"Signal promise": the Absolution at Morning and Evening Prayer

As Lent approaches, most of the posts this week will consider the normative way Anglicans over centuries received absolution: that is, by means of "The Absolution or Remission of sins ... pronounced by the Priest" at Mattins and Evensong. To guide our reflections on this Absolution, we turn to A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), by clergyman John Shepherd.

Mindful that the Absolution at Morning and Evening Prayer, "pronounced by the Priest alone", had been a source of Puritan and then Dissenting criticism since the Elizabethan era, Shepherd invokes Calvin in defence of the Absolution as a "signal promise" of forgiveness after confession:

The propriety of introducing the Absolution in. this part of our daily service, is acknowledged without reserve by Calvin, whose immense learning, and extraordinary abilities, no one will dispute. This distinguished instrument of the reformation, who was not remarkable for his partiality to the reform made in England, delivers here the opinion of his colleagues, as well as his own. "We are every one of us," says Calvin, "ready to admit that after a general confession, to subjoin some signal promise, which may excite hope of pardon and reconciliation, is a very useful and beneficial practice. And from the very beginning, I was desirous of adopting this method, but I yielded too easily to the apprehensions of others."

The want of a form of Absolution in a Liturgy, which Calvin regrets, is certainly a defect.

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