Bramhall: "They condemn not private confession, and absolution itself"

From Protestants' Ordination Defended - a response to a Roman Catholic critique of Anglican orders - by Bramhall, then Bishop of Derry, addressing the allegation that Anglican formularies had removed private confession and the priestly authority to absolve sins:

Neither have the Protestants "pared away" all manner of mariner of shrift, or confession and absolution. I have shewed before in this answer five several ways [he had previously stated that the priestly authority to remit sins was found in administering Baptism, the Eucharist, prayer, preaching, and absolution], whereby the Protestants hold, that their Presbyters put away sins. Nay, they condemn not private confession, and absolution itself, as an ecclesiastical policy, to make men more wary how they offend; so as it might be left free, without tyrannical imposition. No better physic for a full stomach than a vomit. Bodily sores do sometimes compel a man to put off natural shamefacedness, and to offer his less comely parts to the view of the surgeon. By a little shame, which we suffer before our fellow servant, we prevent that great confusion of face, which otherwise must fall upon impenitent sinners at the Day of Judgment.

What are those corruptions then, which we have "pared away" from the Romish shrift? First, that they have tricked it up in the robes of a Sacrament, obtruding it upon the world as absolutely necessary to salvation, and that by Divine institution ...Secondly, that they have restrained it to a particular and plenary enumeration of all sins. "Who can tell how oft he offendeth; cleanse Thou me, O Lord, from my secret faults" ... Thirdly, they make it to be meritorious at the hands of God, and satisfactory for sins, not by way of complacence only, but even in justice ...

Let them purge away these abuses of their shrift, which they have added, making it sacramental, plenary, particular, satisfactory, enforced under pain of damnation, by virtue of Christ's institution; let them cease to disorder it, to prostitute it, to profane it; and the Protestants and they will have less cause to differ about the bounds or limits of Priestly power.

From The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, John Bramhall, Volume 5.

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