The form of the absolution. AFTER the sick person has made a special confession of his sins, as has been mentioned above, the Priest is to absolve him, if he humbly and heartily desire it, after this sort:
Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his Church to absolve all sinners, who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences: and by his authority committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Seems only to respect the censures of the Church. Now whether the Church designs, by this form, that the Priest shall directly convey God’s pardon to the conscience of the sinner, for his sins and offences committed against him; or whether that he shall only remit the censures of the Church, and continue him in the privilege of Church-communion, which he may be supposed to have forfeited by the sins he has confessed, is thought by some not to be clearly or determinately expressed. But if we look forward to the Collect immediately after to be used, it looks as if the Church did only intend the remission of ecclesiastical censures and bonds. For in that prayer the penitent is said still most earnestly to desire pardon and forgiveness: which surely there would be no occasion to do, if he had been actually pardoned and forgiven by God, by virtue of the absolution pronounced before. Again, the Priest offers a special request, that God would preserve and continue him in the unity of the Church; which seems to suppose, that the foregoing Absolution had been pronounced in order to restore him to its peace. And therefore since the form will bear this sense, without straining or putting any force upon the words, I hope it will be no offence to interpret them so, as is most consistent with the original commission given by our Lord, and the exercise of it in the purest ages of the Church.
§.2. What power given to the Church by our Saviour. Now it is plain that the authority first promised to St. Peter, and afterwards in common to all the Apostles, was a power of admitting to, or excluding from. Church-communion: for it is expressed by the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Now the kingdom of heaven being, in the Scriptural sense, the Church of Christ, of which heaven is the metropolis or principal part; and the keys (which are a token or ensign of power) being also used in Scripture to denote the conferring of authority to some chief officer in a family, to take in and exclude from it whom he should judge convenient; it must follow, that by the keys of the kingdom of heaven must be meant a power of admitting into, and shutting out of, the Christian Church. Accordingly the exercise of this power is called binding and loosing, which were terms used by the Jews, to signify the same things with what we now express by excommunicating and absolving. And our Saviour gives in charge, that whosoever is thus bound should be looked upon by his disciples as a heathen man and a publican; which seems naturally to import, that from a state of communion with the Christian Church, he should be reduced into the state of heathens, and such other profligate men, who were not admitted into their places of worship, nor so much as received into common conversation.
St. John indeed tells us, that our Saviour, after his resurrection, and when he seemed to be giving his final commission, endued his Apostles with a power expressed by the terms of remitting and retaining sins. But now it is the opinion of Dr. Hammond, and from him of a late author of not inferior judgment, that this passage has much the same signification with the former, and that the terms in St. John, of retaining and remitting, are equivalent to those in St. Matthew, of binding and loosing. They only observe that retaining is more emphatical than binding, and that it signifies properly to keep bound, and the word remit refers to sin as a debt, whereas the word loose refers to it as a bond or chain. And if this be the sense of the words in St. John, then it is plain that this commission, as well as the former in St. Matthew, confers only a power of excommunicating and absolving; and consequently that no authority can be urged from hence for the applying of God’s pardon to the conscience of a sinner, or for absolving him any otherwise than from the censures of the Church.
And indeed that these words give no power to us, in the present state of the Church, to forgive or remit sins in the name of God, so as immediately to restore the person absolved to his favour and grace, I humbly presume to join my opinion with theirs. But yet, with due submission, I cannot forbear thinking, that such a power was intended to be given by them to the Apostles. For I observe, that wherever else in the New Testament we meet with the word ἀφίημι, (which we render remit in the text,) applied to sins, as it is here, it is constantly used to express the remission and forgiveness of them, or the entire putting them away; and therefore the use of the same terms, in the text I am speaking of, inclines me to interpret the commission there given, of a power to remit sins, even in relation to God; insomuch that those sins which the Apostles should declare forgiven by virtue of this commission, should be actually forgiven by God himself, so as to be imputed no more. Not that I believe this power extended to the remitting all sins indiscriminately, and in whomsoever they pleased: out only that when some temporal calamity or disease had been inflicted upon a man as a punishment for his sins, the Apostles, if inwardly moved by the Spirit, had power to declare that his sins were forgiven, and as a testimony thereof to remove his calamity. That which inclines me to put this sense upon these words is my observing, that when our Saviour vouchsafed to heal the paralytic, he first pronounced that his sins were forgiven him: and that when St. James also is speaking of a sick man’s being raised by the prayer of faith, from his bodily disease, he adds, that if he had committed any sins, (which were the cause of it,) they also should be forgiven him. Now from hence I would infer, that the power of healing diseases, and the power of remitting sins, were generally consequent one of the other. And therefore since it is evident that the Apostles and others, in the first ages of the Church, could heal diseases, it seems not unlikely that they did it by virtue of a power that was invested in them of forgiving sins. And consequently, if they had a power of forgiving sins, that power must be conferred upon them by this commission in St. John, where our Saviour sends them with the same plenitude of power with which he himself was sent of the Father, and explains that power by the express and open terms of remitting and retaining sins. And if this be the sense of this text in St. John, then it is only to be interpreted of an extraordinary power which accompanied the inflicting, or continuing, or removing diseases, (as the occasion required,) which our Saviour thought fit, for the readier progress of the Gospel, to intrust with the Apostles and first preachers of Christianity.
§.3. The internal effects of excommunication and absolution. However, that these words were never understood by the primitive Christians to imply a Standing authority in the Ministers of the Gospel, to pardon or forgive his sins immediately and directly in relation to God, and as to which the censure of the Church had been in no wise concerned, I think may fairly be urged from there being no mention made, in any of the ancient Fathers, that any such authority was ever pretended to by any Church whatever, for a great many centuries after Christ. And therefore, if they relate to any standing authority, which was designed to continue through all ages of the Church, they must necessarily be interpreted in the abovementioned sense; which makes them equivalent to the texts in St. Matthew, which, I have already shewed, have an evident relation to excommunicating and absolving, or to the inflicting and removing Church-censures. Not that the favour or displeasure of God is wholly unconcerned in these acts of the Church; for the contrary of this is evidently declared by our Lord himself: whatsoever, saith he, ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven: which must at least imply, that whatever sentence shall be duly passed by the governors of the Church, shall be ratified by him whom they represent; insomuch that whosoever is, by virtue of such sentence, cut off from the Church, not only loses the benefit of Church-communion, (which is ordinarily the necessary means of salvation,) but will also, if he dies in a state of impenitence, be looked upon by God to have forfeited all the privileges of his baptism, and consequently to be as much without the pale of the Church, as if he had never been admitted into it. Nay, further, though even an innocent man should, through wrong information, or some other mischance, be unjustly excommunicated, he must, with due respect and submission to the authority, plead his innocence, and use all proper means that offer, to bring his judges to a sense of their mistake. And if, after all, his sentence is, for want of opportunities to clear himself, ratified and confirmed, he is obliged to acquiesce in it: for should he, upon such occasion, behave himself undutifully to the ministers of Christ, he will undoubtedly incur the same sentence in heaven, which the courts on earth would pass on those who should offer to abuse and revile their judges; i.e. he will be condemned for his disobedience to them, let him be ever so innocent as to the crime laid to his charge. So that though a man may have committed no real offence against God, yet if he falls under the censure of the Church, it will be imputed to him as a sin even by God himself, if he does not obtain, or by all due humiliation endeavour to obtain, her absolution and forgiveness. And for this reason the absolution of the Church ought always to be sued for with prayers and tears, whenever we have done any thing that may give her offence. And therefore all I aim at is only to shew, that it does not appear from this text in St. John, nor from any of the others that have been spoken to above, that any absolution pronounced by the Church can cleanse or do away our inward guilt, or remit the eternal penalties of sin, which are declared to be due to it by the sentence of God, any further than by the prayers which are appointed to accompany it, and by the use of those ordinances to which it restores us, it may be a means, in the end, of obtaining our pardon from God himself, and the forgiveness of our sin as it relates to him.
§.4. The power of Absolution, what sense exercised in the primitive Church. And this, upon inquiry, we shall find to be all that the Church laid claim to for divers ages after our Saviour. For if we look into her practice for the first four centuries, we shall always find absolution co-relative to public discipline. The peace of the Church was never ordinarily given but to such as were under its censures before; nor was any loosed, or had his sins remitted, but who had before been bound, or had his sins retained. It is true, at such times, prayers were always used, for the obtaining to the penitent the forgiveness of God, and for restoring him again to his favour and grace. And indeed it does not appear, that in those primitive ages there was any other ceremony used, at the instant of re-admitting a penitent to the peace of the Church, than intercessions and prayers offered to God on his behalf, together with the imposition of the Bishop’s hands; which, by the way too, were all along applied to him throughout the whole course of his penitentieal separation: so that this sin was gradually expiated by the deprecations of the Minister, during the whole time of his being under the state of penance; and was then judged to be fully expiated, when the term of his sentence was quite expired, and he had for the last time received the imposition of hands, upon which he was immediately reinstated in all the privileges of full communion. In some time after the optative form was gradually introduced, and mixed with the precatory, much as it is in the form of absolution used by our own Church in the office of Communion. But as to the indicative form, it does not appear to have been generally introduced till about the middle of the twelfth century; and then it was made use of only to reconcile the penitent to the Church, whilst the deprecatory was what was supposed to procure his pardon from God. Within a century afterwards, indeed, it was a ruled case in the Church, that such as received the confession of penitents should, by an indicative form, absolve them from their sins: and the Priests were supposed to have a power invested in them, to release a sinner from the wrath of God, purely by pronouncing this form over him.
But I have already observed, that as to the pardon of God, and applying it directly to the sinner’s conscience, the power of the Priest is only ministerial; and therefore one would think that, in the exercise of that power, the form should be rather precatory than peremptory. But in restoring a man to the peace of the Church, (which he may appear by his confession to have forfeited, though sentence was never denounced against him,) there the form may decently enough be absolute and indicative: for the Minister in this case has a Judicial authority, and so is at liberty to use fuller terms.
§.5. What intended by the present form. And that the form of absolution, of which we are now discoursing, is only designed to remit to the penitent the censures that might be due from the Church to his sins, may not only be inferred from the expressions I have already taken notice of in the Collect that is appointed to be used immediately after it, but may also further be argued from the end and design for which that Collect was originally composed. For in the Penitential of Ecbert, who was archbishop of York in the middle of the eighth century, the reader may find this very prayer, with a very little variation, to have been one of the ancient formularies for clinical absolution: for even in the primitive Church, absolution was granted to a sick-bed penitent, though neither excommunication nor penance had preceded before. Penance indeed was in such cases assigned him, and he stood bound, upon his recovery, to comply with the conditions upon which it was granted him, and to perform it publicly in the face of the Church: but since he was not at present in such a state or capacity, he was by no means whatever to be denied a reconciliation, but was admitted to the one, upon a presumption that, if he lived, he would perform the other. And as this was the ancient usage of the Church, and as our own Church has made choice of a form that was used upon these occasions, to be used to a penitent in the same circumstances; why may we not suppose that her design was to accommodate, as far as she could, our modern office to the ancient ones? If the Minister that visits will use his endeavours, he may certainly bring it very near: for he may assign the party that confesses to him, certain penitential mortifications to be undergone by him, as soon as he recovers and is able, though they be not publicly submitted to in the face of the congregation: and he may insist with him, that he shall give some proof of his repentance, before he offers to receive the Communion in the Church. And if the penitent promises to submit to these conditions, the Minister may proceed, with a great deal of hope and satisfaction to himself, and with a great deal of comfort and advantage to the penitent, to reconcile him to the Church in the absolution itself, and to intercede with, and to recommend him to the throne of grace in the prayer that follows. And if this too were done before a few chosen serious witnesses, it would still bear a nearer resemblance to the ancient practice. For Tertullian observes, that the Church may subsist in a few of her members; and our Saviour has promised, that where two or three are gathered together in his name, he will be there in the midst of them, and (which to our purpose is somewhat remarkable) that promise follows close after the power he had just before been promising to his disciples of binding and loosing.
§.6. Private Absolution formerly enjoined. By the first book of king Edward VI the same form of Absolution was ordered to be used in all private confessions: i.e. I suppose, whenever any person, whose conscience was troubled and grieved in any thing lacking comfort or counsel, should (as it was then worded in the Exhortation to the Communion) come to some discreet and learned Priest taught in the law of God, and confess and open his sin and grief secretly; that he might receive such ghostly counsel, advice, and comfort, that his conscience might be relieved, and that of him (as of the Minister of God and of the Church) he might receive comfort and absolution, to the satisfaction of his mind, and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness. But in the review of the Common Prayer, in the fifth year of that prince, our reformers (observing, as I suppose, that this form of Absolution was not very ancient, and that persons might place too much confidence and security in it, as thinking that the bare pronouncing it over them cleansed them from their inward pollution and guilt, and entirely remitted their sins before God) left out that rubric in the office appointed for the Visitation of the Sick, and in the Exhortation to the Communion mentioned above, somewhat altered the expressions, to shew that the benefit of Absolution (of Absolution, I presume, from inward guilt) was not to be received by the pronouncing of any form, but by a due application and ministry of God’s holy word. So that all that the Minister seems here empowered to transact, in order to quiet the conscience of a person that applies to him for advice, is only to judge by the outward signs and fruits of his repentance, whether his conversion be real and sincere; and if upon examination it appears to be so, he is then to comfort him, with an assurance that his sins are remitted even in the court of heaven, and that he is restored to the grace and favour of Christ. But then this he is to deliver, not absolutely, but conditionally; i.e. upon the presumption that his repentance is as sincere as he represents it. He must by no means pronounce it as a final judge; because Christ alone can discern whether his conversion be feigned or real; and consequently he only can absolutely determine the state of the man towards God.
§.7. The present form not to be pronounced, unless heartily desired. As to the form of Absolution, of which we are now discoursing, a parenthesis was added at the last review, to intimate, that this is not to be used even over the sick, unless he humbly and heartily desire it. For it is fit a man should shew an earnest desire, and a due sense of so great a benefit, before it is offered him. And then if he be rightly instructed in the end and design of it, and the form itself be applied with that prudence and caution above described, the use of it surely may not only tend to the good of the penitent, but may also prove of singular service and advantage to the Church.