respect, that being through tyranny and persecution deprived of pastors, the doleful rehearsal of their lost felicities hath not any thing more eminent, than that sinners distressed should not know how or where to unload their burdens. Strange it were unto me, that the fathers, who so much every where extol the grace of Jesus Christ, in leaving unto his church this heavenly and Divine power, should as men, whose simplicity had universally been abused, agree all to admire and magnify a needless office.

The sentence therefore of ministerial absolution hath two effects: touching sin, it only declareth us freed from the guiltiness thereof, and restored into God's favour; but concerning right in sacred and Divine mysteries, whereof through sin we were made unworthy, as the power of the church did before effectually bind and retain us from access unto them, so upon our apparent repentance it truly restoreth our liberty, looseth the chains wherewith we were tied, remitteth all whatsoever is past, and accepteth us no less returned than if we had never gone astray.

For, inasmuch as the power which our Saviour gave to his church is of two kinds; the one to be exercised over voluntary penitents only, the other over such as are to be brought to amendment by ecclesiastical censures, the words wherein he hath given this authority must be so understood, as the subject or matter whereupon it worketh will permit. It doth not permit that in the former kind (that is to say, in the use of power over voluntary converts), to bind or loose, remit or retain, should signify any other than only to pronounce of sinners according to that which may be gathered by outward signs; because really to effect the removal or continuance of sin in the soul of any offender, is no priestly act, but a work which far exceedeth their ability. Contrariwise, in the latter kind of spiritual jurisdiction, which by censures constraineth men to amend their lives; it is true, that the minister of God doth then more declare and signify what God hath wrought. And this power, true it is, that the church hath invested in it.

Howbeit, as other truths, so this hath by error been oppugned and depraved through abuse. The first of name that openly in writing withstood the church's authority and power to remit sin, was Tertullian, after he had combined himself with Montanists, drawn to the liking of their heresy through

the very sourness of his own nature, which neither his incredible skill and knowledge otherwise, nor the doctrine of the gospel itself, could but so much alter, as to make him savour any thing which carried with it the taste of lenity: a sponge steeped in wormwood and gall, a man through too much severity merciless, and neither able to endure nor be endured of any. His book entitled concerning Chastity, and written professedly against the discipline of the church, hath many fretful and angry sentences, declaring a mind very much offended with such as would not persuade themselves, that of sins, some be pardonable by the keys of the church, some incapable of forgiveness; that middle and moderate offences, having received chastisement, may by spiritual authority afterward be remitted: but, greater transgressions must (as touching indulgence) be left to the only pleasure of Almighty God in the world to come: that as idolatry and bloodshed, so likewise fornication and sinful lust, are of this nature; that they, which so far have fallen from God, ought to continue for ever after barred from access unto his sanctuary, condemned to perpetual profusion of tears, deprived of all expectation and hope to receive any thing at the church's hands, but publication of their shame. "For (saith he) who will fear to waste out that, which he hopeth he may recover? Who will be careful for ever to hold that, which he knoweth cannot for ever be withheld from him? He which slackeneth the bridle to sin, doth thereby give it even the spur also." Take away fear, and that which presently succeedeth instead thereof, is licentious desire. Greater offences therefore are punishable, but not pardonable by the church. If any prophet or apostle be found to have remitted such transgressions, they did it not by the ordinary course of discipline, but by extraordinary power. For they all raised the dead, which none but God is able to do; they restored the impotent and lame man, a work peculiar to Jesus Christ; yea, that which Christ would not do, because executions of such severity beseemed not him who came to save and redeem the world by his sufferings, they by their power struck Elymas and Ananias, the one blind, and the other dead. Approve first yourselves to be, as they were, apostles or prophets, and then take upon you to pardon all men. But if the authority you have be only ministerial, and no way sovereign, overreach not the limits

12.

which God hath set you; know that to pardon capital sin, is beyond your commission.

Howbeit, as oftentimes the vices of wicked men do cause other their commendable qualities to be abhorred, so the honour of great men's virtues is easily a cloak of their errors. In which respect, Tertullian hath passed with much less obloquy and reprehension than Novatian; who, broaching afterward the same opinion, had not otherwise wherewith to countervail the offence he gave, and to procure it the like toleration. Novatian, at the first a stoical philosopher (which kind of men hath always accounted stupidity the highest top of wisdom, and commiseration the deadliest sin), became by institution and study the very same which the other had been before, through a secret natural distemper, upon his conversion to the Christian faith and recovery from sickness, which

moved him to receive the sacrament of baptism in his bed. Concil. The bishops, contrary to the canons of the church, would Neocæsar. needs, in special love towards him, ordain him presbyter, which favour satisfied not him who thought himself worthy of greater place and dignity. He closed therefore with a number of well-minded men, and not suspicious what his secret purposes were, and having made them sure unto him by fraud, procureth his own consecration to be their bishop. His prelacy now was able, as he thought, to countenance what he intended to publish, and therefore his letters went presently abroad to sundry churches, advising them never to admit to the fellowship of holy mysteries, such as had after baptism offered sacrifice to idols.

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There was present at the council of Nice, together with Socrat. 1. other bishops, one Acesius a Novatianist, touching whose diConcil. Ni- versity in opinion from the church, the Emperor, desirous to cen. c. 30. hear some reason, asked of him certain questions, for answer Socrat. 1. i. whereunto, Acesius weaveth out a long history of things that

happened in the persecution under Decius; and of men, which to save life, forsook faith. But in the end was a certain bitter canon, framed in their own school: "That men which fall into deadly sin after holy baptism, ought never to be again admitted to the communion of Divine mysteries: that they are to be exhorted unto repentance; howbeit not to be put in hope that pardon can be had at the priest's hands, but with God, which hath sovereign power and authority in himself to remit sin, it may be in the end they shall find mercy," These followers of Novatian, which gave themselves the title of καθαροὶ, clean, pure, and unspotted men, had one point of Montanism more than their master did profess; for amongst sins unpardonable, they reckoned second marriages, of which opinion Tertullian making (as his usual manner was) a salt apology, "Such is (saith he) our stony hardness, that defaming our Comforter with a kind of enormity in discipline, we dam up the doors of the church, no less against twicemarried men, than against adulterers and fornicators." Of this sort therefore it was ordained by the Nicene synod, that if any such did return to the catholic and apostolic unity, they should in writing bind themselves to observe the orders of the church, and communicate as well with them which had been often married, or had fallen in time of persecution, as with other sort of Christian people. But farther to relate, or at all to refel the error of misbelieving men concerning this point, is not now to our present purpose greatly necessary.

The church may receive no small detriment by corrupt practice, even there where doctrine concerning the substance of things practised is free from any great or dangerous corruption. If therefore that which the papacy doth in matter of confessions and absolution be offensive, if it palpably serve in the use of the keys, howsoever that which it teacheth in general concerning the church's power to retain and forgive sins, be admitted true, have they not on the one side as much whereat to be abashed, as on the other wherein to rejoice ?

They bind all men, upon pain of everlasting condemnation and death, to make confessions to their ghostly fathers, of every great offence they know, and can remember, that they have committed against God. Hath Christ in his gospel so delivered the doctrine of repentance unto the world? Did his apostles so preach it to nations? Have the fathers so believed or so taught? Surely Novatian was not so merciless in depriving the church of power to absolve some certain offenders, as they in imposing upon all a necessity thus to confess. Novatian would not deny but God might remit that which the church could not, whereas in the papacy it is maintained, that what we conceal from men, God himself shall never pardon. By which oversight, as they have here surcharged the world with multitude, but much abated the weight of confessions, so the careless manner of their absolution hath made discipline, for the most part, amongst them a bare formality; yea, rather a means of emboldening unto vicious and wicked life, than either any help to prevent future, or medicine to remedy present evils in the soul of man. The fathers were slow and always fearful to absolve any before very manifest tokens given of a true penitent and contrite spirit. It was not their custom to remit sin first, and then to impose works of satisfaction, as the fashion of Rome is now; insomuch that this their preposterous course, and misordered practices hath bred also in them an error concerning the end and purpose of these works. For against the guiltiness of sin, and the danger of everlasting condemnation thereby incurred, confession and absolution succeeding the same, are, as they take it, a remedy sufficient: and therefore what their penitentiaries do think to enjoy farther, whether it be a number of Ave-Maries daily to be scored up, a journey of pilgrimage to be undertaken, some few dishes of ordinary diet to be exchanged, offerings to be made at the shrines of saints, or a little to be scraped off from men's superfluities for relief of poor people, all is in lieu or exchange with God, whose justice, notwithstanding our pardon, yet oweth us still some temporal punishment, either in this or in the life to come, except we quit it ourselves here with works of the former kind, and continued till the balance of God's most strict severity shall find the pains we have taken equivalent with the plagues which we should endure, or else the mercy of the pope relieve us. And at this postern-gate cometh in the whole mart of papal indulgences so infinitely strewed, that the pardon of sin, which heretofore was obtained hardly, and by much suit, is with them become now almost impossible to be escaped.

To set down then the force of this sentence in absolving penitents; there are in sin these three things: the act which passeth away and vanisheth: the pollution wherewith it leaveth the soul defiled; and the punishment whereunto they are made subject that have committed it. The act of sin is every deed, word, and thought against the law of God. " For sin John is the transgression of the law;" and although the deed itself do not continue, yet is that bad quality permanent, whereby it maketh the soul unrighteous and deformed in God's