shall be loosed also in heaven. But the apostles loose them by the Word of God, and the testimonies of the Scriptures, and the exhortation to virtue."—(App., Note 61.)

"To the discipline of the priest it belongs to answer questions concerning the law. For if he shows himself not only a lover of ignorance in other things, but neglectful in the Holy Scriptures, he boasts in vain of a dignity whose works he does not exhibit. This is what the Apostle Paul writes to Titus, that he should be powerful to exhort with sound doctrine, to convince the gainsayers. And to Timothy: As thou hast known from infancy the sacred Scriptures, which are able to instruct thee unto salvation, that thou mayest rebuke sinners before all.” -(App., Note 62.)

If that serpent the devil has privily bitten any one, and has infected him with the poison of sin, no one being conscious of it, and he does not exercise penitence, nor is willing to confess his wound to his brother and Master, his Master, who has the tongue to cure him, can not easily profit him. For if the sick man is ashamed to confess to the physician the wound which he knows not, the medicine does not cure."-(App., Note 63.)

"Blessed are those whose iniquities are pardoned, and whose sins, through confession, are washed away by the Lord. But by what modes are sins remitted? By three. They are remitted through baptism, they are covered by charity, they are not imputed through martyrdom.”—(App., Note 64.)

Now here it is worthy of great remark that Jerome takes no notice whatever of any prerogative, even of the apostles themselves, in the remission of sins, save only what they exercised "by the Word of God, the testimonies of the Scriptures, and the exhortations to virtue;" that he specially quotes St. Paul's command to Timothy, to rebuke those that sinned "before all;" that the only confession he recommends the sinner to make is to his "brother and Master," where it is evident that the term brother refers no more to the priest than to any other Christian; and the term Master as evidently can only refer to Christ. Lastly, we see that Jerome reckons only three modes by which sins are remitted through the acts of human

agency, baptism, charity, and martyrdom. Charity, however, in this passage, is doubtless intended, not to exclude penitence, but to distinguish the quality which makes penitence effectual before God, according to that declaration of the Saviour, "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, because she loved much."

I may here mention the statement of the Roman scholiast on Jerome, that the learned Erasmus, who lived and died in the communion of the Church of Rome, "denies the secret confession of sins to have been practiced among the ancients, and admits only the public confession, which was made on account of public sins."-(App., Note 65.)

As to the reference of the Trentine Catechism to the sentence of Jerome about penitence being "the second plank after shipwreck," it is precisely in accordance with what we have already seen in all the other witnesses who speak of the one allowance of public penitence after baptism. And I shall only add, that Jerome, in his epistle to Rusticus,* collects a great number of passages from Scripture on the subject of penitence, without taking the slightest notice of confession to the priests, or even of the penitential canons, only urging confession to God.

My next witness, who is the most voluminous, as well as the most profound of the fathers, furnishes so large an amount of evidence, that it will be expedient to make his testimony the subject of a distinct chapter.

* Tom. i., p. 142-5.

CHAPTER IX.

TESTIMONY OF AUGUSTIN.

It is a subject of no small gratification to me, that in turning to Augustin, whom the Church of Rome acknowledges as the most eminent, on the whole, among the ancient fathers, I shall be able to demonstrate in the clearest manner the novelty of their present system; for although his testimony, in the main, does not differ from that of his predecessors, yet his statements are more full and precise, and therefore less capable of evasion. I appeal, therefore, to this, my fifteenth witness, with considerable confidence, that even the judgment of Romanists might be satisfied, if unhappily their figment of infallibility did not shut them out from the possibility of conviction. The language of Augustin is as follows:

"There are three kinds of penitence which your Erudition recognizes, as I do; for they are familiar in the Church of God, and known to those who are diligently attentive. One is that which travails with the new man, until, through saving baptism, the washing away of all past sins takes place; so that, as when a child is born, the pains pass off by which the womb was urged to the birth, joy may follow sorrow. For every one who is already made the arbiter of his own will, when he comes to the sacraments of the faithful, unless he repents of his old life, he can not begin with the new one. From this kind of penitence when they are baptized, infants alone are exempted, because they can not as yet use free will."-(App., Note 66.)

"Another kind of penitence is that which is required in the perpetual humility of supplication, through the whole of this life which we pass in our fleshly tabernacle. Whence, also,

when we pray, we say, what through our whole life we are bound to say, Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. For we do not pray that those debts should be forgiven, concerning which, unless we believe that they are already forgiven in baptism, we doubt of the faith itself; but we say this rather concerning our daily sins, for which also every one offers, without ceasing, the sacrifices of alms, fastings, and prayers, and supplications, with all his power."—(App., Note 67.)

“The third kind of penitence is that which is to be performed for the sins committed against the laws contained in the Decalogue, and concerning which the Apostle saith, For those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Therefore, in this penitence every one ought to exercise a greater severity toward himself, that, being judged by himself, he may not be judged by the Lord."-(App., Note 68.)

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Being bound, therefore, by the chains of these deadly sins, does any man refuse, or delay, or doubt whether he should have recourse to those keys of the Church by which he may be loosed on earth, in order that he may be loosed in heaven? Let a man, then, judge himself in these by his own will, while he is able, and amend his ways; lest, when he is no longer able, he may, against his will, be judged by the Lord. And when he shall have pronounced against himself the sentence of this most severe medicine, but yet a medicine still, let him come to the presiding ministers, by whom in the Church those keys are applied, and as already beginning to be a good son, the order being observed of his Mother's children, let him accept the mode of his satisfaction from those who preside over the sacraments, so that, being devout and suppliant in offering the sacrifice of a sorrowful heart, he may do what shall not only be profitable to his own salvation, but shall also serve for an example to others. To this end, if his sin be not merely to his own grievous injury, but is likewise a cause of scandal to others, and if it shall seem expedient for the good of the Church in the judgment of the bishop, let him not refuse to exercise penitence in the presence of many, or even of all the people : let him not resist, nor, through shame, add inflammation to the mortal and deadly wound."-(App., Note 69.)

"And let no one think, brethren, on account of these things, that he ought to despise the use of this salutary penitence, because he may, perhaps, observe and know that many come to the sacrament of the altar of whose crimes he is not ignorant. For many are corrected, like Peter; many are tolerated, like

Judas; many are unknown, until the coming of the Lord, who shall illuminate the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the thoughts of the heart; for most men are unwilling to accuse others, desiring to be excused by them. And many good Christians are silent, and suffer the sins of others which they know, because the testimonies are often wanting, and those things with which they are themselves acquainted can not be proved to the ecclesiastical judges; for although certain things may indeed be true, yet they are not to be easily credited by the judge, unless they are substantiated by certain evidence. But we can not prohibit any one from the Communion (although this prohibition is not yet mortal, but medicinal) unless he be accused and convicted, either by his own voluntary confession, or by some secular or ecclesiastical judgment. For who would dare to take it upon himself, that he should act against any man both as accuser and judge ?”—(App., Note 70.)

Now here we have the positive and irrefragable proof, which totally destroys the claims of the Roman system to an apostolical, or even a primitive origin. How little idea had Augustin, when he wrote this paragraph, that the time would ever come for prohibiting all Christians from the sacrament, until they had passed through the private confessional of the priest, and been forced to answer every question which he might choose to put to them, under the penalty of excommunication? No contrast can be more complete than that exhibited between the fair and reasonable freedom of the Church, in the time of this ancient witness, and the priestly despotism which was fastened upon it in after ages. And the picture of relaxed discipline and inconsistent discipleship which Augustin sets before us in this passage, is a fair parallel with the condition of most Christian communities in our own day. The Church had declined from her first zeal and devotion. A hundred years and more had passed away since the fires of heathen persecution had been exchanged for worldly peace and honor. And although the image of the ancient strict

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