"No countenance to the snare of compulsory auricular confession": Jelf's Bampton Lectures on private confession

In the seventh of his1844 Bampton Lectures, An inquiry into the means of grace, their mutual connection, and combined use, with especial reference to the Church of England, Jelf - one of the Zs, those whom Nockles highlights as the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition - addresses the issue of private confession and absolution. Proposed by Tractarians as a regular, routine feature of the spiritual life, Jelf robustly reaffirms the Old High understanding that this Prayer Book provision must not be regarded as Tridentine "compulsory auricular confession".

Jelf begins by pointing to the radical difference between the primitive penitential practice and the much later Sacrament of Penance:

And let it be acknowledged that it [i.e. the primitive practice] is now to be found nowhere in Christendom as it existed in the Primitive Church; and, considering the change of circumstances and habits, it is, perhaps, hardly to be expected that any Church will ever succeed in restoring it to its primitive form and efficiency. Let us console ourselves with the reflection, that, being an ecclesiastical ordinance, however wisely adapted to the situation of the early Church, it was, in its nature, variable, and liable to discretionary modifications in after times. It is our wisdom then, not vainly to mourn at the absence of that, the restoration of which, however much to be wished, may seem to be denied us, but to pray that our Church in her discretion may be led and enabled to act upon the principle of discipline, as already, in certain of her formularies, enjoined on her clergy, in the spirit of Christian love for the sinner, so as to adapt it to the circumstances of her position ...

But if the ancient system of penance, how ever we may regret its unsuitableness to our times, was liable to modification, as being only of ecclesiastical origin, still more was the so called Sacrament of Penance, which had been received in the Church of Rome, liable to be rejected, as owing its origin to the subtleties of the Schoolmen about the time of the Lateran Council. For what title has an ordinance arbitrarily compounded, as it is, out of various elements, to be accounted "a Sacrament for the remission of sins committed after Baptism," which, as a complex system, had yet no warrant of Scripture and no evidence of antiquity to support its claims ?

While the Schools and Trent made the "various elements" a Sacrament with "no warrant of Scripture", the Prayer Book retained "component parts" of the penitential practice, including private confession:

Whatever, indeed, there is of value in its component parts our Church has retained. To absolution she attributes, as we have seen, a very important office in restoring the sinner; confession, not only general and public, but private confession to some "discreet and learned minister of God's Word," is even recommended to the disquieted conscience.

This, however, was most definitively not the Tridentine practice of "compulsory auricular confession" and, contrary to what some Tractarian practice suggested, private confession was not a requirement for reception of the holy Sacrament:

But our Church gives no countenance to the snare of compulsory auricular confession, nor to sacramental confession as a necessary qualification for the Holy Communion, seeing there is no ground for it either in Holy Scripture or in Christian antiquity; she makes no vain distinctions between contrition and attrition; and she allows no meritorious efficacy to satisfaction. In a word, what the one Church arbitrarily established, the other, in her discretion, has rightfully rejected, so far as it was repugnant to God's Word and Catholic practice; but she has, in doing this, been careful not to abandon or to endanger any of the means of grace.

Reading Jelf's rebuttal of Tractarian teaching and practice regarding private confession and absolution brings to mind the Preface to the 1878 Irish revision of the Prayer Book:

nor is it anywhere in our Formularies taught or implied that confession to, and absolution by, a Priest are any conditions of God's pardon; but, on the contrary, it is fully taught that all Christians who sincerely repent, and unfeignedly believe the Gospel, may draw nigh, as worthy Communicants, to the Lord's Table without any such confession or absolution.

This Old High teaching not only reflected Anglican teaching and experience over preceding centuries, it also continues to have significance: for the vast majority of Anglicans, private confession and absolution is not a familiar practice while "compulsory auricular confession" is unknown. The normative means for confession and absolution remains - as it was for Anglicans who gathered for Mattins Sunday by Sunday over centuries - that provided in the liturgy. The failure of the Tractarian desire to promote auricular confession as a regular feature of the spiritual life is certainly not to be lamented. Rather, as Jelf indicates, it points to the enduring pastoral wisdom of the Prayer Book's provision, allowing - but never requiring - the ministry of private confession and absolution in specific circumstances when required, as the 1878 Preface stated:

other than that of declaring and pronouncing, on God's part remission of sins to all that are truly penitent, to the quieting of their conscience, and the removal of all doubt and scruple.