The testimony of the fathers and councils.
The testimony of the fathers and councils.
§ 115. He takes his second class of arguments to establish a specific enumeration of sins from “the testimonies of the councils and fathers.”
We respond. (1) This type of proof is secondary and does not prove that it is a necessity of the divine Law but only that it is the ordinance and custom of the church.
** Bellarmine himself writes about those councils (ch. 5): “Although the testimonies of the councils which we shall produce do not openly contain the idea that confession is a matter of divine Law, nonetheless they do contain an ancient custom.” **
(2) A distinction must be made between ancient and more recent writers. The former speak about the public confession which was used in the early church for a long time, as the authors cited earlier testify [§ 109].
(3) The successor to the public confession of public trespasses is that which the Tripartit. (bk. 9, ch. 35) describes in this way: “Wherefore not sinning is known to be something divine and beyond human nature, but God commands that pardon be given to sinners who repent, but those who flee confessing acquire a greater burden of sins on account of the fact that it seemed best to the ancient pontiffs that sins be laid open under the testimony of the people of the church as if in a theater. And so for this they set up as presbyter a man of good behavior, a wise man who kept a secret. To him those who had sinned would come and confess their sins.” Nicephorus (Hist., bk. 12, ch. 28, from Sozomenos):
Because admitting no sin is a characteristic not of human but of divine and immortal nature, but rather we once came into the inheritance of sinning through transgression, [so] God ordered forgiveness of sins to be granted to those who employed a lawful and appropriate repentance and then turned away from sin and at the same time confessed. But confessing an offense amid the people or in public seemed a grave thing to the bishops who came close after the time of Christ, and therefore they delegated one of the bishops who was of a pure life and was at the same time close-mouthed and prudent before whom they would recover their senses and speak forth what they had done through repentance, etc.
Pope Leo (as it stands in the decretal [Ius canonicum,] De poenit., dist. 1, ch. Quamvis) said, “There are many things which are improper for one to say in public and which people do not say easily because of their enemies, lest their foes bring charges and they be hauled off to court.” Therefore he removed that objectionable custom and adds: “It is enough for them to come to the priest who will pray for them, and to speak secretly.”
(4) Therefore private confession developed in this way from public confession, but an enumeration of all sins was not yet bound to it nor was it bound to certain times. It had not yet accrued the idea of merit, but confession of sins was made for this purpose: that the penitent would receive an informing of conscience and consolation in certain cases.
(5) From the fact that Irenaeus sometimes seems to hint at the making of a confession of secret sins (bk. 1, ch. 9; bk. 3, ch. 4), the following can be [properly] understood: this does not yet succeed in proving that auricular confession, bound by laws of necessity to an enumeration of all sins, was in use. For it advanced from the occasion of public confession to the confession even of secret sins, just as Bellarmine writes about the woman in his account of Nectarius (De poenit., bk. 3, ch. 14): “Although the sin was secret, and although the presbyter had not commanded her to expose it to the people, nevertheless she publicly confessed other sins which were public, and then went even further than was proper and also confessed that sin.” We say the same thing about those women seduced by the heretic Marcus: that in public confession they freely went on to the confession even of secret sins. Irenaeus clearly states that Marcus corrupted a woman who was a deacon’s wife. But later she was converted with great difficulty and “continued to confess all the time as she mourned and lamented.” So shall we judge that she always prostrated herself at the feet of the priest and confessed her sin? And if she were converted with great difficulty, how could her sin have been secret? In regard to Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, and the rest, see B. Rhenanus (his preface and notes on the book of Tertullian, De poen.) and also Dr. Chemnitz (Exam. Concil. Trid., chapter De conf.).15