ification; but He has appointed the priest
to judge in His place and pass sentence in His name. To the priests He
has said: "Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound in
heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also
in heaven" (_Matt._ xviii. 18); and again: "Whose sins you shall
forgive, they are forgiven, and whose sins you shall retain, they are
retained" (_John_ xx. 23). These two texts clearly show that auricular
confession as practised in the Catholic Church was taught by Christ. For
how could the apostles and their successors, the pastors of the Church,
know what sins to bind and retain and what sins to loose and forgive
unless the sins were confessed to them and they were allowed to judge?

No matter how numerous or how great these are, provided they are
confessed with a sincere repentance, they will be forgiven. And they
will be forgiven by the power of the priest. Properly speaking, God
alone has power to forgive sins. But no one will deny that He has power
to confer this power on others. He communicated this power to His
apostles and commanded them, in turn, to communicate it to others by
means of the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

That Our Saviour communicated this power to His apostles is evident from
the words of St. John: "As the Father hath sent Me I also send you.
Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall forgive, they are
forgiven." But sin was to continue till the end of the world. Hence the
necessity of the means of forgiving sin being coextensive with sin. As
the people receive from the priests the Word of God and the cleansing
from sin in Baptism, so also do they receive from them the cleansing
from sin in confession.

It is certain that the apostles conferred the power of forgiving sins
upon others, if we find that those whom the apostles ordained this
power. But we find this to be the case.

From the time of Christ until the present the writers of every age tell
us that confession of sins was practised. St. John, who lived until the
beginning of the second century, says in the 1st chapter of his First
Epistle: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins and to cleanse us from all iniquity."

St. Cyprian, who wrote in the third century, says: "Let each of you
confess his faults, and the pardon imparted by the priest is acceptable
before God."

St. Ambrose, in the fourth century, wrote: "The poison is sin; the
remedy, the accus