of the impurities into which they had been seduced. Iren. adv. hær. lib. i. c. 9.

The second of the two passages tells us, that the heretic Cerdon (in his better days, I do suppose) often went to church and made confession (sæpe in ecclesiam veniens, et exomologesin faciens): but, whether, by the necessity of discipline, he made a periodical private confession to a Priest duly seated in a confessional box, or whether he joined only in a general public liturgical confession of sin to Almighty God, we receive no information from Ireneus. Iren. adv. hær. lib. iii. c. 4.

(3.) His third witness is Tertullian: and never, surely, was a witness more infelicitously selected.

Tertullian, in the place referred to, says not a word respecting the duty of private auricular confession to a Priest: he speaks only of public penitential confession of gross and scandalous sin, made to THE LORD before his ALTAR, in the presence of the whole assembled congregation.

Exomologesis est, qua delictum DOMINO nostrum confitemur: non, quidem, ut ignaro; sed quatenus satisfactio confessione disponitur, confessione pœnitentia nascitur, pœnitentia Deus mitigatur. Itaque exomologesis prosternendi et humilificandi hominis disciplina est, conversationem injungens misericordiæ illicem. De ipso quoque habitu atque victu mandat, sacco et cineri incubare, corpus sordibus obscurare, animum mororibus dejicere,-jejuniis preces alere, ingemiscere, lachrymari et mugire dies noctesque ad Dominum Deum tuum, Presbyteris advolvi et ARIS DEI adgeniculari, omnibus fratribus legationes deprecationis suæ injungere. Tertull. de Pœnit. § ix. Oper. p. 483, 484.

(4.) His fourth witness is Origen.

This author recommends, in the place referred to for

the

purpose of establishing the primitive obligatoriness of private auricular confession to a Priest, that, when sins press heavily upon the conscience, the offender should confidentially state his case to some discreet and experienced adviser, rather than smother it within his own bosom; a recommendation, in the propriety of which, few, at least in some peculiar cases, will refuse to concur but, whether any individual should choose to follow his recommendation (which exactly corresponds with that in our anglican warning for the celebration of the holy communion), was, so far as respects the point of obligation, purely optional. Orig. Homil. ii. in Psalm xxxvii.

(5.) His fifth witness is Cyprian.

The admirable Bishop of Carthage is so strangely wide of the mark in respect to the avowed purpose of his adduction by Dr. Trevern, that, were I not tolerably well acquainted with that disingenuous Prelate's humour of catching at straws, I should really admire his splendid audacity of reference and citation.

In the Discourse on the lapsed, to which we are invited for evidence in favour of the primitive enforcement of private periodical auricular confession to a Priest as now enjoined by the Church of Rome, Cyprian never once even so much as mentions the subject. He is treating, throughout the whole Discourse, of an entirely different topic. Confession, indeed, he very largely mentions but then the ONLY confession, of which he speaks, is that public confession of apostasy from the Faith united with the long probative humility of public penitence, which the strict discipline of the primitive Church required of all those who in time of persecution had through terror lapsed into pagan idolatry, ere they could be readmitted to the privilege of full ecclesiastical

communion with the permanently stedfast and faithful. Cyprian. de Laps. Oper. vol. i. p. 121–138.

II. Such is the evidence, by a gross misrepresentation of which the Bishop of Strasbourg would unblushingly persuade our English Laity, that a forced system of periodical private confession to a Priest, altogether identi cal with the present offensive and mischievous imposition of the Roman Church, prevailed from the beginning in the Church Catholic.

Nor is this the whole extent of Dr. Trevern's unwarrantable paltering. He likewise has the actual effrontery to adduce, as if it were scriptural, though in plain defiance of very plain Greek, the strange unauthorised distinction between mental repentance and bodily penance, which is one of the many cherished delights of the Latin Church: just as if, in the original of the New Testament, two entirely different words were used to express two entirely different ideas.

Repentance, he tells us, is the sole condition of the Reformation: but this is not sufficient: we must also confess and do penance.

(See Discuss. Amic. vol. ii. p. 202, 203.) In the place here referred to, he makes a distinction, between le repentir, and le faire pénitence or le remplir les œuvres de pénitence qui nous sont préscrites pour satisfaire à la justice divine. This last phrase, works of penance, he seems to have fabricated out of St. Paul's expression, ἄξια τῆς μετανοίας ἔργα, works worthy of repentance or works meet for repentance or (in other words) a holy conversation suitable to repentance. Acts xxvi. 20.

Now I beg to ask: Where is there a single passage in the whole New Testament, which enjoins the performance of a latin penance as necessary to eternal salvation?

An uneducated Romanist, who peradventure has read the translations authorised by his Church, will promptly reply, that Penance is enjoined again and again in Holy Scripture. But the Bishop of Strasbourg is not an uneducated Romanist. He knows perfectly well, that the expressions penance and to do penance, which perpetually occur with most ridiculous absurdity in the romish versions of the New Testament, do not exhibit the true idea of the original words μετάνοια and μετανοεῖν. These words, from the very necessity of their etymology, relate, not to the outward austerities which the Latin Church enjoins under the name of Penance, but purely and exclusively to that moral change of mind which we denominate Repentance. Nay, what renders Dr. Trevern still more inexcusable, is the notorious fact, that, to escape absolute nonsense, the romish versions are sometimes actually compelled to exhibit the true sense of the original. Thus, while they render one and the same greek word μɛravoɛīv, sometimes to repent, and sometimes to do penance: the Bishop of Strasbourg is not ashamed to attack the hated Reformation, on the score that it rejects the necessity of bodily penance, and requires only mental repentance evidencing itself (as St. Paul speaks) in meet or appropriate works of holiness; thus insinuating, what is palpably contrary to fact, that the phraseology of the New Testament equally inculcates the two perfectly distinct ideas by two perfectly distinct words, and that the Reformation arbitrarily adopts the one inculcated idea while it rejects the other no less inculcated idea.

By this lamentable, and (I fear) systematic mistranslation of the greek original, thousands and millions may have been seduced by the apostatic Church of Rome into a scheme of mere unauthorised and misdeemed meritorious will worship.

NUMBER III.

SATISFACTION.

In point of principle or of theoretical rationale, the fruitful parent of expiatory penance, expiatory good deeds, purgatory, indulgences, and supererogation is the vain phantasy so congenial to our proud though fallen nature, the phantasy of Meritorious Satisfaction.

This deeply rooted and widely pullulating heresy, which lies at the bottom of all false schemes of religion whether pagan or papal or mohammedan or socinian, is cherished in all its baneful luxuriance by the Church of Rome: and the account, which is very accurately given of it by the Bishop of Strasbourg, may be briefly stated in manner following.

The meritorious passion of Christ upon the cross delivers us only from the eternal punishment of sin in a temporal point of view, we ourselves must make satisfaction for it to the offended justice of God. Now this satisfaction is made, partly by our personally undergoing certain penalties, and partly by our performing certain meritorious good works. With respect to the penalties, they consist of bodily penance here and of the pains of purgatory hereafter: with respect to the meritorious or expiatory good works (œuvres expiatoires), they consist of abstinence and fasting and the care of widows or orphans and alms-giving and the visitation of the sick; works, Dr. Trevern observes, which in the Latin Church are reckoned among the most important satisfactions. Discuss. Amic. Lettr. xii. vol. ii. p. 204-225.

I. For such a scheme of doctrine as this; I speak in regard to its principle or rationale: the question is, whe