Religious confessions and confessants; with a chapter on the history of introspection

Preface

It has been the privilege of the writer to do much of her work in the library of the late Dr. Henry C. Lea — its shelves still laden with that material which assumed so significant an aspect under the guidance of his distinguished mind. Such surroundings were in themselves an inspiration and she is grateful for the kindness which procured them.

Thanks are also due for the courteous co-operation of the librarians of the two Friends' Libraries, of the Presbyterian and Methodist Historical Societies, of the Philadelphia Library, of Haverford College, of S. Carlo Borromeo, and of S. Thomas of Villanova. Through the kindness of Dr. Jastrow, the University of Pennsylvania Library gave the writer access to her material all over the country. Such goodwill has lent the work an ever-increasing pleasure.

While reading for an earlier study on autobiography, the writer had been impressed by the present superabundance of works on religious and mystical theory, side by side with a total absence of any collation of the documents of personal religion. No one has apparently thought it worth his while to examine the foundations on which the current elaborate doctrines are based. Some years of investigation have resulted in this book. If the work has turned in directions not at first anticipated, yet it formulates viii PREFACE

no theory except by induction from the data it furnishes. In its final position, it agrees with Hobbes, when he remarks, — "that ignorant and superstitious men make great wonders of those works, which other men, knowing to proceed from nature (which is not the immediate but the ordinary work of God), admire not at all. ' '

Contents

I. Introductory 3

II. Confession and Apologia . . . .19

III. Introspection: The Introspective Type 71

II

I. 1. Confession in ancient religions, Egyptian, Babylonian, Islamic, Vedic, Manu.

2. Buddhistic, Greek, Hebrew.

3. The early Church, Origen.

4. Rite of Exomologesis, libelli, Loyola, Abelard,

Othloh.

5. Augustin and his imitators.

6. Port-Royal, Petrarch.

II. 1. The confessional impulse; publicity as privacy.

2. Relation of thought and speech.

3. Power of ideas; exaggeration; Macaulay, Shelley,

Morley.

III. 1. The classic apologia.

2. Rufinus and Jerome; the personal note.

3. Middle Ages, testamenta, apologies, confessiones.

4. The mystics and their records.

5. Hamilton and the Reynolds Pamphlet.

6. Development of the modern personal apology.

II

Most of us are so well accustomed to the phenomena of our conscious being that its common miracles of thought and emotion no longer rouse astonishment. Now and again, however, one of us will call the others to some appreciation of these imperious wonders, as Stevenson, when he found the universal ideal of duty "strange to the point of lunacy." 1 The uneasiness of thought concealed, the pain of having something " on one's mind," the relief when one is rid of it — these rank surely among our most familiar mental sensations, without which no one of us can live for long. Yet how often do we ask ourselves why this should be ? Why is there, for most of us, an uneasiness in the fact of concealment, and why does the act of confession bring so definite a relief? What is the reason that our thoughts are, on the whole, so difficult to hide, and so easy to avow ?

People exist, of course, in whom this impulse counts for little ; to whom concealment is more natural than avowal. Yet this temperament is rare and is regarded as apart from the common human type. And what is the reason? Is nature a moralist in this respect, laying some vital prohibition on the hiding of the truth ? Whence spring those impulses which urge us to tell what we know ? That we are so urged is matter of human history, and is traceable long before the time religion caused the impulse to crystallize into the shape of ritual.

To-day we associate the idea of confession wholly with confession of sin, and with that group of ideas concerning penitence and submission. And yet its presence in that group is not readily accounted for. Has human nature elaborated an idea having a source purely artificial and ritualistic; or rather, has ritual seized upon and elaborated an idea sprung from a fundamental need of human nature?

To the impulse toward confession and its evolution, much in literature is owing, and this fact is a sufficient warrant to justify any formal enquiry into its nature and origin. Nor could there be a better introduction to such an inquiry than an historical survey of its presence in its technical religious form. Brief as this survey will be, it should at least serve to connect in the reader's mind the auricular, with the written confessions of the past; a formal act of penitence and submission, with that spontaneous, individual, even, if one will, rebellious, movement of the suffering human soul.

The rite of confession of sin in the Christian Church has a direct, concrete bearing on the genesis of the written confession, and its significance is shown by its great antiquity. Public confession of wrongdoing was current in the ritual of the ancient religions, although holding no such important place therein as it came later to acquire in the Christian ritual. The confession-idea, however, will be found manifest in some very curious and suggestive forms. In the religion of ancient Egypt, for instance, it is connected with that elaborate trial of the soul after death of which we possess full records. The dead soul was obliged to make a curious "plea" or "negative confession, ' ' when it came before Osiris and forty-two other judges in Amenti. 2

" I have not told falsehoods, ' ' pleaded the soul, awaiting judgment, "I have not done any wicked thing. ... I have not murdered. ... I have not done fraud to men. . . ." And so on, through a catalogue of acts and deeds, ending, ' ' I am pure . . . I am pure ... I am pure!"

This formula appeared to have a cleansing and absolving significance, and was evidently not intended to be taken literally. Then followed a positive confession addressed to the gods of the underworld. " I live upon rigHt and truth," the soul declared. . . . "I have performed the commandments of men. . . . I have given bread to the hungry man . . ." 3 And the same idea was repeated in a litany or hymn to Osiris, which formed part of the ceremony of the soul's reception. Each verse ends, "For I am just and true, I have not spoken lies wittingly nor have I done aught with deceit." 4 After such formulae the soul was weighed and admitted.

The Babylonian religion had a conventionalized form of confession which does not appear to have expressed any individual appeal, although the Babylonian penitential hymns contain certain forms of confession of suffering, wherein the supplicant, who has failed to fulfil the law, bewails his sin. 5 But there is little likeness to any modern spiritual confession in these forms, nor in that avowal of guilt which was required by the ritual of Zoroastrianism. 6 The faith of Islam is too objective to make any such requirement of confession of sin as it made of fighting for the Prophet. The Koran makes but an insignificant reference to this spiritual need; and in truth, humility was not insisted upon by Mahomet save under certain special conditions. It is interesting to contrast Islam, in this respect, with the various religions of India, whose deeply introspective character caused them to lay great stress on the idea of self-examination and confession of sinful act and thought.

This is clearly developed in the collections of Sacred Books. Manu says : "In proportion as a man who has done wrong himself confesses it, even so far is he freed from guilt as a snake from its slough. ' ' 7 There will also be found in one of the Vedas (the ceremonial code of the Brahmans) the statement that, "when confessed, the sin becomes less because it becomes truth." 8 The Mahavagga of the Palis contains the sentence: "For this is called progress in the discipline of the Noble One [i.e., the disciple of Buddha] , if one sees his sin in its sinfulness, and duly makes amends for it, and refrains from it in future. ' ' 9

Upon the idea of the value of self-examination were founded the practices of the Buddhist "Samgha" — a confraternity of monks, who, at stated intervals, made confession one to another according to a fixed form. 10 Such a rite is familiar to the Christian, who will not have forgotten that it is advocated by St. James, in no uncertain words. 11 To find that the earlier Buddhist doctrines had so clear an idea of the need for self-study and confession as an aid to religious development, would seem to prove that the religions of India had passed through their subjective period long before the Western world came into contact with them ; 12 and before such ideas as these crystallized into mere formalism. The naturally introspective cast of the Oriental mind tended to adopt all such religious practices, although they have later developed the more mystical at the expense of the less.

Definite public confession was enjoined by the Greeks under certain circumstances, when it was addressed to an oracle or to a priest. "In the days of Socrates," recounts Plutarch, "Lysander consulted the oracle at Samothrace, and was told by the priest to confess the worst actions of his life. 'Is it thou who commandest this/ he asked, 'or the gods?' The priest replied, ' It is the gods. ' ' Then at once retire, ' said Lysander, ' that I may answer the gods ! ' ' ' 13

This anecdote displays a typical situation as regards the confession; i.e., the priestly effort to make use of it as a weapon for the benefit of the hierarchy, with the ensuing resentment of a certain kind of penitent. Moreover, it is precisely this Lysander-type whose influence has been set against the practice from the beginning and continues until the present day. A masterful man is willing to confess to God, but not to the priest; and had there been more examples of this temperament, the control of the confessional would have lapsed more slowly into priestly hands. Early ideas of submission and of discipline, with the early lack of individualism, made this control inevitable;

but that Lysander and his like existed and must be reckoned with, cannot be ignored when the origin of the written confession is to be discussed. 14

From very early times, the Jews made confession on the eve of Day of Atonement. The form which they recited differs little from that employed by Christianity; and involved an act of atonement, just as, later on, the penitent will be found making a rich gift to the Church. But the Hebrew confession was less individual than national; the people, as one penitent, could and did make confession of their sin. 15 From the evidence of the Old Testament, this movement seems to have sprung from a deep and spontaneous emotion of patriotism; and its impressiveness had, doubtless, much to do with its later influence over the penitential system of the Church. The emotional Aramean, who beat his breast and confessed his sin, presented a more vivid picture of remorse than the pagan world was accustomed to behold. Thus, many of the rites and f ormulas, which served to heighten the emotional appeal of Christianity, were retained therein, despite their origin.

The Jewish confession does not seem to have been often a written document; but preserved its public and national character. Unquestionably, this was at first also the character of the Christian confession. It was enjoined by the Church as a public, penitential, and disciplinary formula, without any individual significance whatever, and this fact must be remembered when the reader plunges into the vast literature of the Christian ritual. There was no need for Lysander to protest in those days. By the time public confession of sin had become a regular sacrament of the Church, its disadvantages were manifest and its use had begun to create scandal; while to regularize the practice by private confession had become inevitable. 10 The period of transition, according to scholars, is somewhat vague ; for the Church long wavered between her definite dogmatic necessities and the authority of certain texts, which, though clear in their general meaning, were yet not specific. 17

In the first and second centuries confession preceded baptism. "The pardon symbolized by the baptismal rite," says Dr. Lea, 18 "was only to be earned by a cleansing of the heart, confession of sin to God and earnest repentance. . . ." This confession, which was supposed to be public and voluntary, was to be rewarded by a mitigation of that penalty which the sinner incurred as discipline, at the hands of the Church. 19 Nor would the Church, even at this date, have permitted so high-handed an action as that of Lysander : she was already jealous of her authority. "Public confession and public penance were the only process then recognized by the Church ;" while Origen 20 in his "Homilies" recommends the penitent to lay bare his soul to some expert in whom he has confidence.

It appears to be the influence of Origen, rather than the action of Pope Calixtus, which systematized definitively the rite of confession. The former had instituted it in 218 a.d. ; 21 but the rite of Exomologesis, as it is called, and as it appears in the old Armenian service-books, was but a repetition of the rite of baptism, involving confession, but involving much else beside. The confession-idea, in reality, was therefore but a part of the whole penitential system — it had no such importance as it afterwards received, and some historians even make no separate mention of it. 22 Origen planned the different steps and stages of penance as "contrition, satisfaction, and self -accusation or confession." 23 During the transition period, to which we have just alluded, this confession varied. Sometimes "it was private before the bishop or priest, sometimes public before the whole congregation, Public confession was demanded of persons who were guilty of grievous public sins" ; unless the recital of such sins would tend to create scandal. In other words, the bishops were required to use their own judgment; in special cases they are found consulting their diocesan counselor, or asking the advice by letter of their brother-bishops.

Such was the situation regarding confession of sin, in which the penitent Christian convert of the first and second centuries found himself. The public recital of his crimes was no doubt even then largely conventional, consisting, as it now does, in the repetition of a set formula. But his vital offences were obliged to have a private hearing ; and this latter practice so personal, so intimate, fed the Church's growing need of power to knit together her isolated congregations. For this reason, if for no other, the practice of auricular private confession was encouraged. 24 Yet so many of the devout shared the objection of Lysander that progress in this direction was felt to be provokingly slow; the cases remaining scanty, indeed, even in the third century. 25 The custom was held to be salutary for the penitent, and a wholesome exercise in the development of self-restraint, but since Dr. Lea writes that it was far from common as late as 850 a.d., one may judge of its infrequency in the days of Augustin.

The name of the great Bishop brings us without further parley to the immediate point of departure between the spoken and the written confession. While his influence on the latter is profound, it formed but a part of his general influence on the whole penitential system of the Church; while the breadth and force of this personal and intellectual influence is difficult to overestimate. "In the Decretum of Gratian, no less than 607 canons are taken from his works. St. Paul furnished but 408. It was on Augustin rather than on Paul that the schoolmen built. " 26 So writes the historian, not omitting to note that in the 1 ' Conf essiones, ' ' Augustin had laid a foundation upon which not only the Church, but the whole world of thought was to build.

The modern student of philosophy 27 sees in Augustin "a virtuoso of self -observation and self -analysis " ; and to the open-minded reader his greatest book is charged with the vital power of literary genius, and full of the zeal and color with which genius informs a new idea. This literary quality must not be forgotten, because it is a factor only recently acknowledged as responsible for the book's success. To find in publicity all the sacredness of the confessional, is Augustin 's new idea; and his genius pours forth his sin and his humility, his love and his joy, ' ' in the ears of the believing sons of men." While it is easy to realize the effect upon the sensitive mind of such confidences as these, and to understand how literature at large came to regard them, yet their immediate result was not literary but theological, heightening the importance of Exomologesis in the eyes of the Church.

There has never been a shorter and more inevitable road to power than that furnished by the confessional. 28 The rule laid down by Gregory of Nyssa "mitigated all penance to those persons who voluntarily revealed any sin not before known, and who sought a remedy." 29 Gradually the practice became regularized after the penitent had been taught the means of duly expressing his humility. The word confessio meant also memoria, the burial-place of a martyr, or the shrine of a reliquary ; and in this manner the idea of revealing something precious and hidden became identified with the idea of a self-revelation.

It is not easy to state when the practice of writing the confession developed; doubtless in the beginning it was the necessary result of the distances which separated the members of those early isolated congregations. Libelli (as these written records were called) came to be read aloud in church to spare the personal mortification of the penitent. 30 St. Basil, who advocated this custom, states that he received such a written record from a woman in Caesarea, of high rank but very evil life, — who, in this manner, laid confession of her sins before the Lord. 31

In the ninth century, Robert of Le Mans, when sick unto death, sent a written statement of his sins to the Bishop, and received absolution in the same way. 32 But by the thirteenth century the written records were forbidden, and the rule finally established that all confession must be auricular. Dr. Lea, however, reminds us that the practice itself did not become annually obligatory on the faithful until the year 1216, in the reign of Pope Innocent III. 33

With the history of auricular confession this study has little to do. After it has been related to the special document with which it is our business to deal, the evolution of the practice does not greatly concern us. The fathers differed widely in their opinion of its value, and these opinions furnish a suggestive commentary upon their personalities. Abelard is not sure it is always desirable ; St. Bernard is never weary extolling its virtues. 34 Long after private confession had superseded the older public form, that form survived when men made confession to one another, in crises where no priest was to be had. 35 This act had the warrant of St. James, and more than one autobiography of the Middle Ages make mention of the occurrence. ' * When the expected day of battle came, ' ' writes Loyola, "he made his confession to one of the nobles who had often fought by his side, and who, in turn, also confessed to him. ' ' 36 To a similar impulse is due Abelard 's letter, "Historia Calamitatum ,, ; while Abbot Othloh of St. Emmeran writes a detailed account lest death should prevent him from making a full oral confession. 37 No better proof could be given of the penitent's deep humility and sincere repentance. Other mediaeval expedients show the depth of this feeling. The nun, Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, was used to kneel in the chapel and, after repeating certain psalms, to recite aloud her faults of the day, addressing herself directly to God. In a phraseology full of touching humility and beauty, she accused herself of negligence and of preoccupation with things of the flesh. Her very simplest thoughts, she felt, were wholly unworthy of her Lord. "Deja, mon Dieu, la nuit arrive, et je n'ai rien fait encore sans vous offenser ! " 38 was her avowal. And no doubt there were many to follow her pious example.

The intensity of this desire to confess will be felt by even the most casual student of these days. Augustin's influence, both literary and theological, had been to vitalize all penitential practices with the breath of emotion, and to stimulate them by his literary genius. His work lent the penitent a sacredness which he has not lost even to-day ; a sacredness which Augustin felt to be inherent in his own humility and love of the Divine. No cold array of dogmas could possibly have roused the sinful man to a sense of his sinfulness, as does this personal contact with the soul of another man who is at once his fellow-sinner and his guide. What the Church owes Augustin on this one count is incalculable, since he provided a means whereby the Lysanders of this world may be brought to their knees without a loss of self-respect. That there are yet other sources affecting both the production and the character of these documents, cannot be forgotten, and they are to receive, in their turn, full consideration at our hands. Yet, when all is said and done, it may be doubted if they are more powerful than the personal appeal of the "Confessions." The author's understanding of human nature is equal to his pity, and both are based on real experience. No figment of

CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA SI

life had he lived — the Bishop of Hippo ! He knew the horror of the sinner and the exaltation of the saved. He had realized to the full a Vedic saying, "that, when confessed, the sin becomes less, because it becomes truth" : and he felt in his own proper person the "purifying influence of public confession " by which "hope in lies is forever swept away." 39

In treating his "Confessions" as a perfect type of this document, one desires to do away with those clouds which the misinterpretation of centuries has caused to dim its brilliant surface. Perfect confession is indeed rare and difficult and distrusted of men. According to Ramon de Penafort it must be 1 ' bitter, speedy, complete, and frequent. " 40 So hard is it for an active, objective mind to grasp the principles of self-examination that it tends to confuse the practice with an unhealthy self-depreciation. Along with reverence for Augustin, distrust of Augustin's introspection has gone hand in hand for centuries, and it has so permeated many minds that we find the edition prepared for general reading has most of the self -study expurgated. It is a shock to the Church, it is a shock to the average reader, to find so great a figure making an avowal of this and that, with such a great humility. But to another type of mind this avowed kinship is as the breath of life; nor can Augustin have lacked the knowledge that herein lay the great value of his work. No book has been more studied, and to less purpose; no book has been more read, and is less really known. The world, for a thousand years and more, has tried to open these doors without a key. Just as in the case of Jerome Cardan 's very different but equally candid life, 41 the world has been obliged to wait until science gave it both the facts and the knowledge of how to apply them, which it needed to elucidate the writer's statements.

Meanwhile, a mountain of exegesis, criticism, and so-called interpretation has been piled upon the "Confessions." The favorite attitude of critic and commentator insists that the "Confessions" are not autobiographical at all and were never intended by the author to be thought so. The Church is very strong upon this view, chiefly, it would seem, to preserve the great Father's sanctity; and in order that the vulgar shall not have the satisfaction or the scandal of believing that he lied, or stole, or dwelt "in a chaldron of unholy loves." As he is St. Augustin, argues the Church, he cannot have done these things. He must have exaggerated his trifling peccadilloes, because we have canonized him. The logic here is the logic of the cleric, but its effect has so deeply permeated the history of the subject as to have an unfortunate result for the written confession in general. For Augustin 's supposed exaggeration has, of course, been made a text for the exaggeration of his followers, without the ehurehly reasoning being taken into account.

Quite apart from questions of hierarchical policy, Augustin has suffered, with many another, from that passion of the commentator for the involved, indirect explanation, invented by himself, instead of the simple, direct explanation furnished by the words of the subject. 42 Even in the English standard edition, the translator is found to have made the important discovery that the "Confessions" are only "confessions of praise.' ' This is based on an observation of Augustin in his exposition of the Psalms, that 1 ' Confessions of sin all know, but confessions of praise few attend to." These words, together with the undercurrent of worship and praise carrying along the music of the prose, satisfy this editor that Augustin did not intend to tell all about himself.

One is roused in these latter days to a weary impatience when it comes to combating such artificial views as these, but it must be done, since they prevent us from seeing our subject as it really is. From the standpoint of reverence — which should have weight with many — it would seem very little to listen and believe what Augustin tells us. We know his heart to beat with ours, we have the best of human reasons to feel his truth and his sincerity; let us be confident, then, that he did what he says he did, and that he confessed his sins when he declares that he confessed them. The words are there in all their poignancy, and the man who wrote them did not write for the purpose of hiding his real meaning. Moreover, it is not difficult to decide whether or not the 11 Confessions " form a genuine autobiography. We have but to compare the body of facts which the book contains with the body of facts obtainable from other sources. If the book be not intended as an autobiography, then these facts will necessarily be fewer and less essential than the outside facts; and we should be able to gain just as clear a picture of the man if he had never written any confessions at all.

A rapid examination of the different chapters will show, better than any words, how exceedingly rich they are in personal data. In his first book Augustin presents a minute analysis of his childish development, not omitting such details as his prayer to God that he might not be flogged. 43 Book II contains a study of the crisis of puberty; and after that a careful description of his education. 4 * Book III opens with one of the most striking pictures in all literature of the effect of life and art upon a vivid, youthful imagination; its new joy in ideas, and chiefly in the drama, whence came, he declares, "my love of grief s." 45 If his purpose, indeed, was not primarily autobiographical, why these analyses ? Whence these details ? They serve no purpose in the scheme of a "confession of praise.' ' Let the reader compare them with Rousseau ; or their vitality of ideas with the similar youthful vitality displayed in such letters as those of Shelley 46 or the young Goethe, and he will see that the religious purpose has not been allowed to interfere with the intention of sincere self -study. Later, in depicting his period of temptation through the senses, Augustin 's self -observation is remarkably full and valuable. He tells of his indifference to perfume, his fondness for music, his delight in beautiful imaginings and colors, and "that vain and curious longing' ' which he terms the "lust of the eye for things hidden." 47 There are similar details given in such highly secular studies as Cardan's, 48 and the "De Profundis" 49 of Oscar Wilde, and for the same reason, i.e., that the writer may he known to the reader as he really is. Augustin's whole book, in truth, loses meaning if it be regarded in the sense insisted upon by the religious world as that of a mere penitential handbook of prayer and praise. Such prayer and praise it contains in full measure, 50 but they are intended to be secondary and should be so regarded.

Moreover, the power and influence of Augustin 's "Confessions" over the world of literature has been maintained for no other reason than their sincerity and truthful information. Prayer and praise have their own beauty and place, but they make no such universal appeal to man as do the works which add to his stock of knowledge. In vain has the Church warned the faithful that he must not dare to suppose Augustin lived in sin simply because he says that he did; the human heart knows better. It knows that for one exaggeration of an error, a man will write ten understatements. It feels exactly what Augustin meant when he cried out to God; "Accept the sacrifice of my confession by the agency of my tongue. ' ' 51 And it echoes and reechoes the words of his humility through all the years to the present, when yet another sinner repeats them: "A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt, when he kneels in the dust and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life. ' ' B2