the practice gradually became more common, especially in the West, arid more a matter of rule and precept; until at length, in the fourth Lateran Council, held under Pope Innocent II L, in 1215, it was enjoined upon all members of the Church of Rome once a year, by the famous 21st canon, beginning with the words, Omnis utriusque sexus fidelis. The mediaeval church of the West fixed the number of sacraments as seven, arid insisted on auricular confession as an essential part of the sacrament of penance. Confes sion and absolution was reserved for the priesthood. Yet a certain recognition of a quasi-priestly power, residing in the church at large, and in some sense therefore in the laity, appears in the Roman office-books, and we find laymen, in cases of extreme emergency, confessing and absolving each other. (An instance occurs in one of the earliest and most admirable of French biographies, Joinville s Life of St Louis.} Russia appears now to be the country where, at least in theory, confession is most insisted upon as a certificate of annual confession (often, it is said, purchased)
is a condition of being a witness in court.At the Reformation the reformed communities were unanimous in rejecting enforced auricular confession, but it is a mistake to suppose that they were equally unanimous in reprobating its use in cases where it was sought by the free choice of penitents. The Augsburg Confession (part i. art. 11) retains it, and Melanchthon asserts that many frequently availed themselves of it. Luther did not even deny its claim to a sacramental character ; nor has it ever died out among the Lutherans. But the sacramental character is denied by Calvin and the Calvinistic churches generally. Peter Martyr, Chamier, and others seem to identify absolution with the preaching of God s Word. Nevertheless absolution still retained, for a long time, a disciplinarian character even among these bodies. Thus we find the Scottish ministers offering absolution to the marquis of Montrose before his execution at Edinburgh on May 21, 1650 ; and his refusal seems, according to the historian Burton, to have influenced his enemies in the matter of the sepulture granted to his remains. Private confession also finds a place in the English prayer-book and homilies. Before the Revolution of 1688 it was so far common that we find Bishop Burnet, in his History of His Own Times, naming this or that clergyman as confessor in the family of such and such a nobleman. To divulge anything thus confided is as strictly forbidden in the reformed English as in the medieval or modern Roman church, though on exception is made in the English canons in the case of such crimes as might endanger the life of the recipient of the confession by making him an accessory in the eye of the law.
The connection of confession with casuistry and with the morality of nations, cannot be discussed here. As regards casuistry, it must suffice to allude to the great name of Pascal, and the controversy arising out of his celebrated Lettres Provinciates. The question of its effect on morality is still more complex and difficult to estimate. As a rule, we may expect to find its influence well spoken of by Roman Catholics and the reverse in the opposite camps ; nevertheless, some Protestant writers, as Hallam, and perhaps Sismondi, appear to view it with a certain amount of tolerance and even favour, while some Roman Catholic writers (e.g., Vitelleschi, under the pseudonym Pomponio Lelo), on the contrary, seem inclined to censure at any rate its extreme development in the form of direction, as injurious to proper self-reliance and independence of character.
It remains to add, that the terms confessor and confessional are used by ecclesiastical writers in very distinct senses, which can only be judged of by the context in which they are found. The statement that a given priest is the confessor say of the king of Spain means, of course, that he is the person to whom that sovereign confesses ; but the term found simply after a name, as " St Leonard, confessor," means that the person so designated underwent more or less of suffering on behalf of the Christian faith, though he may not have been an actual martyr. This latter sense is the usual one in ancient writers. In like manner the term confessional, which is now commonly employed to signify the structure placed in Roman Catholic churches for the purpose of hearing confessions, meant originally, in Christian antiquity, the place where a martyr had been buried. It was subsequently applied to a tomb built over a spot thus hallowed either in the crypt or in the upper part of a church.
The authorities on the subject embrace, as lias been seen, acts of councils, confessions of faith, and an abundance of controversial works. The foreign Reformers Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Zwingli have all touched upon it in their writings. Among Anglican works may be named Jewell s Apology, and Marshall s Penitential Discipline of the Early Church (republished in the Anglo-Catholic Library, 1844), and various modern Catena; of authorities, as Gray s Statement on Confession. The Roman Catholic view is set forth in such works as Klee s Dogmatik and History of Dogmas (Mayence, 1834, 1838), and Martigny s Dictionnaire des antiquites chreliennes, Paris, 1865. The subject is a prominent one in the Acts of the Council of Trent, and for the fourth Lateran Council the student may refer to Labbe s Concilia (torn, vii., Paris, 1714).
CONFIRMATION, an ecclesiastical term denoting the laying on of hands, in the admission of baptized persons to the enjoyment of full Christian privileges. The antiquity of this ceremony is, by all the older writers, carried as high as the apostles, and founded upon their example and practice. In the primitive church the ceremony was performed immediately after baptism, if the bishop were present at the solemnity. Among the Greeks, and through out the East, it still accompanies baptism ; but the Roman Catholics make it a distinct and independent sacrament. Seven years is the stated but not the uni form age for confirmation. The view put forth in the English prayer-book is, that the person confirmed releases his godfather and godmother, by taking upon himself the baptismal vows in their place, an aspect of the matter not apparently recognized in the ancient church, which regarded it almost exclusively as a means of grace and a prepara tion for the reception of the Holy Communion. This ordinance is usually reserved for the bishop only. It has, however, always been a moot point, whether he may not delegate a presbyter to perform it for him. Such delega tion is not uncommon in the Eastern Churches, but is practically unknown in the West. The Calvinists (in com mon with most non-episcopal communities) have always reiected confirmation.
CONFUCIUS the famous sage of China (550 or 551–478 B.C.) They are very few among all the millions of the Chinese people who would not heartily repeat the lines with which the first paragraph in a popular history of the sage concludes:—
| “ | Confucius! Confucius! How great was Confucius! |
| Before him there was no Confucius, | |
| Since him there has been no other. | |
| Confucius! Confucius! How great was Confucius!” |
The man whose memory is thus cherished by a third portion of the human race, and the stamp of whose character and teachings is still impressed, after so long a time, on the institutions of his country, demands our careful study. In order to understand the events of his life and the influence of his opinions, we must endeavour to get some impression of the China that existed in his time, in the 5th and 6th centuries before our Christian era.
