My dear brethren, let me ask you to bear with me patiently. I have no party motives to serve, nor party prejudices to indulge; GOD is my witness I reluctantly speak to you on this subject. I am only induced to do so by the consideration that, when a religious question is agitated out of doors, it is the minister of GOD’S bounden duty to take it up in the pulpit, and exhibit it, as far as he can, in scriptural light, keeping aloof alike from prejudging approval, and from capricious and worldly condemnation of the thing maintained. “The priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth.” {75} What, then, first, is the Romish use of confession? Every lay member of the Church of Rome is obliged, at stated times, to make a full and particular confession to a priest, of every sin, of every kind, that he or she can call to remembrance. No matter, that they are repented of and confessed to GOD; no matter, that the way of escape from them is plain; that they have been escaped from; out they must come, with all their preceding, accompanying, and following circumstances; without reserve of any kind. If but a _thought_ of sin be kept back; if the priest but _fancy_ that something is kept back; excommunication is pronounced, and the offender, or supposed offender, is cut off from all means of grace. {76} And the doctrine which guides this practice is, that no sin is ever forgiven by GOD, unless it has first been confessed to a priest; and that, even then, though its eternal punishment is remitted by their giving of absolution, works of penance must be performed on its account, or a longer or shorter period of suffering in purgatory will have to be endured. Such is Rome’s course. I need scarcely tell you, that our Church, in condemning the “sacrament” of penance, and denying the existence of a purgatory, has swept away the only pretences on which such a prying, unscriptural, and most mischievous confessional could be maintained.