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think, that the priest may give absolution, not merely as declaratory or promissory, but authoritative and immediate; that he may actually pronounce the penitent to be from that very time absolved, and that this absolution will be ratified in heaven. Others again will not allow this: they think, that the priest merely promises pardon from God hereafter; or that he declares in the name of God, that if the man truly repent him of his sins, (of which God only can be a judge,) he may then be absolved.

"The Church of England would be quoted in support of all these several interpretations. She undoubtedly claims the right of inflicting and withdrawing censures, however obsolete such a custom may have become: she also claims the power of binding her members to the observation of certain laws, and of loosing them from others. With respect to absolution, or the forgiveness of sins, her authority would be quoted by those, who assert this doctrine in its highest sense, and by those, who allow it merely in the lowest degree. The latter would say, that in her form of absolution, which is read in the Morning Service, the priest evidently does nothing more than execute a command of God, in declaring and pronouncing, that He pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent. The former would quote the office for the visitation of the sick, where the priest is authorized to say by his

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authority committed to me, I absolve thee

from all thy sins.'

"It will be the object of the following pages to consider these several interpretations; and it may perhaps be well to state here the conclusion, which it is intended to draw, viz. that the power of the keys, or the power which is expressed in Matt. xvi. 19. xviii. 18. and John xx. 23. gave to the apostles and to their successors for ever the privilege of admitting any persons by baptism to the Christian covenant; that is, of loosing the faithful and penitent from the disabling curse, under which they were born, and of putting them into a new condition, which made them capable of working out their salvation." P. 1.

Mr. Burton then observes, that the words in Matt. xvi. and xviii. contain only a promise of what shall be done; while the words in John xx. intimate an actual gift. He contends therefore that the Power of the Keys was bestowed by our Lord upon his apostles, in the interval

between the Resurrection and Ascension-several pages are employed in proving against the Romanists that the gift was not confined to St. Peter. The argument is put with great neatness and force, and may be advantageously consulted by such as entertain any doubts upon the subject.

The next point is to distinguish between the power of remitting and retaining sin, which was conferred in the interval between the Resurrection and Ascension, and the power of working miracles and speaking with tongues, which was not bestowed till the day of Pente

cost. Here again Mr. Burton proceeds in a workmanlike manner— shortly and satisfactorily establishes his point, and shews that the History of the two Inspirations does not give the slightest grounds for concluding that the Apostles could not transmit the one power without transmitting all the others likewise. Our Lord's last charge to his Apostles is then examined-and the different accounts of it harmonized. We extract Mr. Burton's paraphrase of this most important portion of Scripture-and wish that the inference which he draws from it, were less unworthy of the foundation on which it rests.

"We might paraphrase this charge in the following manner. The atonement is now made: God has accepted the sacrifice, which I offered for sin, and allows all men to be benefited by it. Power is henceforth given to me to put all the inhabitants of the earth into a way of coming to heaven: they may have their sins forgiven, if they will believe in me: this is the condition, which I appoint for their being put into the way of salvation. It was to make this atonement, and to invite all men to partake of it on this condition, that my Father sent me into the world; and as 1 am now going away, in the same manner I send you in my name, and authorize you to appoint successors after you, who shall continue till the end of the world to publish these and make them known to all nations. glad tidings to all mankind. Go therefore, Moreover it is my will, that wherever you make them known, every person, who

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and whatsoever ye loose on earth, shall: be loosed in heaven.' And that this is the full meaning of the promise given in Matt. xvi. 19. xviii. 18. and of the power actually conferred in John xx. 23. is the conclusion which I have been endeavouring to establish. I conceive, that the apostles loosed sinners, or remitted their sins, when upon their professing their belief in Christ, they admitted them to the sacrament of baptism: and so they hound them, or rather left them bound, and declared their sins to be retained, when they refused to believe in Christ.

wishes to profit by them, and to accept
the terms offered, shall first be baptized.
He must believe in me: he must repent of
his past sins: and then being baptized in
the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost *, he shall be fully
admitted into the new covenant, which we
have established through my blood. Till
now it was impossible for men to please
God, or to make any atonement for their
sins, so as to escape punishment: if they
died without committing sin themselves,
yet the sin of their first parents, under the
curse of which they were born, was enough
to subject them to the wrath of God. But "If this interpretation be correct, the
now they may have this curse effectually absolving power of the church, in the
removed, if they will believe in me and usual sense of the expression, finds no sup-
they may have their own personal sins for- port from Matt. xvi. 19. xviii. 18. or
given, if they will add repentance to their John xx. 23. and the successors of the
belief. Go therefore; and by baptizing apostles can never give actual and imme-
those who believe in me,and admitting them diate remission of sius, except when they
into my covenant, loose them from that first admit a man into the covenant, and
curse, and from that inability to please baptize him upon his professing faith and
God, by which they were before bound,
repentance. If such a man again commit
Whosoever are thus loosed by you in my sin, the minister of Christ cannot again
name, are really and effectually loosed:
say to him, all thy past sins (including the
my Father, who is in heaven, will look sins committed since baptism) are forgiven
upon them as beginning a new life, and thee; he cannot even say this, though
will judge them merely for the works which the sinner again profess to believe in Christ,
they do after baptism. The sins, which and to repent. The minister may indeed
you then remitted to them, will not be and ought to remind him of the pardon,
imputed to them, so as to affect their which he once received; that all his sins,
admission into heaven. But, on the other whether actual or imputed, were once
hand, whosoever refuses to believe in me, blotted out: and he ought also to remind
is in the same state of condemnation, as if him, that his sins subsequently committed
I had never died: he is still bound by the
may likewise be blotted out, if he will re-
curse passed upon Adam, and subject to
pent and leave them off. But this forgive-
the wrath of God. You cannot loose him: ness of sins committed after admission into
you cannot admit him into the new cove- the covenant will never be declared, till
nant, or hold out to him any hope of for- the judgment of the last day. The priest
giveness, unless he believe in me. In may exhort and encourage the sinner to
such cases you have no anthority: you look for it but he can never say with his
must leave such persons bound: you must own authority, at this very moment all
denounce to them, that their sins are still thy sins are forgiven thee. If he could,
retained; and at the last day they will the same man may be absolved several
find, that they are really and effectually times in the course of his life: there is no
retained, so as to keep them from heaven.
reason, why he may not be absolved every
day. There is no doubt, that he may re-
quire absolution every day by committing
fresh sins and as he may also believe and
repent every day, the priest might give
him absolution every time thathe professed
this faith and repentance *.

"It will be seen, that in the latter part of this paraphrase I have intended to give the meaning of John xx, 23. Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained;' coupling that passage with Matt. xviii. 18. Whatsoever ye bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven;

It has been said, that the apostles do not appear to have observed this form of words, but to have baptized in the name of Jesus only. (Acts ii. 38. viii. 16.) Yet we have perhaps a proof to the contrary in 1 Cor. vi. 11. where all the three Persons in the Trinity are mentioned.

"But this conclusion is too absurd to

The eleventh Canon of the third Council of Toledo complains, that in certain churches of Spain, men do not follow the Canons, but anworthily repent them of their sins, and as often as they please to sin, so often they desire the priest to absolve them.

be entertained. It could never have been the intention of our Saviour to give such an unavailing power of absolution as this, when he so solemnly ordained his apostles

to remit sins. This alternation of guilt and purity, of condemnation and absolution, can never be the effect of that power, which the Holy Ghost conveys to the ministers of Christ. It is surely therefore more reasonable to say, that the same person receives a positive and valid remission of sins from the minister of Christ only

once, that is, when he is first admitted into

the covenant by baptism. It is then that he is loosed from his inability to please God, and that the sin of his first parents, and his own personal sins, are remitted to him. Bishop Taylor is express in asserting this doctrine: then (at Baptism) the power of the keys is exercised, and the gates of the kingdom are opened: then we enter into the covenant of mercy and pardon, and promise faith and perpetual obedience to the laws of Jesus, and upon that condition forgiveness is promised and exhibited, offered and consigned, but never after *.'" P. 27.

We shall proceed as speedily as possible to examine the contents of the three latter paragraphs. But, in the first instance, we must again return our thanks to Mr. Burton for bis exposition of the doctrines of the Christian Covenant, Justification by Faith, and Infant Baptism. His observations on each of these subjects are sound and perspicuous: and if there be no striking novelty in the author's views or expressions, still less is there any statement which our Church, or its more esteemed members, would disown.

We cannot make the same remark upon his theory respecting the power of the keys. The strict limitation which he has placed upon that power is new, and therefore, of course, suspicious. It is not authorized; on the contrary, it is most unequivocally renounced by the Scriptures, to which he appeals in its support. His inquiries into the practice of the primitive Church upon the subject are meagre, superficial, and unsatisfactory. His no

Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, c. ix. sect. 2. vol. ix. p. 184.

tions are irreconcileable with the formularies of the Church of England; and, what is last and worst, they make so formidable an inroad upon the doctrine of forgiveness of sins, that few persons who agree with Mr. Burton ought to be, or can be, at peace. These are serious accusations; but, believing that we it is our duty to speak out. The can substantiate every one of them, difficulty of the subject is unquestionable; and that difficulty may be pleaded and admitted as an excuse for declining it altogether, or discussing it with hesitation and fear. But when an author undertakes to

explain the hard places of Holy Writ he exposes himself to the censure of those by whom his error is perceived, even if they are not prepared to substitute interpretations of their own. Without presuming, therefore, to define the precise sense in which the power of the keys is to be understood, we shall animadvert freely upon Mr. Burton's limitation of it, and endeavour to show that such limitation is entirely of his own making.

The first point to which we request attention is the interpretation put by Mr. Burton on Matt. xviii. 18. He considers it a promise of the power which was conferred in John xx. 23. and restricts them both to baptism. It is true, he does admit (p. 70.) that

"Our Saviour himself seems to interpret the words binding and loosing with reference to the censures of the Church, when he says, in Matt. xviii. 18. Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in hea

ven,' &c. In the preceding verse he gives a power to the Church of arbitrating in private disputes, and of expressing her displeasure against the party which refused to abide by her decision: he was to be treated as an heathen man and a publican.' It may be disputed what degree of censure was intended by these words; but some sort of punishment, some exclusion from advantages enjoyed by the body at large, must certainly be implied by them : and, in the following verse, our Saviour seems to call this power of exclusion a power of binding and loosing."

This qualified language must not be overlooked. Mr. Burton contends that the power of binding and loosing is limited to a particular act. The expression only occurs twice. On one occasion it is manifestly impossible to limit it as Mr. Burton proposes and to what expedient does he resort? To a simple admission that our Saviour seems to say, what overthrows Mr. Burton's hypothesis. Either binding and loosing are different from remitting and retaining, which Mr. Burton maintains that they are not, or our Saviour himself expressly and emphatically declares that his Church shall have the power of remitting and retaining at other times and upon other occasions than that of baptism. The question, in reality, does not admit of a doubt.

Mr. Burton

takes no notice of the subject in its proper place; and, until we reached his 70th page, we supposed that he had forgotten the context of the verse upon which he comments. In the 70th page, to our no small surprise, we find that he is aware of the difficulty, but does not even attempt to remove it. He notices the subject incidentally and slightly; and, knowing that there was so formidable an obstacle to his hypothesis, observes, that it seems to be irreconcileable with his lucubrations, and says not another word upon the subject.

We come next to the practice of the primitive Church, and Mr. Burton's remarks upon the subject are far from satisfactory.

"There are also passages in the Epistles, which prove that the Church pos sessed some such power. But we must remember, that there is this great difference between the apostolical times and our own. In those days, God not only punished sin in this life by sending bodily diseases, (which we have no reason to think is not the case at present,) but he also gave a power to the apostles of inflicting these diseases. They of course inflicted them in the name of God: but they had a positive and absolute power to do so; and the sickness, which they im

precated, invariably came upon the sinner. This power was supernatural, and confined to the apostles only: there is no intimation of its being continued to their successors; and therefore we can argue nothing concerning our own practice from those passages in the New Testament, which speak of such a power.

"That God sometimes sent these bo

dily infirmities, we learn from 1 Cor. xi. sickly among you, and many sleep.' The 30.for this cause many are weak and 32d verse also informs us of the gracious intentions of God in sending these visitations: but when we are judged we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. He pu nished them in this life, that they might repent, and become fit for the life eternal.

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That the apostles also had this power, firmed the sentence of the apostles, when or, to speak more properly, that God conthey imprecated sickness upon a sinner, is evident from St. Paul's Epistles. In the case of the incestuous Corinthian, it ap pears, that the Church had this power even without the actual presence of au and, as St. Paul says, his spirit being preapostle. They exercised it in his name, sent with them, and their sentence was confirmed by God. I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed,. in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus when ye are gathered together, and my Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. By delivering the offender to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, he evidently means, that permission was given He uses the same expression in 1 Tim. i. to Satan to inflict some bodily disease t. 20. speaking of Hymenæus and Alexander, who had made shipwreck of their faith, he says, whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they might learn not to blaspheme.'

"The greatest exercise of this power, which is recorded to us, is when Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead by the

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words of St. Peter*. St. Paul also afflicted Elymas with blindness, which he told him should continue for a seasont. Whenever he inflicted such diseases, he might be said to bind the sinner, or to allow Satan to bind him, which is the very expression used by our Saviour towards the woman, who had a spirit of infirmity: he says that Satan had bound her these eighteen years 1."

"The same power, which punished a sinner by bodily diseases, could also withdraw them: and as the Church in the name of an apostle could bind the offender, so she could also loose him. In the case of the Corinthian mentioned above, St. Paul promises, that when the Church thought proper to forgive him, he would also forgive him: and the whole passage may be consulted, as explaining the power and the practice of the Church in such cases §.

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“Forgiveness, in this instance, cannot be construed to mean an entire remission of all sins, so as to make the penitent certain of salvation: it can only mean, that what God allowed St. Paul to inflict, God also allowed him to withdraw. The binding and loosing must be relative and coextensive: and though when our Saviour said to the woman mentioned above, 'Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity, he may certainly have intended to forgive her all her sins, we cannot argue from the omnipotence of the Son of God to the limited and delegated powers of an apostle

and of the Church.

"That the apostles had not power to forgive sins in the highest sense of the term, seems demonstrably plain from the words of St. Peter to Simon Magus, Repent of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.' If Peter could have forgiven him of himself, why should

he exhort him to pray to God? Peter evi

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dently felt uncertain, whether God would forgive him or no and it is equally evident, that Simon Magus did not know of any absolving power being resident in the apostles, when he said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things, which ye have spoken, come upon me.' We may remark farther, that St. Peter uses the very expression of Simon being in the bond of iniquity,' and yet he evidently shows, that he had not power to loose him.

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"It appears, therefore, that the terms binding and loosing might be, and were, used in early times to express the imposing and withdrawing of ecclesiastical censures. But since the power of inflicting such punishments as these has long since ceased, whereas the power given by Christ to his apostles was to last for ever, we are obliged to conclude, that the power of binding and loosing means something else, in its primary and real signification, than the power of punishing sinners with sickness, and of restoring them again to health. This power was superhuman and extraordinary; and was, perhaps, the highest exercise of authority which the apostles, or the Church in the name of the apostles, possessed." P. 71.

The immense distance between the Apostles and their uninspired successors we are most ready to acknowledge-and wherever there is allusion in the primitive Church to miraculous power, the case is inapplicable to the question before us. But the author ought not to have passed so slightly over the passage, 2 Cor. ii. 6—11., and the remarks upon Simon Magus are in the highest degree sophistical. Peter prayed for his forgiveness, and thus "evidently showed that he had not the power to loose him!!" Where is it evidently shown, or what imaginable reason has Mr. Burton to believe, that Simon Magus was qualified to receive forgiveness? What proof is there of his penitence? Who imagines that St. Peter could forgive the impenitent? Although Simon had "believed and been baptized," yet was his "heart not right in the sight of God," "he had neither part nor lot in this matter." To argue that the Apostle had no power to absolve because this person was not absolved, can only prove that arguments are scarce.

The observation respecting St. Paul and the incestuous Corinthian, may also be applied to Mr. Burton's remarks on the customs of the Apostolical Fathers, and the earlier ages of the Church. Such customs are not conclusive evidence of the real meaning of Scripture-nor are they sufficiently uniform to establish

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