to both the priest interferes. Neither can be remitted without his intervention. The eternal penalty is remitted in the sacra- ment of penance. The latter is exacted, mitigated, or dispensed with at the discretion of the Church, or its organs. As to the remission of the eternal penalty the intervention of the priest is necessary because he alone can administer the sacrament of pen- ance, which includes contrition, confession, and satisfaction. All are necessary. It is not enough that the sinner be penitent in heart and truly turn from sin unto God ; he must confess his sins to the priest. The Church " maintains that the sinner is bound to manifest his offences to the pastors of his Church, or, rather, to one deputed and authorized by the Church for that purpose ; to lay open to him all the secret offences of his soul, to expose all its wounds, and in virtue of the authority vested by our Blessed Saviour in him, to receive through his hands, on earth, the sen- tence which is ratified in heaven, of God's forgiveness." Christ also u gave to the Church power of retaining sins, that is, of withholding forgiveness, or delaying it to more seasonable time." l u Here is a power, in the first place, truly to forgive sin. For this expression ' to forgive sins,' in the New Testament, always signi- fies to clear the sinner of guilt before God." " The Apostles, then, and their successors, received this authority ; consequently, to them was given a power to absolve, or to cleanse the soul from its sins. There is another power also: that of retaining sins. What is the meaning of this ? clearly the power of refusing to forgive them. Now, all this clearly implies — for the promise is annexed, that what sins Christ's lawful ministers retain on earth, are retained in heaven — that there is no other means of obtain- ing forgiveness, save through them. For the forgiveness of heaven is made to depend upon that which they forgive on earth ; and those are not to be pardoned there, whose sins they retain." 2 This is sufficiently explicit. It is to be remembered the power of forgiveness here claimed has reference, not to the temporary punishment imposed in the way of penance or satisfaction, but to the remission of " the eternal debt." Now, as to the temporary punishment, which, as we have seen, may last thousands of years and exceed in severity any sufferings on earth, Romanists teach, (1.) That "they are expiatory of past transgression."3 (2.) That they are of the same nature with the penances imposed by the discipline of the early Church. That discipline was naturally, perhaps necessarily, very severe ; the Church was then sur-
1 Wiseman, Lectures, vol. ii. p. 15 3 Ibid. dd. 19 20. » Ibid. p. 39.
760 PART IV. Ch. I. — STATE OF SOUL AFTER DEATH.
rounded by heathenism, and many of its members were hea- then converts. What tendencies, and what temptations to un- christian conduct, were unavoidable under such circumstances, may be learned from the state of the Church in Corinth as de- picted in Paul's epistles. The great danger was that Christians should be involved, intentionally or unintentionally, in the idol- atrous services to which they had been accustomed. As the worship of idols in any form, was a renunciation of the Gospel, it was against that offence the discipline of the Church was princi- pally directed. One party contended that the u lapsed " ought never to be restored to Christian fellowship ; another, which al- lowed their readmission to the Church, insisted that they should be restored only after a long and severe course of penance. Some were required " to lay prostrate for a certain period of months or years before the doors of the Church, after which they were ad- mitted to different portions of the divine service; while others were often excluded through their whole lives from the liturgical exercises of the faithful, and were not admitted to absolution until they were at the point of death." These penances Romanists pro- nounce " meritorious in the sight of God," they " propitiate his wrath." This is the doctrine of satisfaction ; and such satisfac- tion for sin is the necessary condition of its forgiveness. (3.) As these penances or satisfactions are imposed by the Church, they can be mitigated or remitted by the Church. (4.) As the pains of purgatory are of the nature of satisfactions, " expiatory," "meritorious," and " propitiatory," they are as much under the control of the Church, as the penances to be endured in this life. This is the true, and it may be said, the virtually admitted genesis of the doctrine of purgatory in the Church of Rome. It is a perversion of the ecclesiastical discipline of the early Chris- tians. To be sure, the genesis, or birth, is spurious ; there is no legitimate connection between the premises and the conclusion. Admitting the fact that the early Church imposed severe pen- ances on offenders before restoring them to fellowship ; admitting that this was right on the part of the Church ; admitting that such penances were of the nature of satisfactions, so far as they were designed to satisfy the Church that the repentance of the offender was sincere; and admitting that these penances being matters of Church discipline were legitimately under the power of the Church, how does all this prove that they were " expiatory in the sight of God," that " they satisfied divine justice," or that they were the necessary conditions of forgiveness at his bar?