consent is sufficient to make a thing catholic. But I shall not need to proceed this way. For,

1. It is apparent, that, of their own side, Altisidiorensis largely and professedly proves the lawfulness of publication, in some cases, as it is to be seen. Lib. 4. Summæ tract. 6. cap. 3. q. 7. and Garnet himself, the man who, if any, had most need to stand in defence of the seal, that the pretence of it might have defended him,-yet confessed of his own accord," Leges quæ celare hæc prohibent, apprimè esse justas et salutares." He adds his reason, and that is more than his authority; for, saith he, it is not fitting that the life and safety of a prince should depend upon the private niceties of any man's conscience. If two, nay, if one dissent, it is enough to destroy a consent. But see further. There are many cases, generally confessed amongst themselves, in which the seal of formal, and, as they love to speak, sacramental confession, may be broken open. I instance but in two or three.

ጌ

First, Confession may be revealed to clear a doubtful case of marriage. It is the opinion of many great canonists, as you may see them quoted by Suarez de Paz, and Covaruvias, and the case of the Venetian, who married a virgin that was both his sister and daughter;-and that at Rome, under Pope Paul III. almost to like purpose,―were long disputed on both sides, whether they were to be revealed or not; so that at most, it is but a doubtful matter in such cases, whether the tie of secrecy doth oblige. Now if for the proof of marriage, the seal may be broken up, that man and wife might live contentedly, and as they ought, strange it should be unlawful to reveal confessions, in case of treason, for the safety of a prince or state!

In case of heresy, the seal binds not, by their own general confession. It is a rule amongst them,

"Hæresis est crimen, quod non confessio celat."

Now I would fain learn why treason is not as reveal able as heresy? Is heresy dangerous to souls? Then surely so is treason, unless it be none, or a very small crime. May heresy infect others? So may treason, as it did in the present. It may then as well be revealed as heresy. Now that it may something rather, I have these reasons. 1. Because it is not so certain, that such an opinion is heresy, as that such a fact is treason. 2. Because, although both treason and real heresy be damnable and dangerous to souls, yet heresy kills no kings as treason doth. I confess that heresy may, and doth teach it, but then it degenerates into treason. Now, if some heresy may be treason, then that treason is heresy; and so a case of treason may occur, in which, from their own confession, treason is revealable.

3. By the most general voice of their own side, any man may license his confessor to reveal his confession. It is the doctrine of Scotus, Durandus, Almain, Navarre, Medina, and generally of all the

Actio in prodit. lat. p. 99.

y Practic. Crim. Ecclesiast. c. 109.

z Resol. de Matrimon.

L. quod Major ff. ad Municipalem.

a

Thomists. I infer, if a private man may license his confessor to reveal his confession, then the seal of confession is not founded upon any Divine commandment; for if it were, the penitent could not give the priest license to break it. But, if the penitent may give his confessor leave, because the tie of secrecy is a bond in which the priest stands bound to the penitent, and, he giving him leave, remits of his own right, then much rather may a whole state authorize this publication; for, whatever personal right a private man hath, that the whole state hath much rather, for he is included in it as a part of the whole; and in such cases as concern the whole commonwealth, as this of treason doth most especially, the rule of the law holds without exception, "refertur ad universos, quod publice fit per majorem partem," the delinquent gives leave to the publication of confession, therefore, because the whole state doth, whereof he is one member. I add, that in the case of treason, this is much rather true, for here the delinquent loseth all his right whatsoever, prædial, personal, and of privilege; and, therefore, the commonwealth can the better license the publication, and the breach of the bond of secrecy, in which the confessor stood tied to the penitent by virtue of implicit stipulation.

4. Lastly, even in special, in the very case of treason confessed, many of their own do actually practise a publication, when either they are loyal of themselves, or dare not be otherwise.

The like

I instance first in the church of France. For this, see Bodinus, who reports of a Norman gentleman, whom his confessor discovered for having confessed a treasonable purpose he sometimes had, of killing Francis I., of which he was penitent, did his penance, craved absolution, obtained it, but yet was sentenced to the axe by express commission from the king to the parliament of Paris. confession was made by the lord of Haulterville, when he was in danger of death; which when he had escaped, he incurred it with the disadvantage of public infamy upon the scaffold. I instance not in the case of Barriere, it is every where known as it is reported partly by Thuanus, but more fully by the author of "Histoire de la Paix." Nor yet is France singular in the practice of publication of confessed treason. For at Rome there have been examples of the like, I mean of those who confessed their purpose of killing the pope, who were revealed by their confessors, and accordingly punished.e

Thus then the first pretence proves a nullity, and either our laws are just in commanding publication of confession in case of treason, or themselves very culpable in teaching and practising it in the same, and in cases of less moment. The second is like the first, for it is extremely vain to pretend that the seal of confession is founded upon catholic tradition. Judge by the sequel.

The first word I hear of concealing confessions, b ff. de Regul. Juris. ad sec. refertur. Lib. vii. sec. ult. ff. de pact. d Histoire de Lapaix. e Dominic. e Soto memb. 3. q. 4. concl. 2. de rat. regendi

De Republ. lib. ii. c. 5.

secret.

is in Sozomen, relating how the Greek church, about the time of Decius the emperor, set over the penitents a public penitentiary priest, who was bound to be "Vir bonæ conversationis, servansque secretum," "a good man, and a keeper of secrets;" for, indeed, he was bound to conceal some crimes, in particular, those which an adulteress had confessed, I mean, concerning her adultery, as appears in the canons of St. Basil. But yet this priest who was so tied to a religious secresy, did "publish many of them in the congregation before the people," that they might reprove the delinquent and discountenance the sin. The same story is reported by Cassiodore and Nicephorus from the same author.

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The lawfulness and practice of publication, in some cases, is as clear in Origen.h If" (saith he) "the physician of thy soul perceives thy sins to be such as to need so harsh a remedy, as to have them published before the assemblies of the people, that others may be admonished, and thou the better cured, he need be very deliberate, and skilful in the application of it." Hitherto, no such thing as a universal tradition for the pretended inviolable sacramental seal; for Origen plainly, and by them confessedly, speaks of such sins, as first were privately confessed to the priest; how else should he deliberate of their publication? but yet he did so, and for all the seal of confession, sometimes opened many of them to no fewer witnesses than a whole assembly. Thus it was, in the Greek church, both law and custom. But now if we look into the Latin church, we shall find that it was taken up from example of the Greeks and somewhile practised, that some particular sins should be published in the church before the congregation, as it is confessed in the council of Mentz, and inserted by Burchard into his decree.i

But when the lay-piety began to cool, and the zeal of some clergymen wax too hot, they would needs heighten this custom of publication of some sins, to a law of the publishing of all sins. This being judged to be inconvenient, expressed the first decree for the seal of confession in the Latin church. Now see how it is uttered, and it will sufficiently inform us both of the practice and the opinion, which antiquity had of the obligation to the seal.

"Illam contra apostolicam regulam præsumptionem," &c. that is, "it was against the apostolical ordinance, that a law should enjoin that the priest should reveal all those sins which had been told him in confession." "k It might be done, so it were not required and exacted, and yet might be so required, so it were not a publication of all. "Non enim omnium hujusmodi sunt peccata;" saith St. Leo: "some sins are inconvenient to be published:" it is not fit the world should know all, therefore some they might, or else he had said nothing. The reason which he gives, makes the business somewhat clearer, for he derives it, not from any simple

f Hist. lib. vii. c. 16.

* Τὰς μοιχευθείσας γυναῖκας καὶ ἐξαγορεύσας δι' εὐλά βειαν δημοσιεύειν οὐκ ἐκέλευσαν οἱ Πατέρες ἡμῶν. --Epist. ad Amphil.

necessity of the thing, or a Divine right, but lest men out of inordinate love to themselves, "should rather refuse to be washed than buy their purity with so much shame." The whole epistle hath many things in it excellently to the same purpose.

I say no more; the doctrine and practice of antiquity is sufficiently evident, and that there is nothing less than a universal tradition for the seal of confession to be observed in all cases, even of sins of the highest malignity.

Thus these fathers confessors are made totally inexcusable by concealing a treason, which was not revealed to them in a formal confession, and had been likewise culpable though it had, there being, as I have shown, no such sacredness of the seal as to be inviolable in all cases whatsoever.

I have now done with the several considerations of the persons to whom the question was propounded; they were the fathers confessors in the day, but it was Christ the Lord, in my text. The question itself follows, "Shall we command fire to come from heaven and consume them ?"

The question was concerning the fate of a whole town of Samaria; in our case it was more, of the fate of a whole kingdom. It had been well if such a question had been silenced by a direct negative, or (as the judges of the Areopagus used to do) put off" ad diem longissimum," that they might have expected the answer three ages after.

"De morte hominis nulla est cunctatio longa ;" no demur had been too long in a case of so much and so royal blood, the blood of a king, of a king's children, of a king's kingdom. Пpiaμos Пpiaμołó te aides, king and kingdom should have been made a solemn sacrifice to appease their solemn deliberate malice. I said "deliberate," for they were loth to be malicious without good advice, and therefore they asked their question, worthy of an oracle even no less than Delphic, where an evil spirit was the "numen," and a witch the prophet. For the question was such of which a christian could not doubt, though he had been fearfully scrupulous in his resolutions. For who ever questioned the unlawfulness of murder, of murdering innocents, of murdering them who were confessed righteous? For such was their proposal; being rather willing that catholics should perish with those whom they thought heretics, than that there should be no blood spilt.

But to the question. It was fire they called for, the most merciless of all the elements, no possibility of relenting when once kindled, and had its object. It was the fittest instrument for merciless men, men of no bowels, whose malice, like their instrument, did " agere ad extremum suarum virium,” "work to the highest of its possibility." Secondly; it was fire indeed they called for, but not like that in my text, not fire from heaven. They might have called as long and as loud as those priests did who contested with Elisha; no fire would have come

h Homil. 2. in Psal. xxxvii. Cap. 10. et 21. lib. xix. c. 37.

* Decret. S. Leonis. P. M. Epist. 83. ad episc. Campan.

from heaven to have consumed what they had intended for a sacrifice. God's anathemas post not so fast as ours do: "Deus non est sicut homo." Man curseth often when God blesseth; men condemn whom God acquits, and, therefore, they were loth to trust God with their cause, they therefore take it into their own hands. And certainly, if to their anathemas they add some faggots of their own, and gunpowder, it is odds but then we may be consumed indeed; and so did they; their fire was not from heaven.

Lastly, it was a fire so strange, that it had no example. The apostles, indeed, pleaded a mistaken precedent for the reasonableness of their demand, they desired leave to do but "even as Elias did." The Greeks only retain this clause, it is not in the Bibles of the church of Rome, and really these "Romano-barbari" could never pretend to any precedent for an act so barbarous as theirs. Adramelech, indeed, killed a king, but he spared the people; Haman would have killed the people, but spared the king; but that both king and people, princes and judges, branch, and rush, and root, should die at once, (as if Caligulas were actuated and all England upon one head,) was never known till now, that all the malice in the world met in this, as in a centre. The Sicilian even-song, the matins of St. Bartholomew, known for the pitiless and damned massacres, were but káπνov oкíaç övap, "the dream of the shadow of smoke," if compared with this great fire. "In tam occupato sæculo fabulas vulgaris nequitia non invenit." This was a busy age; Erostratus must have invented a more sublimed malice than the burning of one temple, or not have been so much as spoke of since the discovery of the powder-treason. But I must make more haste, I shall not else climb the sublimity of this impiety. Nero was sometimes the "populare odium," was "popularly hated;" and deserved it too; for he slew his master, and his wife, and all his family, once or twice over, opened his mother's womb, fired the city, laughed at it, slandered the christians for it, but yet all these were but "principia malorum," the very first "rudiments of evil." Add then to these, Herod's master-piece at Ramah, as it was deciphered by the tears and sad threnes of the matrons in a universal mourning for the loss of their pretty infants; yet this of Herod will prove but an infant wickedness, and that of Nero, the evil

but of one city. I would willingly have found out an example, but I see I cannot, should I put into the scale the extract of all the old tyrants famous in antique stories,

"Bistonii stabulum regis, Busiridis aras, Antiphate mensas, et Taurica regna Thoantis." Should I take for true story the highest cruelty as it was fancied by the most hieroglyphical Egyptian, this alone would weigh them down, as if the Alps were put in scale against the dust of a balance. For had this accursed treason prospered, we should have had the whole kingdom mourn for the inestimable loss of its chiefest glory, its life, its present joy, and all its very hopes for the future. For such was their destined malice, that they would not only have inflicted so cruel a blow, but have made it incurable, by cutting off our supplies of joy, the whole succession of the line royal. Not only the vine itself, but all the "gemmulæ," and the tender olivebranches should either have been bent to their intentions, and made to grow crooked, or else been broken.

And now after such a sublimity of malice, I will not instance in the sacrilegious ruin of the neighbouring temples, which needs must have perished in the flame, nor in the disturbing the ashes of our entombed kings, devouring their dead ruins, like sepulchral dogs, these are but minutes, in respect of the ruin prepared for the living temples.

Let us then return to God the cup of thanksgiving, he having poured forth so largely to us of the cup of salvation. We cannot want wherewithal to fill it, here is matter enough for an eternal thankfulness, for the expression of which a short life is too little; but let us here begin our hallelujahs, hoping to finish them hereafter, where the many choirs of angels will fill the concert.

Praise the Lord, ye house of Levi; ye that fear the Lord, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord out of Sion, which dwelleth at Jerusalem.1

1 Psal. cxxxv. 20, 21.