Page:Delineation of Roman Catholicism.djvu/371

 CHAP. XI.] PE NANCE'---SATISFA C TION'. 363 prefer the authority of the apogtol/c.fatAers. The testimony, therefore, ot' Paul's fe!low-labourer, the Roman Clement, is of far more weight than the later evidence of Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, or Augustine. "All," says Clement, "are glorified and magnified, not through them- selves, or through their own works, or through the righteous deeds which they have done, but through the will of God. We, therefore, being called through his will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves, or through our own wisdom, or intellect, or piety, or the works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but through faith, by which the Almighty God hath justified all fro.m everlasting. To him be glory' and honour through all ages. What then shall we do, brethren ? Shall we be slothful from good deeds, and shall we desert the faith ? The Lord forbid such to be our case ! Rather let us hasten, with all vehemence and alacrity, to accomplish every good work."* It is difficult to believe that the man who wrote thus could hold to merit- orious satisfaction to be made to God, either by holy deeds or suffer- ings. In the days of Clement, such satisfactions as are taught by the Church of Rome were unknown in the Catholic Church. St. Jerome, in his commentary' on Matt. xvi, "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth," &c., says: "Some priests and bishops of the new law, understanding not the sense of these words, do imitate the pride of the Pharisees, by ascribing to themselves a power to condemn the inno- cent and to absolve the guilty. But God doth not so much consider the sentence of the priest as the life of rite penitent. And as the Le- vites did not cleanse the lepers, but only separated those that were cleansed from those that were not, by the knowledge which they had of the leprosy; even so the bishop or the priest doth not bind those that are innocent and loose the guilty; but, having heard the difference of sins, he knows whom to bind and whom to loose, in the discharge of his ministry." Isodore defines satisfaction to be "an exclusion of the causes and occasions of sinning, and a cessation from sinning." This is nearly the qame with Augustine's definition, who says: "Satisfaction is to cut off the causes of sins, and to allow no entrance to their sugges- tions."t St. Ambrose saith: "Of tears I read; to make satefaction I read not." Such declarations as these do not well correslnd with the doctrine of satisfaction as held by the Church of Rome. [n the second Council of Chalons, held in the year 813, the follow- mg canon (33d) was passed, which goes to prove that in the com- mencement of the ninth century the sacrament of penance did not exist: "Some say that we ought to confess our sins to God alone; others affirm that they ought to be confessed to priests. Both are done with great benefit in the holy church, so that we confess our sins to God, who does forgive them; I/nd according to the apostles' institution, we confess them to each other, and pray for each other, that we may be saved. So the confession which is made to God purges from sins; and that which/s made to the pr/est informs us how we ought to be purged frqm them: for GOd is the author of our nlvation, and gnmtz it �CIom. Rom. Ep/st mt Corinth. i, sec. 32, 33. t "tidactio eat peccatorum cauMm excindere, et eomm suggestioib, nullurn � adimm indulg_re."--Aug. de Dog. E, ex/., c. 64. . 1: Ambr. in Luc., Ser. 46. 1 Goocle

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