviii. "Where binding is but to rebuke them that sin; and loosing to forgive them that repent." Elsewhere, he gives this comment on John xx. 21-23: "To bind and to loose is . . . . to tell people their faults, and to preach mercy in Christ to all that repent."

" 2

Pilkington, the first Protestant Bishop of Durham in Elizabeth's reign, makes the same identification

1 Dean Plumptre says that these figures belong to the Scribe or Teacher, not to the Priest, and that our Lord's training of the Apostles was to make them 'Scribes instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. xiii. 52), stewards of the treasures of Divine wisdom. Bp. Ellicott, Comment. on Matt. xvi. 19.

2 Tind. i. 320, ii. 283. This he illustrates by St. Paul's treatment of the Corinthian offender in 1 Cor. v., and