'The real meaning of that absolution': Phillpotts on the absolution in the Visitation of the Sick
But it may be said, a particular absolution "is given to him who has made a particular confession": true, it is enjoined in the Rubric, that after what has preceded, if the sick man humbly and heartily desire it, the priest shall absolve him in the form annexed, a form, the meaning of which, if it be ambiguous, must be understood from comparison with the express doctrine, and uniform practice, of our Church in all the preceding instances. But even in this very form there is an implied declaration of the nature of the absolving power; it is given to absolve all sinners who truly repent and "believe in our Lord Jesus Christ;" and therefore on the penitent's "humbly and heartily desiring it" (the very terms imply the sincerity both of his repentance and his faith) the Priest feels himself at liberty to use it, and to say "By Christ's authority committed to me," an authority the limits of which have been just before stated, "I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Need I add, that it is immediately followed by a prayer to God "to consider the sick penitent's contrition, to accept his tears, to assuage his grief as shall seem to the Divine Wisdom most expedient for him"? Would this be consistent with a judicial absolution already given to the penitent? We have seen then, Sir, the real meaning of that absolution, which you affect to believe, and persons of less information than you, really believe, the same with that which is claimed and exercised by the priesthood of the Church of Rome.
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