"The benefit of absolution": a Laudian view of the absolution at Mattins and Evensong

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From Richard Montagu's Articles of Enquiry in the Primary Visitation of the Diocese of Norwich, 1638: an insight into the significance given by the Laudians - and, later, by the Old High tradition - to the Absolution at Mattins and Evensong:

Do your parishioners come late to church, and not at the beginning of Divine service, to make their humble confession unto Almighty God? who, by coming late, deprive themselves of the benefit of absolution, and do become unprofitable hearers and petitioners in that holy action ...

Doth he use the absolution to be pronounced on penitents, not as it is a declaration of forgivenesse, but as a prayer, altering the words of the Common Prayer-book, as some have presumed to do?

(It is worth noting that in addition to 17th century Puritans denying this to be an Absolution, and turning it into a prayer, the Ordinariate has also explicitly done this.)

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