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'The real meaning of that absolution': Phillpotts on the absolution in the Visitation of the Sick

Having last week considered how Henry Phillpotts, in a series of letters - debating a Roman Catholic apologist - published in 1825, gave voice to an Old High critique of auricular confession, we now turn to this insistence that the special form of absolution in the Visitation of the Sick was not to be understood in the terms of Roman Catholic theology:

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. 

Crucially, therefore, this special form of absolution was not judicial. Just as Phillpotts contended that the Prayer Book provision for private confession was a pastoral measure for those in particular distress, so this absolution was addressed to those who - as in the Holy Communion - "do truly and earnestly repent" of their sins, "and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God". It was, in other words, a declaration of forgiveness dependent upon the faith and repentance of the penitent. This "real meaning" of this absolution stood starkly apart from a Roman Catholic understanding of absolution in the Sacrament of Penance. Again, this highlights the context for Phillpotts' republication of this particular letter in 1848, refuting the Tractarian view that this Prayer Book absolution was to be understood in the terms of Tridentine theology. As Phillpotts declared, this was not a sustainable view, for the special form of absolution "must be understood from comparison with the express doctrine, and uniform practice, of our Church".
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