Selected quad for the lemma: honour_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
honour_n	bishop_n	church_n	presbyter_n	1,607	5	10.3283	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

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

persuade to and incourage publick Confessions and to apply them to Auricular or Clancular Confessions thus particularly the aforesaid Author does by Tertullian in his Citation of him 4. And Lastly Whereas it is also true that several of those Holy Men of Old do in some cases very much recommend Confession of secret sins and persuade some sorts of Men to the use of it namely those that are in great perplexity of Conscience and that needed Ghostly Counsel and Advice or to the intent that they might obtain the assistance of the Churches Prayers and make them the more ardent and effectual on their behalf whereas I say they recommended this as an expression of Zeal or a prudent expedient or at most as necessary only in some cases pro hîc nunc These great Patrons of Auricular Confession do with their usual artifice apply all these passages to prove it to be a standing and universally necessary duty a Law to all Christians this is a very common fault amongst them and particularly St. Cyprian is thus misapplied by the same forementioned Writer Lib. 3. Cap. 7. Hitherto inquiring into the most Ancient and Purest times of the Church by the Writings of the Fathers of those times we have not been able to discover any sufficient ground for such an Auricular Confession as the Church of Rome pretends to much less for a constant and uninterrupted succession of it But now after all I must acknowledge there is a passage in Ecclesiastical History which seems to promise us satisfaction herein and therefore must by no means be slightly passed over without due consideration it is the famous story of Nectarius Bishop of Constantinople and Predecessor to St. Chrysostom which happen'd something less then Four hundred years after our Saviour The Story as it is related by the joint Testimony of Socrates and Sozomen runs thus In the time of this Nectarius there was it seems a Custom in that Church as also in most others that one of the Presbyters of greatest Piety Wisdom and Gravity should be chosen Penitentiary that is be appointed to the peculiar Office of receiving Confessions and to assist and direct the Penitents in the management of their Repentance Now it happens that a certain Woman of Quality stricken with remorse of Conscience comes to the Penitentiary that then was and according to Custom makes a particular Confession of all such sins as she was conscious to her self to have committed since her Baptism for which he according to his Office appointed her the Penance of Fasting and continual Prayers to expiate her Guilt and give proof of the Truth of her Repentance But she proceeding on very particularly in her Confessions at last amongst other things comes to declare that a certain Deacon of that Church had lien with her upon notice of which horrid Fact the Deacon is forthwith cashier'd and cast out of the Church By which means the miscarriage takes Air and coming to the knowledge of the People they presently fall into a mighty commotion and rage about it partly in detestation of so foul an Action of the Deacon but principally in contemplation of the Dishonour and Scandal thereby reflected on the whole Church The Bishop finding the Honour of the whole Body of his Clergy extreamly concern'd in this accident and being very anxious what to do in this case at last by the Counsel of one Eudaemon a Presbyter of that Church he resolves thenceforth to abolish the Office of Penitentiary both to extinguish the present flame and to prevent the like occasion for the future and now by this means every Man is left to the Conduct of his own Conscience and permitted to partake of the Holy Mysteries at his own peril This is the matter of fact faithfully rendered from the words of the Historian but this if we take it in the gross and look no further then so will not do much towards the deciding of the present Controversy we will therefore examine things a little more narrowly by the help of such hints as those Writers afford us perhaps we may make good use of it at last and to this purpose 1. I observe in the first place that though at the first blush here seems to be an early and great example of that Auricular Confession which we oppose forasmuch as here is not only the Order of the Church of Constantinople for Confession to a Priest but that to be of all sins committed after Baptism and this to be made to him in secret notwithstanding upon a more thorough view it will appear quite another thing from that pleaded for and practised by the Church of Rome and that especially in the respects following First In the Auricular Confession in the Story there is some remainder of the ancient Discipline of the Church whose Confessions used to be open and publick as I have shewed in that here a publick Officer is appointed by the Church to receive them such an one as whose Prudence and Learning and Piety she could confide in for a business of so great nicety and difficulty and it is neither left to the Penitent to choose his Confident for his Confessor nor at large for every Priest to represent the Authority of the Church in so ticklish an Affair as that of Discipline but to a publick Officer appointed by the Church for this purpose so that Confession to him cannot be said to be private seeing it is done to the whole Church by him To confirm which Secondly This Penitentiary it seems was bound as there was occasion to discover the matters opened to him in secret to the Church as appears in the Crime of the Deacon in the Story there was no pretence of a Seal of Confession in this Case as in the Church of Rome by Virtue of which a Man may confess and go on to sin again secretly without danger of being brought upon the Stage whatsoever the atrocity of his Crime be and indeed without any effectual course in Order to his Repentance and Reformation Again Thirdly This Confession in the Story doth not pretend to be of absolute necessity as if a Mans sins might not be pardoned without it but only a prudent Provision of the Church to help Men forward in their Repentance to direct the Acts and Expressions of it and especially to relieve perplexed and weak Consciences and to assist them in their preparations for the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper and this appears amongst other things by the account which the Historian gives us of the consequence of abolishing it viz. That now every Man is left to his own Conscience about his partaking of the holy Mysteries but it is not said or intimated that he was left under the guilt of his Sins for want of Confession To which add in the last place that this Office whatever it was was not reputed a Sacrament but rather as I noted before an expedient to prepare men for it for doubtless neither that

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