ommanded them, in turn, to communicate it to others by
means of the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

That Our Saviour communicated this power to His apostles is evident from
the words of St. John: "As the Father hath sent Me I also send you.
Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall forgive, they are
forgiven." But sin was to continue till the end of the world. Hence the
necessity of the means of forgiving sin being coextensive with sin. As
the people receive from the priests the Word of God and the cleansing
from sin in Baptism, so also do they receive from them the cleansing
from sin in confession.

It is certain that the apostles conferred the power of forgiving sins
upon others, if we find that those whom the apostles ordained this
power. But we find this to be the case.

From the time of Christ until the present the writers of every age tell
us that confession of sins was practised. St. John, who lived until the
beginning of the second century, says in the 1st chapter of his First
Epistle: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins and to cleanse us from all iniquity."

St. Cyprian, who wrote in the third century, says: "Let each of you
confess his faults, and the pardon imparted by the priest is acceptable
before God."

St. Ambrose, in the fourth century, wrote: "The poison is sin; the
remedy, the accusation 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
un