Romish people compass sea and land to make proselytes; and after they have gained them, they are afraid of them, for their respective antecedents are so different, that it is impossible for them to think together.  They get the submission of a poor deluded pervert, but he gets nothing in return from them but a fictitious salvation.  They gain him; but he was lost the kind regard and sympathy of friends he had before, and with it all that once was dear to him; and he voluntarily forfeits all this upon the bare self-assertion of a system which claims his implicit obedience.  The poor pervert is required to give over his will, his conscience, and his deepest feelings to the keeping of his so-called “priest” or to the Church, and is expected to go away unburdened and at peace.  Some there are, it is true, who actually declare that they have peace by this means; but what peace it is, and of what kind, I know not.

Supposing that I was in debt and anxiety, and a man who had no money, but plenty of assurance and brass, came to me and sympathized in my trouble, saying, “Do not fear—–­trust me; I will bear your burden, and pay off your debt”—­if the manner of the man was sufficiently assuring, it would lift up the cloud of anxiety and distress; but, for all that, the penniless man would net, and could not, pay my debt.  I might fancy he had done so or would do so; and then, when it was too late, the debt, with accumulated interest, would fall on me, to my over-whelming ruin, even though I had been ever so free from anxiety before.  So it is with these deluded ones, who go to the priest instead of to Christ, and take his absolution instead of Christ’s forgiveness.

Any one who carefully reads the Word of God may see that the Church of Rome has no such priesthood as she claims, nor power to forgive sins, as she professes to do.  The whole supposition is based on a misunderstanding of the text, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained” (John 20:23).

The disciples (some of them not apostles) who received this commission or privilege, never understood that they were by these words (men and women together) empowered to be absolving priests.  Even the very apostles never knew that they had any such power; and it is certain they never exercised it.  They were perfectly innocent of being priests after the Romish type, and never dreamed of offering a propitiatory sacrifice.  They simply believed that Christ had completed the work of propitiation once for all; and that there is now no more sacrifice for sin—­that Christ only can forgive sins.  Therefore in the words of St. John we are told, that “if any man sin (apostles and people alike), we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1, 2).

The apostles and early Christians never understood that the power of the keys meant the exercise of mere priestly authority, neither was the doctrine known for several centuries after their time; therefore we may be sure that the peace which perverts have, if it professes to come from that source, is a delusion.  No true remission or peace is, or can be given, but by direct and personal transaction with Christ Himself.