Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/123

Rh the entire confession of sins was also instituted by the Lord, and is of divine right necessary to all who have fallen after baptism; because that our Lord Jesus Christ, when about to ascend from earth to heaven, left priests His own vicars, as presidents and judges, before whom all the mortal crimes, into which the faithful of Christ may have fallen, should be brought, to the end that, according to the power of the keys, they may pronounce the sentence of remission or retention of sins. For it is certain, that priests could not have exercised this judgment, the cause being unknown; neither indeed could they have observed equity in enjoining punishments, if they should have declared their sins in general only, and not rather specifically, and singly. Hence it is gathered that all the deadly sins, of which, after a diligent examination of themselves, they have consciousness, must needs be enumerated by penitents in confession, even though those sins be most hidden, and committed only against the two last precepts of the decalogue; which sometimes wound the soul more grievously, and are more dangerous, than those which are committed outwardly, For venial sins, by which we are not excluded from the grace of God, and into which we more frequently fall, although they be rightly and profitably, and without any presumption declared in confession, as the custom of pious persons shows, yet may be passed over without guilt, and be expiated by many other remedies. But whereas, all mortal sins, even those of thought, render men children of wrath, and enemies of God, it is necessary to seek also for the pardon of them all from God, with an open and modest confession" Wherefore, while the faithful oi Christ are anxious to confess all the sins which occur to their memory, they without doubt lay them all open before the mercy of God to be forgiven. But they who act otherwise, and knowingly keep back certain [sins], set nothing before the divine bounty to be remitted through the priest. For if the sick be ashamed to display his wound to the physician, his medical art cures not that which it knows not. It is furthermore inferred, that those circumstances also, which change the species of the sin, are to be explained in confession, because that, without