First, we will take note of St. Cyprian of Carthage’s stern warning in his treatise On the Lapsed to those who dare partake of the Lord’s Body and Blood without confession.
All these warnings being scorned and contemned,—before their sin is expiated, before confession has been made of their crime, before their conscience has been purged by sacrifice and by the hand of the priest, before the offence of an angry and threatening Lord has been appeased, violence is done to His body and blood; and they sin now against their Lord more with their hand and mouth than when they denied their Lord. [ANF 5:441, treatise III, par. 16]
The words “by the hand of the priest” clarify exactly what Cyprian means here: confession before God’s representative the priest. In paragraph 28 of the same treatise, he again spells out very clearly what confession means to him and the Early Church.
Moreover, how much are they both greater in faith and better in their fear, who, although bound by no crime of sacrifice to idols or of certificate, yet, since they have even thought of such things, with grief and simplicity confess this very thing to God’s priests, and make the conscientious avowal, put off from them the load of their minds, and seek out the salutary medicine even for slight and moderate wounds, knowing that it is written, “God is not mocked.God cannot be mocked, nor deceived, nor deluded by any deceptive cunning. [ANF 5: 446, treatise III, par. 28]
The great expositor and preacher of the Early Church, St. John Chrysostom informs us of the power and dignity that God has given his priest in dealing with sin in Treatise Concerning the Christian Priesthood.
For if any one will consider how great a thing it is for one, being a man, and compassed with flesh and blood, to be enabled to draw nigh to that blessed and pure nature, he will then clearly see what great honor the grace of the Spirit has vouchsafed to priests; since by their agency these rites are celebrated, and others nowise inferior to these both in respect of our dignity and our salvation. For they who inhabit the earth and make their abode there are entrusted with the administration of things which are in Heaven, and have received an authority which God has not given to angels or archangels. For it has not been said to them, “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.” They who rule on earth have indeed authority to bind, but only the body: whereas this binding lays hold of the soul and penetrates the heavens; and what priests do here below God ratifies above, and the Master confirms the sentence of his servants. For indeed what is it but all manner of heavenly authority which He has given them when He says, “Whose sins ye remit they are remitted, and whose sins ye retain they are retained?” What authority could be greater than this? “The Father hath committed all judgment to the Son?” But I see it all put into the hands of these men by the Son. [NPNF 1-08: 46, bk. III, par. 5]
St. Ambrose of Milan in Book II of On Repentance speaks in a very similar way to St. John Chrysostom.
Can any one endure that you should blush to entreat God, when you do not blush to entreat a man? That you should be ashamed to entreat Him Who knows you fully, when you are not ashamed to confess your sins to a man who knows you not? Do you shrink from witnesses and sympathizers in your prayers, when, if you have to satisfy a man, you must visit many and entreat them to be kind enough to intervene; when you throw yourself at a man’s knees, kiss his feet, bring your children, still unconscious of guilt, to entreat also for their father’s pardon? And you disdain to do this in the Church in order to entreat God, in order to gain for yourself the support of the holy congregation; where there is no cause for shame, except indeed not to confess, since we are all sinners, amongst whom he is the most praiseworthy who is the most humble; he is the most just who feels himself the lowest. [NPNF 1-10; 356; bk. II, par. 91]
Ambrose addresses the same subject and our mysterious Scripture verse in his treatise On the Holy Spirit.
Let us now see whether the Spirit forgives sins. But on this point there can be no doubt, since the Lord Himself said: “Receive ye the Holy Spirit. Whosesoever sins ye forgive they shall be forgiven.” See that sins are forgiven through the Holy Spirit. But men make use of their ministry for the forgiveness of sins, they do not exercise the right of any power of their own. For they forgive sins not in their own name but in that of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. They ask, the Godhead gives, the service is of man, the gift is of the Power on high. [NPNF 2-10: bk. III, ch. XVII, par. 137]
Firmillian, bishop of Caesarea, writes in his letter to Cyprian about confession.
But what is the greatness of his error, and what the depth of his blindness, who says that remission of sins can be granted in the synagogues of heretics, and does not abide on the foundation of the one Church which was once based by Christ upon the rock, may be perceived from this, that Christ said to Peter alone, “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” And again, in the Gospel, when Christ breathed on the apostles alone, saying, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them, and whose soever sins ye retain they are retained.” Therefore the power of remitting sins was given to the apostles, and to the churches which they, sent by Christ, established, and to the bishops who succeeded to them by vicarious ordination. [ANF 5:395, Epistle LXXIV, par. 16]
Lastly, let us note the writing of Lactantius, who served as a tutor for Constantine’s son, Crispus. In The Divine Institutes he writes the following:
No one ought to flatter himself with persevering strife. For the contest is respecting life and salvation, which, unless it is carefully and diligently kept in view, will be lost and extinguished. But, however, because all the separate assemblies of heretics call themselves Christians in preference to others, and think that theirs is the Catholic Church, it must be known that the true Catholic Church is that in which there is confession and repentance, which treats in a wholesome manner the sins and wounds to which the weakness of the flesh is liable. [ANF 7: 133, bk. IV, ch. XXX]
There can be little or no doubt as to where the foregoing writers stood on the matter of confession to a priest. All the modern nay-sayers notwithstanding, we have see that the Early Church stands and speaks unanimously on this subject.
One has to ask: why don’t we follow this practice? Why have we thrown out what is demonstrably Scriptural and part of the practice of the Early Church? What possible reason can be proffered for our discarding this practice? I don’t have answers but the questions are certainly intriguing, are they not?
