alien from the divine command, and is a human invention, and that it took its rise from the fathers assembled in the Council of Lateran: for the Church did not, through the Council of Lateran, ordain that the faithful of Christ should confess, a thing which it knew to be necessary, and instituted of divine right, but that the precept of confession should be fulfilled, at least once a year, by all and each, when they should have attained to years of discretion. Whence, throughout the universal Church, to the great benefit of the souls of the faithful, the salutary custom is now observed of confessing at that most sacred and most acceptable time of Lent, which custom this holy synod most highly approves and embraces, as pious, and with reason to be retained.
CHAPTER VI.
Touching the Ministry of this Sacrament, and Absolution.
But, as respects the minister of this sacrament, the holy synod declares all these doctrines to be false, and utterly alien from the truth of the Gospel, which perniciously extend the ministry of the keys to any other men soever, besides bishops and priests; supposing that those words of our Lord, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall he bound also in heaven, and whatever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven;[1] and, Whose sins ye shall remit, they are remitted unto them, and whose sins ye shall retain, they are retained;[2] were in such wise addressed indifferently and indiscriminately to all the faithful of Christ, as that every one has the power of remitting sins, contrary to the institution of this sacrament, public sins, to wit, by rebuke, provided he that is rebuked shall acquiesce, but secret sins by a voluntary confession made to any person soever. It also teaches, that even priests, who are held in deadly sins, through the virtue of the Holy Ghost bestowed in ordination, exercise the function of remitting sins, as the ministers of Christ; and that they think erroneously who contend that this power exists not in bad priests. But although the absolution of the priests is the dispensation of another's bounty, yet is it not a bare ministry only, whether
