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CHAPTER VII.

ABSOLUTION.

It is well known that in some parts of Christendom, and in some sections of the English Church, considerable importance is attached to certain words which appear in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John, as justifying the idea that it is the paramount duty of all Christians to confess their sins to presbyters who have received episcopal ordination, and the exclusive right of presbyters, so appointed, to absolve them.

It is not here intended to enter on the various objections raised on moral grounds to this theory. But it may be useful to show the original meaning of the words, and then trace their subsequent history. It will be then seen that, whatever other grounds there may be for the doctrine or practice in question, these passages have either no relation to it, or whatever relation they have is the exact contradiction of the theory in question.

The texts are (in English) as follows:

The address to Peter (Matt. xvi. 19): Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.'

The address to the disciples (Matt. xviii. 18): 'Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.'

The address to the disciples (John xx. 23): 'Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them: and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.'

We will first take the two passages in the Gospel of St.

Matthew. For the purposes of this argument the words. addressed to St. Peter need not be distinguished from the words addressed to the disciples, as they are in each case identically the same.1

I. The phrase 'binding' and 'loosing' meant, in the language of the Jewish schools, declaring what is wrong and what is right. If any Master, or Rabbi, or Judge Binding and declared a thing to be lawful and right, he was said loosing. to have loosed it; if he declared a thing to be unlawful and wrong, he was said to have bound it. That this is the original meaning of the words has been established beyond possibility of question, since the decisive quotations given by the most learned Hebrew scholars of the seventeenth century.2 The meaning, therefore, of the expressions, as addressed to the first disciples, was that, humble as they seemed to be, yet, by virtue of the new spiritual life and new spiritual insight which Christ brought into the world, their decisions in cases of right and wrong would be invested with all and more than all the authority which had belonged before to the Masters of the Jewish Assemblies, to the Rulers and Teachers of the Synagogues. It was the same promise as was expressed in substance in those other well-known passages: It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of my Father which speaketh in you.' He that is spiritual judgeth all things.' Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things, and need not that any one should teach you.' The Comforter shall lead you into all truth.'

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The sense thus given is as appropriate to the occasion as it is certainly true. In the new crisis through which the world was to pass, they, the despised scholars of a despised Master, were to declare what was changeable and what was unchangeable, what was eternal, what was transitory, what

be

per

1 For their peculiar meaning as addressed to St. Peter, it may mitted to refer to a volume published many years ago, entitled Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age, pp. 127-34.

2 Hebrew and Talmudical Exercitations Matthew (xvi. 19). By John Lightfoot, D.D.'

upon the Evangelist St. Works, vol. ii. pp. 206-7.

was worthy of approval, and what was worthy of condemnation. They were to declare the innocence of a thousand customs of the Gentile world, which their Jewish countrymen had believed to be sinful; they were to declare the exceeding sinfulness of a thousand acts which both Jews and Pagans had believed to be virtuous or indifferent. They were empowered to announce with unswerving confidence the paramount importance of charity, and the supreme preciousness of truth. They were empowered to denounce with unsparing condemnation the meanness of selfishness, the sacrilege of impurity, the misery of self-deceit, the impiety of uncharitableness. And what the first generation of Christians, to whom these words were addressed, thus decided, has on the whole been ratified in heaven, has on the whole been ratified by the voice of Providence in the subsequent history of mankind. By this discernment of good and evil the Apostolic writers became the lawgivers of the civilised world. Eighteen hundred years have passed, and their judgments in all essential points have never been reversed.

The authority or the accuracy of portions of the New Testament on this or that point is often disputed. The grammar, the arguments, the history of the authors of the Gospels and Epistles can often be questioned. But that which must govern us all, their declaration of the moral standard of mankind, the ideal they have placed before us of that which is to guide our conduct-which is, after all, as has been said by Matthew Arnold, three fourths of human life-has hardly been questioned at all by the intelligent and upright part of mankind. The condemnation of sins, the commendation of graces, in St. Matthew's description of the Beatitudes, in St. Luke's description of the Prodigal Son, in St. John's description of the conversation with the woman of Samaria, in St. Peter's declaration that in every land he that worketh righteousness (of whatever creed or race) is accepted of God,' in St. Paul's description of charity, in St. James's description of pure religion-have commanded the entire assent of the world, of Bolingbroke and Voltaire no

less than of Thomas à Kempis and Wesley, because these moral judgments bear on their face that stamp of the divine, the superhuman, the truly supernatural, which critical inquiry cannot touch, which human wisdom and human folly alike, whilst they may be unwilling or unable to fulfil the precepts, yet cannot deny. This is the original sense in which the judgments of the first Christians in regard to sin and virtue were ratified in heaven. It is necessary to insist on this point in order to show that an amply sufficient force and solemnity is inherent in the proper meaning of the words, without resorting to fictitious modes of aggrandising them in directions for which they were not intended.

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and retain

The signification of the phrase in John xx. 23, translated in the Authorised Version remitting and retaining sins,' is not equally clear. The word used for remitting (apiévai) Remitting does not of necessity mean the declaration of the sins. innocence or lawfulness of any particular act; still less does the corresponding phrase (кpatɛiv) necessarily mean the declaration of its unlawfulness. It may be that the word rendered 'remit' points rather (as the cognate peois in Mark i. 4, Luke iii. 3) to the abolition or dismissal of sin; and it would be natural that the word (xpaтsiv) rendered ' retain' should signify, as in all the other passages of the New Testament where it occurs, to control,'' conquer,' 'subdue sin.' In that case the words would describe, not the intellectual or didactic side of the Apostolic age, but its moral and practical side, and would correspond to numerous other passages, such as, Ask and it shall be given unto you;'If ye will say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done;' 'He that humbleth himself shall be exalted;'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me;' 'Greater works than these shall ye do;' 'Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world;'Sanctify them through Thy truth; My grace is sufficient for thee;' 'I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me;' 'He that overcometh and keepeth my words unto the end, to him will

I give power over the nations.' If this assurance of the moral victory of the Apostolic age over sin be the meaning of the phrases, then here also it may be affirmed, without fear of contradiction, that, on the whole, and with the necessary reserves of human imperfection, the moral superiority of the first age of Christendom to those which preceded and those which followed was very remarkable, and that such a fulfilment well corresponded to the significant act of the breathing of the spirit of goodness or holiness upon those to whom the words were addressed. But on this interpretation we need not insist. It is necessary to mention it in order to show that the passage is not clear from ambiguity. But it is enough if, as is commonly supposed, the words, by some peculiar turn of the Fourth Gospel, are identical in meaning with those in St. Matthew. In that case all that we have said of the address to Peter and the address to the disciples in the First Gospel applies equally to this address in the Fourth.

II. Such, then, was the promise as spoken in the first instance. In the literal sense of the words this fulfilment of them can hardly occur again.

Universal

No other book of equal authority with the New Testament has ever issued from mortal pen. No epoch has spoken on moral questions with a voice so powerful as the Aposapplication. tolic age. Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Hegel may be of a wider range. Yet they do not rise to the moral dignity of the best parts of the New Testament. When we leave the purely personal and historical application of these words, then, as in all our Lord's words and precepts, the whole point of the words is, that they are spoken, not to any one person or order of men, or succession of men, but to the whole Christian community of all time-to any in that community that partake of the same spirit, and in proportion as they partake of the same moral qualities as filled the first hearers of the Gospel. When it is sometimes alleged that the promise to Peter was exclusively fulfilled in the Bishops of Rome, who, centuries afterwards, were supposed to have been his suc