Confess your faults one to another. — The meaning attributed to the words of this verse by many devout Catholics cannot be established either from the opinion of antiquity, or a critical examination of the Greek text according to modern schools. “We have,” observes Alford, “a general injunction arising out of a circumstance necessarily to be inferred in the preceding example (James 5:14-15). There, the sin would of necessity have been confessed to the elders, before the prayer of faith could deal with it. And seeing the blessed consequences in that case ‘generally,’ says the Apostle, in all similar cases, and ‘one to another universally, pursue the same salutary practice of confessing your sins...’ Confess therefore one to another — not only to the elders (presbyters) in the case supposed, but to one another generally — your transgressions, and pray for one another that ye may be healed, in case of sickness, as above. The context here forbids any wider meaning... and it might appear astonishing, were it not notorious, that on this passage, among others, is built the Romish doctrine of the necessity of confessing sins to a priest.”
Not that all Roman Catholic divines, indeed, have thus read the injunction. Some of the ablest and greatest have admitted “that we cannot certainly affirm sacramental confession to have been meant or spoken of in this place” (Hooker). How then did the gradual perversion take hold of men’s minds? The most laborious investigation of history and theology will alone answer the question properly; and here only a brief résumé is possible. There can be little doubt that, strictly consonant with the apostolic charge, open confession was the custom of old. Offenders hastened to some minister of God, and in words, by which all present in the congregation might take notice of the fault, declared their guilt; convenient remedies were as publicly prescribed, and then all present joined in prayer to God. But after awhile, for many patent reasons, this plain talk about sins was rightly judged to be a cause of mischief to the young and innocent; and such confessions were relegated to a private hearing. The change was in most ways beneficial, and hardly suspected of being a step in a completely new doctrine. It needed years — centuries, in fact — to develop into the hard system of compulsory individual bondage which cost Europe untold blood and treasure to break asunder. A salutary practice in the case of some unhappy creatures, weakened by their vices into a habit of continual sin, was scarcely to be conceived as a rule thrust upon all the Christian world. Yet such it was, and “at length auricular confession, followed by absolution and satisfaction, was elevated to the full dignity of a necessary sacrament. The Council of Trent anathematises all who deny it to be truly and properly a sacrament instituted by Christ Himself, and necessary to salvation (jure divino); or who say that the method of confessing secretly to the priest alone... is alien to Christ’s institution, and of human invention” (Harold Browne). Marvellous perversity of acute brains and worthy sentiment, showing only how steep is the way of error; and how for Christian as for Jew the danger of tradition is perilous indeed. “To conclude,” in the words of Hooker, “we everywhere find the use of confession, especially public, allowed of, and commended by the fathers; but that extreme and rigorous necessity of auricular and private confession, which is at this day so mightily upheld by the Church of Rome, we find not. It was not then the faith and doctrine of God’s Church, as of the Papacy at this present — (1) that the only remedy for sin after baptism is sacramental penitency; (2) that confession in secret is an essential part thereof; (3) that God Himself cannot now forgive sins without the priest; (4) that because forgiveness at the hands of the priests must arise from confession in the offender, therefore to confess unto him is a matter of such necessity as, being not either in deed, or, at the least, in desire, performed, excludeth utterly from all pardon, and must consequently in Scripture be commanded wheresoever any promise of forgiveness is made. No, no; these opinions have youth in their countenance. Antiquity knew them not; it never thought nor dreamed of them” (E. P., vi. iv. 14).
“As for private confession,” says Jewel in his Apology, “abuses and errors set apart, we condemn it not, but leave it at liberty.” Such must be the teaching of any Church which, in the epigram of Bishop Ken, “stands distinguished from all papal and puritan innovations,” resting upon God’s Word, and the earliest, holiest, simplest, best traditions of the Apostles of His dear Son. And if an ancient custom has become a universal practice in the Latin communion, presumed to be of sacramental virtue, scholars will tell us that the notion has never been absent altogether from any branch of the Catholic Church; and that in some shape or form, it lives in most of those societies which sprang into existence at the Reformation largely from abhorrence of the tyranny and misuse of confession.
The effectual fervent prayer... — Better, The prayer of a righteous man availeth much in its working. It moves the hand of Him Who moves the world.
“What are men better than sheep, or goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer —
Both for themselves, and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is, every way,
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”
In Matthew 14:2, and Mark 6:14, we read of John the Baptist, that “mighty works do show forth themselves in him.” A nearer approach to the sense would be “they work” — energise, if we might coin a word; and such is also the meaning of the present passage — the prayer of the just, pleading, striving fervently, hath power with God, even like Israel of old, and shall prevail (Genesis 32:28). Some divines trace a literal force in the passage, finding in it an allusion to the Energumens of the first century (the “mediums” of that age), who were possessed by demons; that, just as these unhappy beings strove in their bondage, so equally — nay, infinitely more — should Christians “wrestle with the Lord.”