Annotation XLV

”…God who gave such power to men.” — Matthew 9:8

Whether priests [truly] absolve, or only pronounce [people] absolved.

John Ferus, in the second book of [his] commentaries on Matthew, interpreting these [words], speaks of the sacramental absolution of sins in such a way that some have suspected him to assert that the power of remitting sins, handed to priests, is not a power of truly and properly remitting sins, but only a faculty of pronouncing, declaring, attesting, and certifying that the sins of penitents have been remitted and loosed by God. Which error is reproved in the fourteenth session of the Council of Trent, canon 9, in these words: “If anyone shall say that the sacramental absolution of the priest is not a judicial act, but a bare ministry of pronouncing and declaring that sins are remitted to the one confessing — let him be anathema.”

But the words of Ferus are these: “Who would not praise God…

“[Who would not praise God] that he has now given such power to men, and to our brother Christ — nor to Christ alone, but also to others through Christ?¹ ‘Whose sins,’ he says, ‘you shall have remitted, they are remitted to them,’ etc. — not that a man properly remits sin, but that he shows and certifies [it] to have been remitted by God. For absolution, which you receive from a man, is nothing else than as if he said: ‘Behold, my son, I certify to you that your sins are remitted; I announce to you that you have God propitious; and whatever Christ promised us in his baptism and Gospel, he now announces and promises to you through me. Of this you shall have me as witness. Go in peace, and in quiet of conscience.’” Again, in the same volume of commentaries, on that sentence of the eleventh chapter, “Come to me, all you who labor,” etc., he seems to confirm this same teaching, speaking thus: “What else does the priest do in absolving, than [what] the Gospel preaches? Is it not the Gospel and the good news, when he says, ‘By the virtue of Christ’s passion I absolve thee, and I judge thee free from thy sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’? For what else does he wish [to convey] by these or like words, than if he said: ‘Behold, my son, you tremble because of your sins: but fear not. God has now become to you a kindly father, and has remitted your sins; and whatever Christ, by the virtue of the keys of binding the obstinate and loosing the penitent, promised in baptism or the Gospel, he has now secretly fulfilled in your heart, and truly announces this to you through me. Take me as witness of it: go, therefore, in peace and tranquillity of conscience, and sin no more.’”

These things [says] Ferus — whom, on this article, the things written down by him in the third book of these commentaries plainly show to have thought and taught piously and holily. There, on that saying of the Savior to Peter, “I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” there is a sure and undoubted opinion of this author concerning the power of the keys and the faculty of absolving, in these words: “From what has already been said, the question is easily resolved which torments some — namely, how priests can remit sins, since that belongs to God alone (according to that word, ‘I am he who blots out thy iniquities’), and since Christ alone has the keys of death and hell. To which it is usually answered thus: that God alone remits sins, because the Apostles and their successors employ those [means] through which God remits sins and gives grace — such as the word of God and the sacraments; therefore they too are said to remit sins and to open heaven, for no other reason than that they employ the means. So Paul says, ‘You are God’s tillage and building, but we are God’s helpers.’ In sum, the keys of the Church are nothing else than the power of binding and loosing, of remitting and retaining sins,” etc. From these words of Ferus, we can easily suspect that the aforesaid words which are at variance with these were corrupted by Lutheran corrupters after the author’s death, or thrust in here from elsewhere out of the commentaries of heretics. You have things pertaining to this article in Annotation 62 of the fifth book, and in Annotations 71 and 202 of this book.