guide such a man to real and deep repentance if his confession had stopped short with the one sin which was heaviest on his conscience? Again, timidity might move some souls to attempt a compromise with conscience by mentioning some sins and keeping back those which involved most pain. And if we bring in the thought of confession as preliminary to the absolution of the soul by the gift of the Blood of Christ it is pertinent to remember that persons, and not isolated offences, are the object of the redemptive work of Christ.

A great deal is said about compulsory confession, but we are seldom told how the compulsion is applied. If in any parish persons are refused Communion unless they have previously been to confession, we entirely allow that the priest goes beyond the liberty which the English Church allows. We have no right to assume that a man who purposes to come to the altar is guilty of deadly sin. The Roman Church, while she requires an annual confession, allows her children to come to Holy Communion frequently without previous confession, and the Anglican Church does not authorize us to demand annual confession. But if the 'compulsion' consists in nothing more than the strenuous urging of confession, we do not see why a priest, who has himself had experience of the value of this ordinance, may not press it upon others. A priest who has been led to attach great value to total abstinence is not blamed if he urges his people with all his might to become total abstainers. If he went further, and refused Communion to a person, otherwise fit, who took a little wine, we should blame him for exceeding his authority, but not for urging on them a rule which he himself has found useful. We may think him unwise or intemperate in his views, but we must recognize that he is within his rights. What he is at liberty to do with respect to the abstinence pledge his neighbour is at liberty to do with respect to confession. Mr. Coles (p. 75) has some excellent remarks on the way in which the general disuse of confession involves a somewhat disproportionate urging of it where it is restored. Some young and zealous priests need perhaps to be reminded to keep the proportion of faith, and may be thankful for a lesson which we received from Father Lowder,

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never to preach about confession until we had carefully preached many sermons about sin and repentance. Sacrament of Penance is a precious gift, but it is not the whole Gospel.

For our own part, after long exercise of the ministry of repentance, the only cases of compulsory confession which we can remember are cases where parents who had themselves had experience of this means of grace left their children very little option as to using it. Canon Lyttelton, who has had much experience with young people, rightly urges (p. 71) that 'the word "voluntary" as applied to confession covers an ambiguity. Suppose the case of home training is taken : is not a kind of pressure required to ensure any Christian observance, or indeed any moral conduct at all, which yet is useless if not voluntary?' And Dr. Moberly asks (p. 82), 'Is it not a parent's duty to press children to say prayers, go to church, &c., and so form "voluntary" habits by "pressure"?' While we are entirely in favour of the Anglican rule which makes sacramental confession voluntary we are jealous to conserve the right of 'pressure' on the part of parents and of those who have the training of souls. The objection which some members made to the confession of children seems to us to show very little knowledge of the early age at which persons are sometimes guilty of very grave sins, and, again, of the frequent cases in which children are harassed by scruples which can only be set at rest by being laid before some wise guide. In many cases a parent is such a guide; but we should be shutting our eyes to painful facts if we forgot that many parents are neither disposed nor fit to act as guides. Sometimes, moreover, a child will rather tell his sins to anybody than to a parent, dreading his horror or his pain, or perhaps the action which might ensue towards companions in sin.

We cannot conclude without regretting once more that the Conference entirely passed over the topic of the Special Training of the Minister, which was proposed for the last meeting. The need of such training was clearly shown in the stories told by Canon Aitken of abuses of the confessional -of a priest who, exercising this ministry without believing

in it, found it promoted formality; of a priest who let belief in the ministry of absolution supersede belief in Christ; of another priest who discussed with a bishop the reason why he had refused absolution (pp. 95-7). Sad abuses, indeed, but abuses; and abuses which would have been less probable if priests had been trained for their awful office. If we have been comparatively free from such scandals thanks are due to the providence of Almighty God, but not to our haphazard way of letting every priest, young or old, learned or ignorant, impetuous or discreet, receive confessions. Whether we desire it or not-and we know that many good men deprecate that in which others rejoice-confessions are being heard with increasing frequency in the English Church. It is obvious that the hearing of them is legitimate, and that the practice is at any rate in certain cases recommended by the Church. It is equally obvious that many both need it and feel the benefit. How to regulate the hearing of them it would be beyond our province to prescribe. This is a matter for our rulers in the Church, who would, we are convinced, have gladly received suggestions from the Conference. The matter is by no means an easy one. The training which is required for a confessor is more than the study of a scholastic manual of moral theology. A standard of age cannot be fixed, for one man is competent at thirty, and another still incompetent at sixty; though it would be beneficial if bishops or incumbents would restrain very young men from this arduous ministry. A foolish proposal has been made that incumbents only should exercise this ministry, for in many parishes there are assistant priests who are at least as competent as their superiors, upon whom the acceptance of a benefice confers no gift of the discerning of spirits. We believe that if a bishop were to designate certain persons as eminently skilled for the purpose, and at the same time were to forbid or discourage very young men, those who are in doubt would readily find a 'learned and discreet minister of God's word,' and those priests who were restrained would gladly shelter themselves under the bishop's prohibition if persons urged upon them a task for which they felt themselves incompetent. How gladly should we have availed

ourselves of such protection when, with a burdensome sense of unfitness, we were first called upon to receive confessions! Only it is essential that any such directions on the part of the bishop should be frankly for the regulation of the confessional, and not with a side-view at its restriction or suppression. We are in the habit of looking to the Bishop of London for bold and wise regulations. May we hope to see him initiating this necessary reform?

ART. IV. THE HOLY EUCHARIST: AN
HISTORICAL INQUIRY.

PART VI.

To the lists of books prefixed to Parts I., II., III., IV., and V., add the following:

50. De Sacra Eucharistia Tractatus. By ADRIAN SARAVIA. The original Latin from the MS. in the British Museum, now printed for the first time. The translation by G. A. DENISON. (London, 1855.)

51. The Works of Mr. Richard Hooker. Arranged by JOHN KEBLE. Seventh edition. Revised by R. W. CHURCH and F. PAGET. (Oxford, 1888.)

52. An Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker's Treatise of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. By FRANCIS PAGET [now Lord Bishop of Oxford]. (Oxford, 1899.)

53. Bishop Guest: Articles Twenty-eight and Twenty-nine. By G. F. HODGES. (London, 1894.)

54. Sermons or Homilies appointed to be read in Churches in the Time of Queen Elizabeth. New edition. (London, 1839.)

XIX. THE death of Edward VI. and the accession of Mary reversed the position of theological parties in England. Gardiner was released from prison, restored to his see of Winchester, and appointed Lord Chancellor. Cranmer was committed to the Tower on a charge of high treason in connexion VOL. LV.-NO. CX.

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with the affair of Lady Jane Grey; was subsequently tried for incontinence in having married as a priest, and a second time as an archbishop, perjury in having broken his vow to the Pope, and heresy in his denial of the presence of Christ in the Sacrament; and was eventually, with Ridley and Latimer, burnt at the stake. Becon was deprived of his benefice because of his marriage; was imprisoned in the Tower for seven months as a seditious preacher; and on his release fled to Germany. The English formularies of Edward's reign were swept away; the Latin Mass was restored; a return was made to the doctrinal position of the early years of the reign of Henry VIII. before his breach with the Pope.

So matters remained till the death of Mary and the accession of Elizabeth in 1558. In the following year a revised Prayer Book, which had not been submitted to Convocation, was sanctioned by Parliament in spite of the strong opposition of the bishops, and came into general use. The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion' was the same as in the 'Second Prayer Book of Edward VI.,' except that the words of administration were composed of those of the Book of 1549 added to those of the Book of 1552, and that the declaration on kneeling with its denial of any real and essential presence there being of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood' was omitted. And the rubric at the beginning of Morning Prayer directed the wearing of the Eucharistic vestments at the administration of the Holy Communion by ordering that the minister should use the authorised ornaments of the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth.' The change in the words of administration marked the policy which was to characterize the reign of Elizabeth. The words used in 1549 were associated with the doctrine that the consecrated Sacrament is the Body and Blood of Christ. Those of 1552 were most congenial to the deniers of that doctrine. The combination effected in 1559 illustrates the attempt officially made to unite in the National Church those who affirmed and those who denied that the bread and wine are after consecration Christ's Body and Blood.