The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

SSOOF PENANCE AND CONFESSION.that adheres to him. His effcft'ts to fly from it are in vain." Which way I fly is hell ; myself am hell."To his mind, we say, this mass of evil must be ever present,mingling with all his feelings, polluting all his duties, andtainting at their very spring all his sympathies. Howghastly and foul must society appear to his eye ! for to himall its secret wickedness is naked and open. His fellowmenare lepers foul and loathsome, and he sniffs their horrideffluvia as he passes them. An angel could scarce dischargesuch an office without contamination ; but it is altogetherinconceivable how a man can discharge it andescape being a demon. The lake of Sodom, daily fed bythe foul and saline springs of the neighbourhood, and givingback these contributions in the shape of black and sulphurousexhalations, which scathe and desolate afresh the surroundingregion, is but a faint emblem of the action and reactionof the confessional on society. It is a moral malaria,—a cauldron from which pestiferous clouds daily ascend,which kill the very souls of men.Hell itself could not haveset up an institution more ingeniously contriven to demoralizeand destroy mankind.But the crowning point in the blasphemy here is the pardonwhich the priest professes to bestow.Protestants grantthat Christ has committed to the office-bearers in his housethe power of " binding and loosing,'"* in the sense of excludingfrom or admitting to the communion of the Churchvisible. But it is a very different thing to maintain thatministers have thepower, authoritatively and as judges, topardon sin. This is the power which Rome claims. Thereis no sin which her priests may not pardon ; only the remissionof the more heinous offences she reserves to thehigher orders of the clergy ; while the most aggravated ofall,namely, those done against the persons and property ofecclesiastics, can be forgiven only by the Pope.*Neverthe-* Concil. Trid. sess. xiv. cap. vii.