'It is to be feared as a mere routine of ordinary life': E.H. Browne's Old High rejection of private confession as normative

We saw last week how E.H. Browne - then Bishop of Winchester - in his An Exposition of the Thirty Nine Articles: Historical and Doctrinal (1874), set forth an Old High understanding in which the Prayer Book's provision for private confession and absolution followed "the same wise and moderate view" of the Continental Reformers regarding this ministry.

In this week's extract, Browne repeats the wisdom of ensuring that this ministry is available, but robustly warns against it becoming the normal and routine form of confession and repentance, which is to be "confession to God":

There can be no doubt, that a distressed conscience may be soothed and guided by confidence in a spiritual adviser. Most people, much in earnest, and much oppressed with a sense of sin, have yearned for such confidence. Hence the Church should always afford to the sin-stricken soul the power of unburdening itself. But, on the other hand, whatever tends to lead people to substitute confession to man for confession to God, and to make the path of repentance less rugged than the Gospel makes it, must be dangerous.

The ministry of private confession and absolution, therefore, is to be available to those "much oppressed with a sense of sin". But, we are "not to substitute confession to man for confession to God". In other words, our individual and corporate confession to God is to be the normative, routine, regular form of confession. Browne is here again affirming the Reformed teaching of the Church of England. In the words of the Homily on Repentance, referring to Psalm 32:5 and 1 John 1:9:

Which ought to be understanded of the confession that is made unto God. For these are St. Augustine's words: that confession which is made unto God is required by God's law ... This is the chiefest and most principal confession that in the Scriptures and word of God we are bidden to make, and without the which we shall never obtain pardon and forgiveness of our sins.

Likewise, Bishop Jewel:

Confess thy sins therefore before God: declare thine offences, and make thy prayer for them before God, which is the true and righteous Judge. Make thy confession not with the tongue, but in the record of thine own conscience.

Browne also gives voice to another consistent, traditional Old High concern, that private confession and absolution can enable and facilitate an inauthentic repentance, before we have journeyed back to the Father from the far country, abandoning the habits of sin - a necessary and integral aspect of repentance:

Such is the systematic and compulsory confession of the Church of Rome, followed as it is by absolution and penance, which too often seem to speak peace to the soul, perhaps before its peace is sealed in Heaven. The penitent finds it far easier to unburden his soul to the priest, than to seek, day and night, with broken spirit, for pardon from God: and, when he has once confided his griefs to his spiritual guide, he easily substitutes that guide's counsels for the dictates of his own conscience: and no counsels from without can speak as fearfully as the whispers of remorse within.

This is a significant reminder that the Old High critique of auricular confession came not from a failure to take sin seriously but from the conviction that the routine of auricular confession could too easily encourage such a failure. Jeremy Taylor had given this concern classical expression:

Confession, as used in the Roman Church, a trifling business, whereby few are frighted from sinning, but more made confident, and go on in sinning; Confessing and sinning going in a round. Their Rules and Doctrines of Confession, enjoyn some things that are dangerous, and lead into temptation.

The pastoral provision of the ministry of private confession and absolution, therefore, is not to be denied to "the dying, the perplexed, or the broken-hearted". It is not, however, to be "a mere routine of ordinary life":

Hence the danger of healing the wound lightly, of substituting false peace for that peace which can come only from a true penitence, and from the sense of God's pardoning love through Christ. Confession has been well called "the luxury of repentance". Access to it is not to be denied to the dying, the perplexed, or the broken-hearted; but it is to be feared for the morbid spirit, and still more to be feared, as a mere routine of ordinary life, as a salving over of the conscience stained by sin, and seeking an easy deliverance from its warnings and reproofs.

In Browne we see the wisdom of the Old High tradition's understanding of private confession and absolution. There are occasions when it can be useful, a means of pastoral reassurance of God's forgiving grace in Christ. But, entirely contrary to Tractarian claims, these occasions are limited and rare in any life. Private confession and absolution was definitively not intended to be a "routine of ordinary life" in the Church of England, and with very good reason.