The ecclesiastical functions of the bishops were here the same as elsewhere. To them belonged the ordination of priests and deacons, the hallowing of chrism, the ceremonies of confirmation, the consecration of churches and churchyards, nuns and monks; they had a right to regulate the lives and conversation of their clergy, to superintend the monastic foundations, and in general to watch that every detail of the ecclesiastical establishment was duly regarded and maintained. In their peculiar synods they could frame canons of discipline, to be enforced in the several dioceses. They were the receivers-general of all ecclesiastical revenue, which they distributed to the inferior clergy under their government, according to certain specified regulations; providing out of the common fund for the due maintenance of the priests, the buildings, and minor accessories required for decent celebration of the rites of religion.[895] ----- Footnote 895: Leg. Wihtr. § 16. Thorpe, i. 40. ----- But the most important of their functions was that which is technically called _iurisdictio fori interni_, their jurisdiction in matters of conscience, their dealing with the motives and feelings, rather than the acts of men. This—which practically they exercised through the several presbyters who were, for the general convenience, dispersed over the face of the country,—was the true source of their power, and measure of their social influence. Positive law deals only with the actions of men, and then only when they are perfected or completed: religion regulates the inward impulses from which those actions spring, and its authority extends both before and beyond them: intention, not act, is its proper province. But the secret intentions and motives of men are known perfectly to God alone; the man himself may, and often does possess but an indistinct and fallacious notion of his own impulses; and as it is in these, rather than in the acts which are their results, that the essence of guilt lies, the Christian was taught to unbosom himself to one of more experienced and disciplined feelings;—one whose profession was to console the distracted sinner, and who, on genuine repentance, was empowered to announce the glad tidings of reconciliation with God. Confession of sins was the mode pointed out by the founder of the church, to obtain the blessings of almighty mercy; but how were the ignorant, the obstinate, or the despairing to know the right manner of such confession? How could they know in what form confession was effectually to be made to God? How could they, plunged in sin and foulness, dare to approach the source of all purity and holiness? What hope could the grovelling outcast have of being admitted to the throne of his glorious King, even for the purpose of renouncing his state of rebellion and apostasy? But the glorious King was a merciful sovereign, who had commissioned certain of his servants, reconciled sinners