ins_". Pardon through the Precious Blood is
the one, and only, source of {150} forgiveness. Our only difference,
then, is as to God's _methods_ of forgiveness. How does God forgive
sin? Some seem to limit His love, to tie forgiveness down to one, and
only one, method of absolution--direct, personal, instantaneous,
without any ordained Channel such as Christ left. Direct, God's pardon
certainly is; personal and instantaneous, it certainly can be; without
any sacramental _media_, it certainly may be. But we dare not limit
what God has not limited; we dare not deny the existence of ordained
channels, because God can, and does, act without such channels. He has
opened an ordained fountain for sin and uncleanness as a superadded
gift of love, and in the Ministry of reconciliation He conveys pardon
through this channel.

At the most solemn moment of his life, when a Deacon is ordained
Priest, the formal terms of his Commission to the Priesthood run thus:
"Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and Work of a Priest in the
Church of God, now committed unto thee by the Imposition of our hands.
Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou
dost retain, they are retained." "_Now_ committed unto thee." No
Priest dare hide his commission, play with {151} the plain meaning of
the words, or conceal from others a "means of grace" which they have a
blessed right to know of, and to use.

But what is the good of this Absolution, if God can forgive without it?
God's ordinances are never meaningless. There must, therefore, be some
superadded grace attached to this particular ordinance. It was left to
be used. It is not left merely to comfort the penitent (though that it
does), nor to let him hear from a fellow-sinner that his sins are
forgiven him (though that he does); but it is left, like any other
Sacrament, as a special means of grace. It is the ordained Channel
whereby God's pardon is conveyed to (and only to) the penitent sinner.
"No penitence, no pardon," is the law of Sacramental Absolution.

The Prayer Book, therefore, preaches the power of formal, as well as
informal, Absolution. There are in it three forms of Absolution,
varying in words but the same in power. The appropriating power of the
penitent may, and does, vary, according to the sincerity of his
confession: Absolution is in each case the same. It is man's capacity
to receive it, not God's power in giving it, that varies. Thus, all