"Free and not infrequent use": sacramental confession and the Anglican tradition

The approach of Lent allows us to again consider the place of sacramental confession and absolution in the Anglican way.  Below is an extract from T.T. Carter's 1877 The Freedom of Confession in the Church of England, reflecting on how "the most devout and learned teachers whom a traditionary reverence has enshrined in the grateful memories of English Churchmen" regarded sacramental confession and absolution.

George Herbert advises a degree of pressure which would be open to popular condemnation now. When describing the ideal priest, he says, "In his visiting the sick, or otherwise afflicted, he followeth the Church's counsel, namely, in persuading them to particular confession, labouring to make them understand the great good use of this ancient and pious ordinance, and how necessary it is in some cases." [The Country Pastor, cxv.] Herbert evidently had no idea that the Church, by recommending confession in sickness, meant to limit it to that time of need.

Hooker also contemplated confession as advisable for persons leading watchful lives, and in cases of need which must have occurred not infrequently. " Because the knowledge how to handle our own sores is no vulgar or common art, but we either carry towards ourselves for the most part an over-soft and gentle hand, fearful of touching too near the quick; or else, endeavouring not to be partial, we fall into timorous scrupulosities and sometimes into those extreme discomforts of mind from which we hardly do ever lift up our heads again; men thought it the safest way to disclose their secret faults, and to crave imposition of penance from them whom our Lord Jesus Christ hath left in His Church to be spiritual and ghostly physicians, the guides and pastors of redeemed souls, whose office doth not only consist in general persuasions to amendment of life, but also in the private particular cure of diseased minds." [Eccles. Pol, bk. vi. c. iv.]

Bishop Jeremy Taylor clearly showed that confession might be a habit. He says, in his Holy Living, "Because we may very much be helped, if we take in the assistance of a spiritual guide, therefore the Church of God in all ages hath commended, and in most ages enjoined, that we confess our sins, and discover the state and condition of our souls to such a person whom we or our superiors judge fit to help us in such a need." And then, in his Holy Dying, he urges, "Whether they be many or few that are sent to the sick person, let the curate of his parish or his own confessor, be among them ... he that is the ordinary judge cannot safely be passed by in his extraordinary necessity, which in so great portions depends upon his whole life past."2 " His own confessor," "the ordinary judge," who knows "his whole life past," unmistakably imply a habit of confession.

The Whole Duty of Man, the most popular manual of past days, urges confession as "an advice not to be neglected, neither at the time of coming to the Sacrament, nor any other when we are under any fear or reasons of doubt concerning the state of our souls." This is clearly contrary to the idea that the Church's advice about confession before Communion is to be viewed as implying a limitation to that particular occasion. And the needs specified are such as might frequently be felt. Neither had Archbishop Wake any such limited view: "We exhort men, if they have any the least doubt or scruple, nay, sometimes though they have none, but especially before they receive the Holy Sacrament, to confess their sins." [GIBSON'S Preservative from Popery, vol. iii. p. 31.]

Wheatley, commenting on the service for the "Visitation of the Sick," clearly views confession as a means of grace to be used in health, though more especially needed in sickness. "We may still, I presume, wish very consistently with the determination of our Church, that our people would apply themselves oftener than they do to their spiritual physicians, even in the time of their health, since it is much to be feared they are wounded oftener than they complain, and yet through aversion to disclosing their sore, suffer it to gangrene for want of their help who should work the cure. But present ease is not the only benefit the penitent may expect from his confessor's aid; he will be better prepared to guide and conduct it through all difficulties that may oppose." Confession, with a view to be guided to a higher life, is here contemplated.

The expressions, "ordinary judge," "spiritual guide," "physician," "confessor," "private guide and judge," and "ghostly father," which commonly occur in such writers, evidently point to the same conclusion, describing a relation between the priest and those to whom he thus ministers, which implies confession, either more or less habitual, or of free and not infrequent use.