treating upon the remission of sin, cites a text from the Psalms, encouraging penitents to hope for that inestimable benefit from deep contrition, but affording no ground to expect it through any other channel'.

An additional reason for concluding that our Anglo-Saxon fathers esteemed not auricular confession sacramental in its nature, and effective for securing the soul, without true repentance, flows from the forms of their absolutions. In the modern Church of Rome individuals are absolved in direct terms immediately after they have confessed their sins, and the sacerdotal voice is considered as an actual conveyance of exemption from the penalties of eternal death". We are taught, accordingly, that in absolution the sacrament of penance chiefly consists. Now the Church of our distant ancestry, holding the tradition of ecclesiastical antiquity, refused absolution to the more scandalous offenders, until they had accomplished their several penances. Nor even then did her absolving voice amount to any thing beyond a solemn restoration to forfeited privileges, and an earnest prayer to God that he would graciously remit the penitent's iniquities. It is, indeed, a notorious and indisputable fact, that forms of absolu

s Bellarm. Controv. II. 248.

tion, entirely precatory, were alone used in the Church during the first Christian millenary". At the conclusion of that period there were, indeed, churches which gave to these forms something of an indicative character. But absolutions, decidedly of such a character, did not establish themselves until after the lapse of another three hundred years 18. None such, therefore, are to be found among Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical antiquities. Of precatory forms, however, many yet remain. Our Ante-Norman progenitors never heard, then, from the lips of their clergy any words conveying an absolute assurance of God's pardon. The most solemn absolutions that met their ears amounted to nothing more than public readmissions to church-membership. The less conspicuous absolutions were merely prayers, uttered by the ministers of God's Word and Sacraments, that iniquities, which had humbly been confessed, might be mercifully forgiven". Such ritual forms are evidently unsuited to Romish penitential doctrines; and being those alone which antiquity supplies, they have naturally occasioned much embarrassment to theologians in communion with the papal see. What discerning sinner, indeed, attrite only, would suppose himself sufficiently protected from perdition by a prayer

merely deprecating the wrath of a God whom he had not learnt to love, and whom he desired not to obey? What unprejudiced mind will readily believe, that an age which knew no other forms of absolution, expected to reach the beatific vision through any way easier than true contrition?

That no such expectation was encouraged in the Church of ancient England is farther shewn by her obvious ignorance of that principle which relieves Romanists from apprehensions of dying unabsolved. We have not the smallest reason for attributing to our early ancestors a belief in the efficacy of a mere disposition to confess, and a mere wish for absolution, in emergencies allowing not such consolations. On the contrary, a Saxon homily paints unrighteous members of the sacred profession, including even bishops, among the wretched outcasts from God's everlasting kingdom'. Is it, then, possible, that such children of perdition could have been wholly unacquainted with that easier way to salvation which has occupied our attention, had such a prospect of escape been habitually contemplated all around them? Or can it be supposed that they felt no will

t See note 36 to Serm. II. p. 119.

T

ingness to confess their sins, no anxiety for absolution, when upon the very threshold of eternity? Or must we consider these imaginary victims of iniquity as overtaken by their awful fate in the very act of mortal sin? Neither of these two cases appears to have been within the homilist's contemplation. His object was evidently no other than to awaken the apprehensions of worldly-minded men, by painting the horrors which they daily braved by their inveterate forgetfulness of God. Many, now consigned to hopeless anguish, he would represent, had been like the passing generation of sinners, practical infidels and hypocrites, bearing, indeed, the name of Christ, but turning habitually a deaf ear to his commands. No doubt such men had been attrite, whenever their minds were crossed by a thought of that fearful recompense to which their evil deeds exposed them. Probably, too, they had entertained, at intervals, a hasty purpose of amendment on reaching some "convenient season"." But it had proved, unhappily, that their deep entanglement in the snares of Satan had allowed them no escape from carnal lusts and pleasures, until the very moment when sinking nature said, "Thou fool, thy soul is required of

u Acts xxiv. 25.

thee." Obviously, such a picture is most unlikely to have been traced by the pen of one who reckoned upon salvation from mere attrition.

Another reason for concluding that the Church of ancient England knew nothing of such a principle necessarily flows from her views as to the power of the keys. The principal ministers of religion, in Anglo-Saxon times, were allowed, indeed, ample authority for excommunicating and absolving those who brought scandal on their holy faith. The people were, however, taught expressly, that their spiritual guides, in exercising these important privileges, acted merely as the dispensers of ecclesiastical discipline, and the channels for communicating God's pleasure to mankind. A homilist, accordingly, endeavours to impress these notions upon the popular apprehension by adopting from St. Jerome a comparison instituted between the Christian priesthood and the posterity of Aaron. In leprous cases these consecrated members of the great Jewish family were empowered to give sentence for exclusion from society and for restoration to its bosom. To Christian ministers is assigned an authority strictly analogous. They are to cut off from

20

▾ St. Luke xii. 20.