eclared:
"I would rather resign my office than hold it, if it was supposed that
I was giving young men the right to practice habitual confession." The
Archbishop of Canterbury said: "I am ready to revoke the license of
any curate charged with hearing confessions." And the Bishop of Ely
declared: "In no other communion would it be possible for a man to set
himself up as the general confessor of a district, without any other
authority than his own."

The assembled bishops, who of course represented the living teaching
body of the Establishment, published a formal document, wherein they
declare: "The Church of England, in the Twenty-fifth Article, affirms
that penance is not to be counted for a sacrament of the Gospel, and,
as judged by her formularies, knows no such words as Sacramental
Confession." And in this same declaration, commenting on the two
instances wherein the Book of Common Prayer recommends seeking the aid
of a clergyman, is it said: "Thus special provision, however, does not
authorize the ministers of the Church to require, of any who may
resort to them to open their grief, a particular or detailed
enumeration of their sins; or to require private confession previous
to receiving the holy communion; or to enjoin, or even encourage, any
practice of habitual confession to a priest; or to teach that such
practice of habitual confession, or the being subject to what has been
termed the direction of a priest, is a condition of attaining to the
highest spiritual life." By far the greater majority of the clergy and
laity endorse, heart and soul, this declaration.

Notwithstanding these clear utterances in Convocation, young curates
and vicars took to themselves authority, and began to hear confession
and pronounce absolution. These gentlemen had never been prepared for
the work: in their course of ecclesiastical studies the hearing of
confessions and the absolving from sin were never contemplated; they
had to obtain their knowledge from the manuals in use among Catholic
priests. Their bishops neither would nor could give them authority;
and so these clergymen became an authority to themselves, and declared
they had power to forgive sin, merely because they were ordained
priests. Such a pretension could not be made by any priest or bishop
of the Catholic Church, however valid may be his orders. To the
sacramental power of orders must be added juridical authority to
absolve. This, in the divine economy, as will be