"A solemn action": thoughts on Quinquagesima about the penitential opening of Mattins

Yesterday, Quinquagesima, I was again struck by the power of the penitential rite at the beginning of Mattins and how it ensures that we are 'shriven' before the beginning of Lent.  Sentences of Scripture, Exhortation, General Confession, Absolution, and Lord's Prayer combine as a searching, weighty rite of penitence which, as Hooker declares, has no material difference from private confession, such "that any man's safety, or ghostly good should depend upon it" (LEP VI.4.15).

Richard Mant's Notes on the BCP (1820) - gathering commentary from Laudian sources of the 17th and Old High Church sources of the 18th centuries - provides a superb insight into the significance of Cranmer's addition of this penitential rite to Mattins and Evensong in 1552, and its importance in the life of the parish, ensuring that Confession and Absolution is routinely experienced by the ordinary congregation and the ordinary parishioner as a means of grace.

Sentences & Exhortation

This preface is composed of Sentences of Scripture, with an Exhortation grounded upon them. The Sentences are very prudently selected. They all relate to repentance and confession of sins, which naturally stands first in the devotions of guilty creatures, as we all are. Till we feel a genuine sorrow for having offended God, and come to entreat earnestly the pardon which is offered us through Christ, he cannot accept us; and when we do, that will qualify us for every other part of his worship ...

As it is the duty of the clergy to remember, what a solemn action they are now about to join in with their respective congregations; and accordingly to read these Sentences with a suitable gravity, with a demeanour expressive of their inward devotion, with attention, and deliberation, and such a tone of voice, as may influence their people, and quicken their zeal, and tend to excite in them those heavenly affections, which are requisite in prayer: so also it is the of the congregations to consider, that, during the reading of these Sentences and the following Exhortation, they must not think them selves at liberty to be idle, as they had nothing to regard, whilst the minister is reading. They are certainly obliged to bestow that time after a quite different manner; to give a reverent attention to what the minister reads; to hear the voice of God speaking to them in the Sentences, and the voice of his ambassador speaking to them in the Exhortation; and thereby to fit and prepare their hearts for making their addresses to God Himself in the Church's Confession.

General Confession

This confession is in its form most solemn, in its extent most comprehensive: for it takes in all kinds of sin, both of omission and of commission: and whilst every single person makes this general confession with his lips, he may make a particular confession with his heart ; that is, of his own personal sins, known only to God and to himself; which if particularly, though secretly confessed and repented of, will assuredly be forgiven. This then is the privilege of our confession, that under the general form every man may mentally unfold “the plague of his own heart,” his particular sins, whatever they be, as effectually to God, who “ alone knoweth the hearts of men,” as if he pronounced them in express words. 

The Absolution

In the Confession we acknowledge our daily offences in general; and there is no means so powerful to obtain pardon for them as the daily prayers of the Church to that purpose. So that the course, which our Church here prescribeth, for the pardon of our daily offences, being put in practice, what can be more just, more due, than to declare that forgiveness and absolution, which those that are, as these profess to be, penitent for those sins, do obtain? What more comfortable than to hear the news of it from the mouth of him, by whom the Church ministereth these offices? What more seasonable than to do this before we come to give God his solemn and honour in our publick services, that we may be assured he accepts of the same at our hands? This solemn beginning of our Service with confession and absolution serves to put the people in mind, that all which follows is the solemn service of Almighty God, preparing them to that attention of mind, and devotion of spirit, which they owe to it, and which are requisite to make it acceptable.

The Lord's Prayer

The service began with the Lord's Prayer in the first book of King Edward the Sixth. But our Reformers at the review of it, in 1551, added the Sentences, Exhortation, Confession, and Absolution, as judging it perhaps not so becoming in us to call God “Our Father,” before we have repented of our disobedience against him, and asked pardon for our sins ... But it is a very proper time to address God in that form which our Saviour taught his disciples, when we have approved ourselves his real disciples by repentance of sins, and faith in the Gospel-offers of mercy.