gustine writes: "Our merciful God wills us to confess in this world
that we may not be confounded in the other."(449) And again: "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?"(450)

In this extract how well doth the great Doctor meet the sophistry of those
who, in our times, say that it is sufficient to confess to God!

St. Chrysostom, in his thirtieth Homily, says: "Lo! we have now, at
length, reached the close of Holy Lent; now especially we must press
forward in the career of fasting, ... and exhibit a _full_ and _accurate
confession of our sins_, ... that with these good works, having come to
the day of Easter, we may enjoy the bounty of the Lord.... For, as the
enemy knows that having confessed our sins and _shown_ our wounds to the
_physician_ we attain to an abundant cure, he in an especial manner
opposes us."

Again he says: "Do not _confess to me_ only of fornication, nor of those
things that are manifest among all men, but bring together also thy secret
calumnies and evil speakings, ... and all such things."(451)

The great Doctor plainly enjoins here a detailed and specific confession
of our sins not to God, but to His minister, as the whole context
evidently shows.

The same Father, in an eloquent treatise on the power of the sacred
ministry, uses the following words: "To the Priests is given a power which
God would not grant either to angels or archangels; inasmuch that what the
Priests do below God ratifies above, and the Master confirms the sentence
of His servants. For, He says, 'Whose sins you shall retain, they are
retained.'

"What power, I ask, can be greater than this? The Father hath given all
power to the Son; and I see all this same power delivered to them by God
the Son.

"To cleanse the leprosy of the body, or rather to pronounce it cleansed,
was given to the Jewish Priests alone. But to our Priests is granted the
power not of declaring healed the leprosy of the body, but of absolutely
cleansing the defilements of the soul."(452)

And again: "If a sinner, as becomes him; would use the aid of his
conscience, and hasten to confess his crimes and disclose his ulcer to his
physician, who may heal and not reproach, and receive remedies from