ation of one's crime. The poison is iniquity:
confession is the remedy."

St. Augustine, who lived in the fifth century, seems to be talking to
some people of the present day, who say they confess in private to God,
when he says: "Let no one say to himself, I do penance to God in
private, I do it before God. Is it then in vain that Christ hath said:
'Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven'? Is it
in vain that the keys have been given to the Church? Do we make void the
Gospel? void the words of Christ?"

These first five centuries were the golden age of Christianity. All
admit that the doctrines and practices of those early centuries were
pure and undefiled, as they came from Christ. But among the practices of
the time we find confession. Hence it is a reasonable practice, because
conformable to Christ's teaching. We might continue quotations from
writers of every century from the sixth to the nineteenth, showing that
the teaching and practice of confession did not vary through the lapse
of ages from the time of Christ until the present day. But this is
unnecessary. The quotations from the first five centuries show that the
power of forgiving sin was not only communicated by Christ to His
apostles, but by them to their successors by means of the sacrament of
Holy Orders. What would be the necessity of this power if they could not
exercise it in confession? If, as some say, priests invented confession,
some one ought to find out and tell us when and where it was invented,
and why they did not exempt themselves from such a humiliating practice.

Confession alone, however, will be of no avail without contrition.
Contrition is a sincere sorrow and detestation for sin with a firm
determination to sin no more. To the truly humble and sorrowful sinner
confession is not a punishment, but a remedy for a tortured conscience.
The most painful secret to be kept by a heart not yet corrupted by
disease is the secret of sin and crime. The soul that loves God hates
sin and desires to separate herself from it. To this desire is
associated the desire of expiating it. All, from the mother who
questions her child about wrongdoing to the judge who interrogates the
criminal, recognize in spontaneous confession an expiatory power.

Confession, it is true, is necessarily accompanied by shame and
humiliation. This humiliation is diminished by the knowledge that it is
of divine origin and that eternal silence is divinel