"For this judgement is secret": Taylor on penitence and discipline

That which God doth chiefly respect in men's penitence, is their hearts - The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity VI.6.18

It is significant that in his discussion in Book VI of the Laws of the Genevan model of lay eldership, Hooker gives over significant space to challenging the Tridentine notion of a sacrament of Penance. As seen yesterday in Taylor's words, this reflected a conviction within the reformed ecclesia Anglicana that consistory and confessional both represented an unwarranted and imprudent intrusion into the heart - the seat of repentance - which God alone, and neither elders nor confessor, could rightly judge.

We also see this emphasis in Taylor's approach in The Worthy Communicant (chapter V.vi.):

2. No man may be separated from the communion for any private sin, vehemently or lightly suspected. This censure must not pass, but when the crime is manifest and notorious; that is, when it is related and convict in any public assembly, civil or ecclesiastical, or is evident to a multitude, or confessed. This is the express doctrine of the church in St. Austin's time, who affirms, that the ecclesiastics have no power to make separations of sinners, not confessed nor convict. And, besides many others, it relies upon this prudential consideration, which Linwood hath well observed: "Every Christian hath a right in the receiving the eucharist, unless he loses it by deadly sin: therefore, when it does not appear in the face of the church, that such a one hath lost his right, it ought not, in the face of the church, to be denied to him; otherwise a license would be given to evil priests, according to their pleasure, with this punishment to afflict whom they list."

3. Every sinner that hath been convict, or hath confessed, and affirms himself to be truly penitent, is to be believed, where, by the laws of the church, he is not bound to pass under any public discipline. For no man can tell, but that he says true; and because every degree of repentance is accepted to some dispositions and proportions of pardon, and God hath not told us the just period of his being reconciled; and his mercy is divisible as our return, and unknown to us; he that knows, that, without repentance, he eats damnation, and professes upon that very account that he is penitent, - may be taught as many more things as the curate please, or as he is supposed to need; but must not be rejected from the holy communion, if he cannot be persuaded. For this judgment is secret, and is to pass between God and the soul alone; for because no man can tell, no man can judge; and the curate, who knows not how it is, cannot give a definitive sentence.

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laudable Practice

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