Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/416

 (3) an oral confession of our sins, and then the priest says: “Our Lord and God Jesus Christ, with the grace and gifts of his philanthropy, may forgive thee, my child, all thy trespasses, and I, unworthy priest, by the power given me forgive and loose thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father and the Holy Ghost. Amen.” (p. 437.)

And then the man is purified. It is very useful and necessary that the guiltiness of the sins should be loosed by the priest’s prayer before the last day. But it does not say what will happen if there is not that contrition which is demanded, when there is not the firm and determined intention not to sin again, while the priest gives the remission of sins; but we know that there never is that contrition which is demanded, nor that intention not to sin and to believe. Thus from the whole description of this sacrament of the church, which considers all its essence to consist in the power of remitting sins through its hierarchy, we get a kind of a toy, something ridiculous, or, at least, a senseless action.

225. The visible side of the sacrament of repentance; its invisible actions, and its extent.

Here it is proved that there is no sin that could not be forgiven by the hierarchy, except the sin of not believing in what the hierarchy teaches.

226. Penances, their origin and use in the church. “Under the name of penances (ἐπιτιμία) are meant prohibitions or punishments (2 Cor. ii. 6), which, according to the church rules, the minister of the church, as a spiritual physician, determines in the case of certain penitent Christians for the sake of curing their moral ailments.”

This power the hierarchy has received from God.

227. The significance of the penances.

228. The incorrectness of the doctrine of the Catholic Church about the indulgences. For twenty-two pages we