The Auricular Confession

THE AURICULAR CONFESSION.

CENTER-SHOTS AT ROME

[pg. 87]IV.

THE AURICULAR CONFESSION.

(1 John 1:9.)Every system that accomplishes anything must have a mainspring, or, to put it in anotherway, a central or chief source of power. And during the last seven centuries RomanCatholicism has depended very largely upon the auricular confession.The auricular confession is the disclosure by word of mouth of sins upon the part of thepenitent into the

auris

, or ear, of a priest. Hence the curtained recess in every Catholicchurch called the "confessional-box."To-night I shall submit and confine my remarks to three propositions, and if I fail to provethem, I'll "eat'em alive." [Laughter.]1. That it took the devil twelve hundred years to make that little box.2. That it paid him to make it. For[pg. 88] all of the boxes in the world in which he has an investment, the confessional-boxhas yielded, and still yields him, the largest return.3. That God is the only logical and Scriptural confessor to whom penitents should go.[Applause.]There is not a hint of the auricular confession in the Old Testament. Doubtless the devilwould have been highly pleased to have had a confessional-box in Solomon's Temple.But, evidently, he never found an opportunity to sneak into that splendid edifice, with abundle of planks under his arm, and a pen off a little corner for his own amusement.[Laughter.]Nor is there a trace of the confessional-box in the New Testament. We read aboutchurches in Jerusalem, Rome, Corinth, and other places; we read about elders or bishops,

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THE AURICULAR CONFESSION.

and preachers, and the people composing the congregations; and we read about meetingsthat were held, missionary journeys that were held, church tribunals that were called,persecutions that were endured, and other[pg. 89] features of early church life; but we never read of the confessional or priestlyabsolution.Hence the history of Roman Catholicism itself must introduce the auricular confession.The Council of Trent declared: "Whoever shall say that the mode of secretly confessing toa priest alone, which the Catholic Church has always observed and still observes, isforeign to the institution and command of Christ and is a human invention, let him beaccursed."Well, I presume I'm about to be accursed. For I shall now say that the confessional is notonly "foreign to the institution and command of Christ," and therefore a human institution,but that the Catholic Church worried along a number of centuries without it. [Applause.]It's one thing to make an assertion, but quite another to prove it. The Catholic Churchasserts that the auricular confession has always been associated with her polity. But there'snot a[pg. 90] Roman Catholic in the world — from the richly adorned pope down to the little,petticoated parish priest — who can prove it. [Applause.]Had the confessional-box, which is to-day the very heart-throb of Romanism, beenconnected with church life in the early centuries, the primitive Fathers, on whom bothCatholics and Protestants must depend for early church history, would undoubtedly havemade some reference to it. I could name the men who would have written about theconfessional, had it existed in their day, and the works in which such references couldhave been made. But life is too short to walk a mile when the distance can be covered in a jump. [Laughter.] I shall, therefore, resort to a method that is by far easier and just as sure.As the million dollars I offered a couple of weeks ago, to the man who would prove thatPeter was ever in Rome, has not yet been called for, I'll give it to the layman, priest,bishop, cardinal, or pope who will produce one sentence from the Fathers in proof of theCatholic proposi-

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THE AURICULAR CONFESSION.

[pg. 91] tion that the confessional existed in their day. [Applause.]In the meantime, while waiting for some one to produce the sentence, I'll refer you to abook, entitled "Confessions," by Augustine, the greatest of the Latin Fathers. Had theconfessional existed in his day, one would think that in this work he would have made atleast a reference to it. But he did not. Instead, he wrote many things which prove that hetaught and practiced the very reverse of this blasphemous doctrine now taught andpracticed by the Catholic Church. And here's one of his terse statements: "I shall confessmy sins to God, and he will pardon all my iniquities."In this particular, at least, Augustine was orthodox, if we measure him by the NewTestament. But if measured by Roman Catholic standards, instead of being "sainted", heought to be "accursed," dumped back into purgatory where he belongs, and chained to aniron post in the hottest corner. [Applause.]Innocent III., proclaimed by Catholics[pg. 92] as a holy man and one of the great popes, at whose hands, as any reputableencyclopædia will inform you, the bloody crusade against the Albigenses was organized;the pope who dispatched an army of priests throughout all Europe to stir up sentimentagainst heretics; the pope who so thirsted for universal dominion that he hesitated not tobathe his hands,

ex officio

, in the innocent blood of multitudes — this power loving, cruel,red-handed monster of hellish deeds (than which history records none that was morediabolical was the originator of the auricular confession. He was the sovereign dictator of and inspired all that was accomplished in the fourth Council of Lateran, which, by itstwenty-first canon, authorized the auricular confession. If any man will produce history toprove that prior to the year 1215 there was an authorized confessional-box in any Catholicchurch, I'll reduce my estate by another million and deposit it in his bank. [Laughter.] Youneed entertain no fears concerning my financial future or the present condition of my purse[pg. 93] — the millions I'm offering will never be called for. [Applause.]This historic council, governed by Innocent III., which decreed the extermination of heretics, the blasphemous doctrine of transubstantiation and the iniquitous confessional,stands out against the sky-line of past events brazen as the sun in its abominable heresies,arrayed in garments that smell of vengeance across the centuries, and painted red withhuman blood. This assembly pulled the very heart out of hell and established it in thebreast of the church. The benediction on that council should have been:

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