Annotation CLIV

”Go, and show yourselves to the priests.” — Luke 17:14

What sins are to be confessed.

Bede, in book 5 of the commentaries on Luke, chapter 68, expounds this passage thus: “The Lord is found to have sent to the priests none of those on whom he bestowed these bodily benefits, except the lepers: because, namely, the priesthood of the Jews was a figure of the future royal priesthood which is in the Church. And whosoever — whether by heretical depravity, or by gentile superstition, or by Jewish perfidy, or even by fraternal schism, as if steeped in a varied color [of disease] — shall have lacked the grace of the Lord: it is necessary that he come to the Church, and show the true color of the faith which he has received. But the other vices — as [diseases] of the health, and as it were of the members of the soul and of the senses — the Lord heals and corrects inwardly, by [the man] himself, in conscience and in [his] understanding.” Beatus Rhenanus, addicted to the Lutheran sect, in the Annotations which he published on Tertullian’s book On Penance, perversely gathers from these words that only in the crime of schism, heresy, and infidelity must one confess to priests; but in the other sins it suffices to confess to God alone. But Bede’s mind is to show by these words a twofold kind of confession: one, which is part of public and solemn penance — and this he says is necessary for heretics, schismatics, and infidels; the other is the kind of clandestine and secret confession, which he asserts to suffice in the other offenses for those who bring forth the secrets of the breast, to God alone, into the ear of the priest, and accuse [their] sins.