_Informal Confession_.--Thank God, I can use this way at any, and at every, moment of my life. If I have sinned, I need wait for no formal act of Confession; but, as I am, and where I am, I can make my Confession. Then, and there, I can claim the Divine response to the soul's three-fold _Kyrie_: "Lord, have mercy upon me; Christ, have mercy upon me; Lord, have mercy upon me". But do I never want--does God never want--anything more than this? The soul is not always satisfied with such an easy method of going to Confession. It needs at times something more impressive, something perhaps less superficial, less easy going. It demands more time for {147} deepening thought, and greater knowledge of what it has done, before sin's deadly hurt cuts deep enough to produce real repentance, and to prevent repetition. At such times, it cries for something more formal, more solemn, than instantaneous confession. It needs, what the Prayer Book calls, "a special Confession of sins". _Formal Confession_.--Hence our Prayer Book provides two formal Acts of Confession, and suggests a third. Two of these are for public use, the third for private. In Matins and Evensong, and in the Eucharistic Office, a form of "_general_ confession" is provided. Both forms are in the first person plural throughout. Clearly, their primary intention is, not to make us merely think of, or confess, our own personal sins, but the sins of the Church,--and our own sins, as members of the Church. It is "we" have sinned, rather than "I" have sinned. Such formal language might, otherwise, at times be distressingly unreal,--when, e.g., not honestly feeling that the "burden" of our own personal sin "is intolerable," or when making a public Confession in church directly after a personal Confession in private. In the Visitation of the Sick, the third mode of {148} formal Confession is suggested, though the actual words are naturally left to the individual penitent. The Prayer Book no longer speaks in the plural, or of "a _general_ Confession," but it closes, as it were, with the soul, and gets into private, personal touch with it: "Here shall the sick man be moved to make a _special_ Confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter; after which Confession, the Priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort". This Confession is to be both free and formal: formal, for it is to be made before the Priest in his "_ministerial_" capacity; free, for the penitent is to be "moved" (not "compelled") to confess. Notice, he _is_ to be moved; but then (though not till then) he is free to accept, or reject, the preferred means of grace. God never handcuffs Sacraments and souls. Sacraments are open to all; they are forced on none. They are love-tokens of the Sacred Heart; free-will offerings of His Royal Bounty.