As to confession, we must adhere to the reply and judgement given above
in Article XI. For the support which they claim from Chrysostom is
false, since they pervert to sacramental and sacerdotal confession what
he says concerning public confession, as his words clearly indicate when
in the beginning he says: "I do not tell thee to disclose thyself to the
public or to accuse thyself before others." Thus Gratian and thus Peter
Lombard replied three hundred years ago; and the explanation becomes
still more manifest from other passages of Chrysostom. For in his
twenty-ninth sermon he says of the penitent: "In his heart is
contrition, in his mouth confession, in his entire work humility. This
is perfect and fruitful repentance." Does not this most exactly display
the three parts of repentance? So in his tenth homily on Matthew,
Chrysostom teaches of a fixed time for confession, and that after
the wounds of crimes have been opened they should be healed, penance
intervening. But how will crimes lie open if they are not disclosed to
the priest by confession? Thus in several passages Chrysostom himself
refutes this opinion, which Jerome also overthrows, saying: "If
the serpent the devil have secretly bitten any one, and without the
knowledge f another have infected him with the poison of sin, if he who
has been struck be silent and do not repent, and be unwilling to confess
his wound to his brother and instructor, the instructor, who has a
tongue wherewith to cure him, will not readily be able to profit him.
For if the sick man be ashamed to confess to the physician, the medicine
is not adapted to that of which he is ignorant." Let the princes and
cities, therefore, believe these authors rather than a single gloss upon
a decree questioned and rejected by those who are skilled in divine
law. Wherefore, since a full confession is, not to say, necessary for
salvation, but becomes the nerve of Christian discipline and the entire
obedience, they must be admonished to conform to the orthodox Church.
For, according to the testimony of Jerome, this was the heresy of the
Montanist, who were condemned over twelve hundred years ago because they
were ashamed to confess their sins. It is not becoming, therefore, to
adopt the error of the wicked Montanus, but rather the rite of the holy
fathers and the entire Church--viz. that each one teach, according to
the norm of the orthodox faith, that confession, the chief treasure in
the Church, be made in conformity to the rite kept among them also in
the Church.