Contents
Where
Rome Is Wrong 3 Where
Rome Is Wrong 2 Where
Rome Is Wrong 1 Athanasius
... Genius? 1st
Pillar of Popery 5 1st
Pillar of Popery 4 1st
Pillar of Popery 3 1st
Pillar of Popery 2 1st
Pillar of Popery 1 Mandatory
Celibacy The
Demon of Celibacy What
is the Individual Infallibility
of Pope The
Jesuits Cult
of Mary - 2 Cult
of Mary - 1 Advance
of Romanism: 2 Advance
of Romanism: 1 Confess:
Modern Sodom The
Perils of Popery Purgatory
Pickpocket An
Exposure of Popery Popish
Miracles Punishment
Of Heretics The
Eucharist, Or Mass Doctrine
Of Oaths Who
Intercedes? - 6 Who
Intercedes? - 5 Who
Intercedes? - 4 Who
Intercedes? - 3 Who
Intercedes? - 2 Who
Intercedes? Monasteries
+ Convents Holy
Orders Rome's
Rejection Virgin
Worship The
Jesuits Saints
And Angels Duties
Of Protestants Condition
/ Prospects The
Inquisition Popish
Confirmation Popish
Baptism Rome's
Literary Policy Justification Clerical
Celibacy Indulgences Image
Worship Extreme
Unction Catholic
Unity Communion
In One Kind Merit
of Good Works Auricular Confession The
Rule of Faith Papal
Infallibility Luther
Speak Ten
Commandments Jesuit
Oath Exposed Imagery
- II Imagery
- I Antichrist
to Light Saint
Worship Scarlet
Woman Indulgences
- Tetzel Christ
and Pope Relics
of Rome Refuge
of Lies Papal
Infallibility Rome's
Immorality Infallibility Rome
Unchanging True
Papal Church The
Mass
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Auricular Confession
Popery ancient and modern by John Campbell
D.D. compiled by Dr. Paisley Dr. Ian
R.K. Paisley
No portion of the Papal system
presents more originality than the Confessional. The
glory and the infamy of this institution is all its own.
The idea never entered into the heads of the men of the
ancient world. The patriarchs of mankind knew nothing of
it, and the wisest seer of those days never contemplated
the rise of such a scheme of deluding and imposing on
mankind. As to the great legislator of the Jews, nothing
was further from his imagination, nor is a single fact
to be found in connection with the customs, rites, or
literature of any portion of the Pagan world, from which
the existence of the idea would be inferred. It was
reserved for " The Man of Sin " to devise and execute
this dreadful engine of tyranny and crime in furtherance
of his own infernal reign! It is pre-eminently a deed of
darkness, having on its forehead the stamp of Lucifer!
This, like the other great elements of the Papacy, is
founded on a single fragment of the Word of God. There
is only one expression, which is available for the
operation of the plastic power of the priesthood -James
v. 16. " Confess your faults one to another, and pray
one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual
fervent prayer of a righteous man availed much." What
can be more natural and proper than such an act? If you
have committed a fault against a neighbour or a brother
in the Lord, you have wounded him, and you have,
speaking figuratively, wounded the friendship between
you, and this is the only sure way to " heal the
breach," which is actually the phrase current among
mankind for the re-establishment of friendship. But,
that friendship may be restored, there must be
forgiveness, and that there may be forgiveness, there
must be confession. The injunction is, " If he confess,
forgive him," and what more comely and proper than that
the restored friendship between two men that fear God,
should be cemented by prayer? The same point is referred
to by the Lord Himself in his form, " Forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against
us." Paul speaks to the same effect, " Forgiving one
another, even as God, for Christ's sake, bath forgiven
you." It is curious to observe how cunning overmatches
itself. The passage in James, on which the doctrine of
Extreme Unction is founded, speaks of anointing with a
view to recovery; but the extreme unction of Popery is
with a view to death, and is never administered till all
hope is gone, and the party is expected speedily to die,
and with a distinct understanding that he is to die, and
that no more shall be done to save him! Hence the
practice, after administering extreme unction, is to
withhold food and medicine. The administration of this
so-called " Sacrament" constitutes an interdict to all
further recourse to either food or medicine; die he
must, and there is no help for him! The doctrine of
Transubstantiation also rests on a single passage in
John vi. which refers solely to the doctrine of the
Atonement, and not at all to that of the Lord's Supper;
and yet the whole fabric of Transubstantiation and the
Mass is founded on a perversion of this single
Scripture. Such exactly is the case in the matter of
confession. There is but one passage in the whole Word
of God that at all admits of being twisted to that
purpose; but in the plastic hand of the priesthood this
is enough. The word is spoken, and forthwith the fabric
of falsehood arises. Now let it be specially noted that,
in the words of James the. confession has nothing
whatever to do with the priest. The injunction to
confess is directed not to the priest but to the people,
who are commanded- to confess, not to him, but to each
other! Let the reader specially mark the difference.
This is one of those things, which remarkably
illustrate Popish progress, showing the necessity of
contending with evil in the bud. in harmony with the
Scriptures at the outset, the confession was
promiscuous. Men. might confess to each other, to laymen
or to priests, but it was at length rendered incumbent
to do either the one or the other. These strainings of
the Word of God paved the way for more. By degrees
confession was elevated into a sacrament, which none but
a priest might administer, and to that priest every
member of the Papal Church roust confess at a fixed
period. The next step was to lay down the doctrine, that
without this confession there could be no forgiveness,
and that the priest, as God's representative, could
bestow such forgiveness, and the priest only. This
brought matters to a crisis; but even there the climax
was not reached, nor even approached. Shame had not
wholly fled the brow of the confessor, who had not yet
ventured to absolve; he only prayed as follows: - "The
Lord grant thee absolution and remission." In process of
time, however, as the spirit of impiety waged stronger,
and mankind, through increasing darkness, became
prepared for further bondage, the demands increased, and
prayer gave place to an authoritative act of absolution.
The priest attained to the dreadful height of impiety
which enabled him to utter the following language:" I
absolve thee from thy sins, in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost "-no mean
contribution surely to the fulfilment of the prediction,
that " The Man of Sin should exalt himself above all
that is called God, or that is worshipped." The
institution might now be said to be complete, and only
one thing was wanted to give it an authoritative stamp,
and secure universal compliance with its dictum; and
this was reserved for that impious convention known as
the Council of Trent, which had the audacity thus to
speak concerning it: -" The Universal Church has always
understood that a full confession of sins was instituted
by the Lord as a part of the Sacrament of Penance, and
that it is necessary by the Divine appointment for all
who sin after baptism, because our Lord Jesus Christ,
when he was about to ascend from the earth to heaven,
left his priests in his place as presidents and judges,
to whom all mortal offences, into which the faithful
might fall, should be honestly and fully submitted, that
they might pronounce sentence of remission, or retention
of sins, by the power of the keys:' Thus, then, by a
falsehood the most daring, these men give the stamp of
their authority to the so-called Sacrament of
Confession. But this baleful confederacy against God and
man did not leave the matter here. Delighting to pour
out curses on the Protestants, they thus decided: " If
any one shall deny that sacramental confession was
instituted, or is necessary, by Divine right to
salvation, or shall say that the practice of private
confession, to a priest is foreign from the institution
and command of Christ, and is only a human invention;
let him be accursed."
What says the reader to this? The choice is given to
men that know the Scriptures and fear God, of either
conniving at falsehood, or being subjected to an
anathema! Thus the whole institution is clothed in
falsehood and steeped in impiety! A curse is here
fulminated against the whole Protestant world, which the
fierce spirit of Antichrist, were his power equal to his
malice, would convert into a hell of torture to every
soul who is prepared to stand by the Scripture law, "
Let God be true, and every man a liar!" Before mankind
can receive the doctrine of Auricular Confession, the
light which is in them must first be darkened, till
reason be utterly blinded, and conscience either seared
as with a hot iron, or surrendered to the keeping of the
priest, it is impossible for this institution to obtain
general currency. It is the perfection of iniquity; its
history, after its complete establishment, is one of
unmingled infamy. It cannot be read without ineffable
disgust and horror! It has been fraught with a double
curse - a curse to the priest, and a curse to the
people! In wickedly debasing them, he has sorely debased
himself. The vampire and his victim have descended
together into the depths of sin and wretchedness!
Nothing ever happened among men so illustrative of the
Scripture that "the wicked shall be filled with their
own devices." Had the spirits of Pandemonium consulted
together by what means they might best create on earth,
a preparatory school for the great work of turning men
into devils, they could have hit upon nothing so adapted
as Auricular Confession, in the hands of a godless
priesthood, the priest himself being intended to occupy
the highest place, and to become the chief fiend! His
crime, in part, was his punishment. In addition to his
own share of inbred depravity, the corruption of a whole
parish is constantly being poured into his bosom! His
breath is the reservoir into which all their hearts, as
so many fetid streams of depravity and impurity.
discharge themselves. All those evils set forth in
Scripture - " evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false-witness, blasphemies "keep
rushing on in a torrent from day to day into the dark
and foul abyss of his soul! A dozen or a score years of
a life so spent, would serve to convert an angel into a
demon! Thus the soul of the priest becomes the dread
depository of the collective iniquity of multitudes.
Simply to sit, as a silent auditor of the endless
recitals of all sorts of iniquity, might suffice to
assimilate a man to Satan, rendering a creature, whose
days are but a handbreadth, as much an adept in iniquity
as a being who has lived and transgressed a thousand
years! But the priest is not a mere passive receiver of
this aggregate wickedness; were such the fact, it would
be innocence itself compared with the part, which, by
the laws of his order, he is obliged to play in this
tragedy of death. He is bound, in effect, to tutor the
souls of his people in the science and practice of
transgression. Himself a professional teacher of evil,
the great subject of his study is, not the Ward of God,
but the heart of man; it is his duty to sound the depth
of the depravity of the human soul, -to familiarize
himself with all the springs of sin, to search out the
sources of temptation, with the peculiar, as well as the
common methods of warring against the Lord: in a word,
he is bound to perfect himself in the science of
turpitude -a course but too congenial to human nature,
and which becomes the more sweet, the more its depravity
is developed, and the more it has grown up in all things
into Apollyon the Destroyer
Such is the daily and nightly study of a Popish
priest; nor is this study prosecuted abstractedly and in
solitude with his own soul for its subject; the hearts
around him are laid open to his gaze, and are ever
exposed to his experiments. The young and the old, the
rich and the poor, the vulgar and the refined, male and
female, the virtuous and the profligate-humanity in all
its modifications of state, condition, and circumstance,
is the subject on which he conducts his fearful
experiments. His system of interrogation is an
instrument of a thousand screws fixed on all parts of
the human heart, by which, in the mass, they are dragged
forth into view. Perfected himself in the knowledge of
all wickedness, he diffuses that knowledge on every
side, and thus multiplies his own moral likeness among
his people. His questions descend, as the plunge of a
poignard into the soul, and penetrate it in its deepest
recesses; by the operation of the Confessional, iniquity
in all its ramifications is taught upon system, and a
community of knowledge is established in the
congregation or the parish. All souls are rendered
familiar with all sins, with all occasions of sin, with
all accompaniments of sin, with all consequences of sin,
with all the modifications of sin! Thus the whole world
of iniquity is laid bare, both to the eye of the priest,
and to sinners themselves. Under the pretence that as
the priest is both judge and physician, he must know all
sin in thought, word, or deed, that he may determine the
conditions of absolution, and prescribe the method
proper for cure. The priest, sitting as God, must know,
and demands to know, all that can be known by God
In dealing with this subject, we feel ourselves laid
under the most enfeebling restraints-restraints utterly
incompatible with even an approach to a full and
adequate discussion. The moral feelings of British
society would be altogether outraged even by such an
approach. It would fill the virtuous and devout with
intolerable loathing, and, among very many, it would
fail to obtain belief. The system has reared, from age
to age, an army of men for its own service, such as
could not have been supplied even by heathen idolatry in
the darkest ages of Paganism. As an Order, they have
stood alone, peerless in their impiety, and in their
profligacy. Unrestrained by any regard to either God or
man, they give the rein to their worst passions, and
make havoc of the human race! One feature of this system
is so remarkable as to call for special consideration;
as if to give full effect to the Satanic principle of
the confessional, it was ordained that the priest must
be severed from society and all its sympathies, and pass
his days in a state of celibacy. This provision alone
was wanted to perfect the machinery of moral
destruction. The Father Confessor, uninfluenced by the
grace of God, is at the mercy of his passions, combined
with the temptations which surround him; from the nature
of his office, he is placed in circumstances of the
strongest temptation, with every inward incentive, and
every outward facility, for the perpetration of
iniquity. Is it then, to be wondered at, if men so
situated fall, where they do not desire to stand? Is it
to be wondered at, if such men in every land, and in
every succeeding age, have become the despoilers of
virtue? Is it to be wondered at, if woman was ruined,
and man dishonoured? On this subject, were we to suffer
history to step forth and deliver her full testimony,
years would be required to recite the dreadful
chronicle, which would be written within and without,
with lamentation and mourning and woe! Who shall
enumerate the millions that have cursed the day they
first appeared at the Confessional, and thus came under
the influence of the foul spirit that presided in it?
Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, France, and every other
country where the Pope has borne sway, is strewed with
the wrecks arising from priestly profligacy! They have
been the patrons and promoters of vice the most hateful.
and the most destructive. Their mission has been, not to
bless, but to curse the people-not to bring health and
happiness, but to diffuse pestilence and death! Mankind
have groaned in hopeless anguish under the dreadful
burden-! It rested, and in spite of the light of' the
Reformation and the mitigated circumstances of modern
times, it still continues to rest on them, with the
weight of a mountain, repressing their energies whether
of body or of mind, converting nations into one vast
prison-house of intellectual and moral bondage. All
mental freedom is overthrown, and the mind of the people
is merely the mind of the priesthood. The thick darkness
which broods on those lands hides from the world their
true moral condition, which is got at under great
difficulties, and at best but imperfectly developed.
We cannot take leave of the subject, without solemnly
pressing it upon our readers, that the magnitude and the
enormity of the evil, which the language we have
employed may suggest, comes far short of the true state
of the case. Let them not for a moment suppose there
must be exaggeration, for to exaggerate in this matter
were utterly impossible! The difficulty is, to attain to
expression adequate in any measure, to set forth the
truth.
The question then, we have now to put to every
reader, is-Do you wish to see the system of Auricular
Confession, restored to its ancient sway in the British
Isles 2 By all that is sacred in relation to the purity
of woman, the peace of families and the welfare of
society, we implore you to ponder the question! It is
pregnant with meaning of unutterable moment! It is one
of wide range, comprising everything affecting human
institutions, and the progress of .the race in wisdom,
virtue, liberty and, happiness. Auricular Confession is
a huge imposture, laden with every evil; not only is it
without foundation in the Word of God, but at utter
variance with right reason. The priest is thereby raised
into a demon, in his own person uniting the professed
pardon of the highest crimes, with the fresh
perpetration of them! The Confessional has, to an extent
incalculable, -been but another name for seduction, and
seduction has oft been but the prelude of murder! What
tales might be told by the lime-pits, the subterranean
passages, and the spirits of murdered infants
But just in proportion as Auricular Confession exalts
the priesthood, it degrades the people. The! presence of
the priest invariably divests the disciple of his
manhood, and turns him into a crawling reptile of the
dust! He cannot stand erect in the presence of the
person who knows all his weakness, and all his sins in
thought, word, and deed! The eye of his tyrant looks him
through and through; and its glance falls upon him as
the withering blight of heaven! He quakes, as a spaniel,
before his ghostly oppressor! His soul is bound in
fetters, and none can deliver him.
Let every man then, as he values his personal
liberty, the moral purity of his country, set his face
as a flint against the system, of which Auricular
Confession is an integral part, and let him unite with
all good men in every wise and well directed scheme, to
work its overthrow in these realms. As a plant, which
God hath not planted, let all godly and patriotic
Englishmen combine to uproot it from the land!
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