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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41435	A discourse concerning auricular confession as it is prescribed by the Council of Trent, and practised in the Church of Rome : with a post-script on occasion of a book lately printed in France, called Historia confessionis auricularis.	Goodman, John, 1625 or 6-1690.	1684 (1684)	Wing G1104; ESTC R6771	36,206	60

would not discharge all their lives before tho not then neither without signs of Attrition and contrition too but these pretend to quite another thing namely to release men in foro Conscientiae and to give them a Pass-port to Heaven without Repentance which is a very strange thing to say no worse of it Or to instance one thing more what is the meaning of their practice of giving Absolution before the Penance is performed as is usual with them unless this be it that whether the Man make any Conscience at all how he lives hereafter yet he is pardoned as much as the Priest can do it for him and is not this a likely way of reformation I conclude therefore now upon the whole matter that Auricular Confession as it is used in the Church of Rome is only an Artifice of greatening the Priest and pleasing the People a trick of gratifying the undevout and impious as well as the Devout and Religious the latter it imposes upon by its outward appearance of Humility and Piety to the former it serves for a palliative Cure of the Gripes of Conscience which they are now and then troubled with in reality it tends to make sin easie and tolerable by the cheapness of its Pardon and in a word it is nothing but the Old Discipline of the Church in Dust and Ashes And therefore though the Church of England in her Liturgy piously wishes for the Restauration of the Ancient Discipline of the Church it can be no defect in her that she troubles not her self with this Rubbish FINIS A POST-SCRIPT AFter I had finished the foregoing Papers and most part of them had also past the Press I happened to have notice that there was a Book just then come over from France written by a Divine of the Sorbone which with great appearance of Learning maintained the just contrary to what I had asserted especially in the Historical part of this Question and pretended to prove from the most Ancient Monuments of the Holy Scriptures Fathers Popes and Councils that Auricular Confession had been the constant Doctrine and Universal and Uninterrupted usage of the Christian Church for near 1300 years from the Times of our Saviour to the Laterane Council So soon as I heard this I heartily wished that either the said Book had come out a little sooner or at least that my Papers had been yet in my hands to the intent that it might have been in my Power to have corrected what might be amiss or supplied what was defective in that short Discourse or indeed if occasion were to have wholly supprest it For as soon as I entered upon the said Book and found from no less a Man than the Author himself that he had diligently read over all that had been written on both sides of this controversy and that this work of his was the product of Eighteen years study and that in the prime of his years and most flourishing time of his parts that it was published upon the maturest deliberation on his part and with the greatest applause and approbation of the Faculty I thought I had reason to suspect whether a small Tract written in haste by a Man of no Name and full enough of other Business could be fit to be seen on the same Day with so elaborate a work But by that time I had read a little further I took Heart and permitted the Press to go on and now that I have gone over the whole I do here profess sincerely that in all that learned Discourse I scarcely found any thing which I had not foreseen and as I think in some measure prevented But certain I am nothing occurred that staggered my Judgment or which did not rather confirm me in what I had written for though I met with abundance of Citations and a great deal of Wit and Dexterity in the management of them yet I found none of them come home to the point for whereas they sometimes recommend and press Confession of Sin in general sometimes to the Church sometimes to the Priest or Bishop as well as to God Almighty Again sometimes they speak great things of the Dignity of the Priest-hood and the great Honour that Order hath in being wonderfully useful to the relief of Guilty or Afflicted Consciences other while they treat of the Power of the Keys and the Authority of the Church the danger of her Censures the Comfort of her Absolution and the severity of her Discipline c. but all these things are acknowledged by us without laborious proof as well as by our Adversaries That which we demand and expect therefore is where shall we find in any of the Ancient Fathers Auricular Confession said to be a Sacrament or any part of one Or where is the Universal necessity of it asserted Or that secret sins committed after Baptism are by no other means or upon no other terms pardoned with God then upon their being confessed to men In these things lies the hinge of our dispute and of these particulars one ought in Reason to expect the most direct and plain proof imaginable if the matter was of such Consequence of such Universal practice and notoriety as they pretend but nothing of all this appears in this Writer more than in those that have gone before him In contemplation of which I now adventure this little Tract into the World with somewhat more of Confidence then I should have done had it not been for this occasion But lest I should seem to be too partial in the Case or to give too slight an account of this Learned Man's performance the Reader who pleases shall be judge by a Specimen or two which I will here briefly represent to him The former of them shall be the very first argument or Testimony he produces for his Assertion which I the rather make my choice to give instance in because no Man can be said ingenuously to seek for faults to pick and choose for matter of exception that takes the first thing that comes to hand The business is this Chap. 2. Page 11. of his Book he cites the Council of Illiberis with a great deal of circumstance as the first Witness for his Cause and the Testimony is taken from the Seventy Sixth Canon the words are these Si quis Diaconum c. i. e. If any Man shall suffer himself to be ordained Deacon and shall afterwards be convicted to have formerly committed some Mortal or Capital Crime if the said Crime come to light by his own voluntary Confession he shall for the space of Three years be debarred the Holy Communion but in case his sin be discovered and made known to the Church by some other hand then he shall suffer Five years suspension and after that be admitted only to Lay Communion Now who would have ever thought this passage fit to be made choice of as the first proof of Auricular Confession or who can imagine it should be any proof at all much

Priests kneels to all holy people and intreats all the Brethren to be his Intercessors with God Almighty for his Pardon This is penitential Confession c. And in his Apology more plainly Coimus in Caetum c. ibidem exhortationes castigationes censura divina nam judicatur magno cum pondere ut apud certos de Dei conspectu summumque futuri judicii praejudicium est si quis it a deliquer it ut à communione c. religetur we have saith he in our Ecclesiastical Assemblies a Spiritual Judicature and with great gravity censure offenders c. But I need say no more of this for we have the Testimony of Beatus Rhenanus one of the Roman Church and of great insight into Ecclesiastical Affairs who gives us this account of Tertullian and his times nihil illum de clancularia illa poenitentiâ loqui quae id temporis penitus ignorabatur there was no such thing as secret or Clancular Confession in use in Tertullian's time which was a thing not so much as known by the Christian Church in those days 5. To go a little lower such was the manner of proceedings in St. Cyprian's time as he himself describes it the sinner by outward gestures and tokens shew'd himself to be sorrowful and penitent for his sin and then made humble Confession thereof before the whole Congregation and desired all the Brethren to pray for him which done the Bishop and Clergy laid their hands upon him and so reconciled him So it was also in Origen's time and once for all to deliver the Custom of the Church in those times touching this particular I will add the words of the Historian Rei ad terram se pronos abjiciunt c. they that are Conscious to themselves to have offended fall down flat upon the ground with Weeping and Lamentations in the Church on the other side the Bishop runs to them with tears in his Eyes and falls down to the ground also in token of Sorrow and Compassion and the whole Congregation in the mean while Sympathizing with both is overwhelmed with tears c. 6. If we go lower yet to the times of St. Chrysostom and St. Austin we find those Holy Men speaking very slightly of Confessions to Men so little did they think of Auricular Confession being a Sacrament St. Austin's Judgment in the case we have heard before in the Tenth Book of his Confessions and third Chapter and for the other the Testimonies out of him are so many and so well known that I cannot think it necessary to transcribe them and as for St. Jerom who lived about the same time I think it sufficient to repeat the account of Erasmus who was very conversant in his Writings and indeed of all the other Fathers and who had no other fault I know but that he did use Mordaci radere vero to be too great a Tell-truth which sure will not invalidate his Testimony his words are these Apparet tempore Hieronimi nondum institutam fuisse secretam admissorum Confessionem Verùm in hoc labuntur Theologi quidam parum attenti quòd quae veteres scribunt de publica generali confessione ea trahunt ad occultam longe diversi generis i. e. It is evident saith he that in St. Jerom's time which was about Four hundred years after our Saviour there was no such thing as Secret Consession in use but the mistake is that some few later and inconsiderate Divines have taken the instances of general and publick Confession then practised for arguments of that Auricular Confession which is now used though quite of a different nature from it Thus we have traced the Current of Antiquity for Four or Five hundred years to search for the Head of this Nilus the source and rise of that kind of Confession which is so highly magnified by the Church of Rome but hitherto we have found nothing of it and this methinks should be sufficient to stagger an impartial inquirer at least it is as much as can be expected in so short a Treatise as this is intended to be and may satisfy the unprejudicate that there is as little of Antiquity to favour this Rite as there is of Divine Institution to be pleaded for it But yet I know on the other side that the Romanists pretend to bring abundance of Testimonies for it and Bellarmine particularly goes from Century to Century with his Citations to prescribe for the constant and uninterrupted use of it but I do sincerely think that these Four following short Observations will inable a Man to answer them all 1. I observe that whereas this word Exomologesis is commonly used by diverse of the Fathers as the Phrase whereby they intend to express the whole nature of Repentance in all the parts and branches of it as is evident by the passage I cited out of Tertullian de Poenit. even now and is acknowledged by Bellarmine himself nevertheless merely because that word signifies Confession properly and nothing else these Romish Sophisters where they find this word Exomologesis force it into an Argument for that Confession which they contend for and so several Discourses of the Fathers concerning Repentance in general are made to be nothing but Exhortations to or Encomiums of Confession in particular and that must be nothing else neither but Auricular Confession the thing in Question A cast of his skill in this way Bellarmine gives us in Irenaeus the very first Author he cites for Auricular Confession in the last quoted Book and Chapter of his Writings De Sacramentis 2. Whereas the Novatians excluded all hopes of Repentance or Pardon for sins committed after Baptism but the true Church contrariwise admitted to hopes of Pardon upon their Repentance upon this occasion when some of the Fathers justly magnify the advantages and comfortableness of the true Church above the Schismatical as that it set open a Door of Hope to those who confessed their sins and applied themselves to her Ministry Hence these witty men will persuade the World that every true Church had a Confessors Chair and such a formal way of pardoning as they now practise at Rome as if there was no remission of Sin where there was no Auricular Confession and as if all that excluded the latter rejected the former too and were no better than Novatian Hereticks whenas in Truth the Power of the Keys is exercised in all the Ministries of the Church and she Pardons and retains Sins otherwise than by the Oracle of a particular Confessor as we have seen already This piece of jugling the same Bellarmine is also guilty of in his Citation of Lactantius 3. Whereas the Ancient Writers are much in the Commendation of Confession of Sins whether it be to God or to the Church but generally intending that which is Publick it is common with those of the Church of Rome to lay hold of all such sayings as were intended to