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2. Application to the Issue at Hand of what has been Said
a. In the Time of the Law of Nature and of the Mosaic Law
22. To the issue at hand I say that no one is bound by precept of the law of nature to the confession of sin that the question is about, because then this obligation would have existed for the state of any law, which is false because it did not exist in the state of innocence or in the state of the Mosaic Law.
23. If you object, through the gloss [Nicolas of Lyra] on Genesis 3.9 “Adam, where are you?” - it was the speech, the gloss says, “of someone rebuking and seeking after confession [and not of someone who did not know].” So, there was confession in the time of the law of nature after the Fall.
24. Similarly about Aaron and his sons it is read that they had to confess the sins of the sons of Israel [Leviticus 6.25, 7.1, 8.1-2, 14, 16.21], and frequently that he who had sinned in the Law had to confess his sin and offer such or such a sacrifice [Leviticus 4-5, 9.1-15, et al.].
25. There is also confirmation of this, because there are many authorities in the Old Testament about making confession, as this one, Proverbs 18.17, “The just man is the first to accuse himself” [also Joshua 7.19, 3 Kings 8.33, Nehemiah 1.6, 9.2 et al.].
26. Besides, that it is a conclusion following from the principles of the law of nature is proved thus: this proposition is known, ‘every culprit should be judged’; and this one, that ‘no one should be judge in his own cause’; therefore, a culprit should be judged by another. He cannot be judged by another unless he be accused before that other; nor can he be accused save by himself if his sin was secret; therefore, he should accuse himself before the other by whom he will be judged; and it is more agreeable to reason that he do it in secret than in public if his sin be hidden; indeed it is perhaps sufficiently known to natural reason that if sin is hidden the accusation ought to be hidden. Therefore, from propositions known by the law of nature, or at any rate very evidently consonant with the law of nature, it follows that this secret confession of one’s own sin is to be made to another, and then to no one more reasonably than to a priest.
27. I respond to the first one [n.23]: Adam ought not to have hidden his sin from God, because God is the very judge to whom every sin is manifest, in whose presence every culprit should acknowledge his fault. And this confession God required of Adam, which confession Adam not only did not make but he excused his sin by turning it back onto the woman, saying [Genesis 3.12], “The woman whom you gave me etc.” Hence this does not prove that in that law confession should be made to man, though it should be made to God when he rebukes.
28. To the second [n.24]: in the whole Mosaic Law the confession we are speaking of was not made, but confession was made of hidden sins to God only. However, as to certain public failings and the observance of legal rules a confession was made - by each one when he offered sacrifice for such a failing, and by the priests a general confession [Psalm 105.6], “We have sinned, we have done unjustly etc.” And in this way was the public confession of the priest a certain disposition for asking God’s mercy for the people - just as also now in the Church we confess, with the confession we are now speaking of, that we have sinned, and we ask mercy for ourselves and the whole people.
29. To the third [n.25] I say that all the authorities of the Old Testament for proving confession, as we are here speaking of it, are only verbal and not judicial sentence. Of what confession are the authorities speaking then? I say of that general one, the sort that the priests made [Leviticus, 4.1-12, 6.17-23, Numbers 15.25-26, 18.1-7 etc.] and Daniel [Daniel 9.4-19] and many other holy Jews [Exodus, 32.31-32, 2 Chronicles 6.2142 etc.]; or of the confession of their own public failing concerning non-observance of the legal rules, as are the irregularities in contracting the impurities of the Law [Matthew 15.1-20, Mark 7.1-23].
30. As to the argument [n.26], I concede that that proposition [‘every culprit should be judged’] is known by the natural light, or at least is very consonant with a known proposition, for a culprit is to be judged because, if there is one Ruler of the universe and he a just one, no failing is to be left unpunished in the universe- this is naturally known or is very consonant with things naturally known.
31. But further, when you say he is to be judged by another [n.26], I concede it. But who is that other is not known by natural reason, nor even by things consonant with natural reason, save about God only, who is rewarder of merits and punisher of sins. And then further, that another cannot judge unless accusation be made to him, can be denied, because God knows sins without any accusation, even before they are done. Or suppose that this proposition, that ‘a fault should be accused before this Judge and by the sinner himself, for only he himself knows’, be granted as consonant with things known. From all these follows only that sin should be confessed to God. And this confession I concede insofar as it was of the law of nature, that is, consonant with truths known from the law of nature. Because for every state after the Fall, the just, who had about God faith that he was Ruler of the universe and just punisher, were wont, after they had sinned against the law of God, to confess their sins to God, seeking remission of them from him, knowing that without such remission he, as just judge of the sin, would avenge it.
32. And if you argue that he should accuse himself to some other who is his judge, this cannot be proved by what is known to the law of nature nor by what is evidently consonant with it, because no sinner can be judge of a man’s sin save as minister of the supreme Judge. This (namely being a minister of the Judge in judging or punishing what has been committed) is conceded more to each with respect to himself than to one with respect to another. For to each has God committed it that he be minister of God in judging his own sin, by inflicting sadness on himself and displeasure at his sin. But it is not thus known that he has conceded it to anyone to be his minister in executing judgment against another for that other’s sin.
33. If you argue that in a human republic one person is judge of another - I reply: this is true in the case of sins that can become known to him in the court of justice, of which sort are public ones.
b. In the Time of the Gospel Law after Lateran Council IV
34. If the third member [nn.18, 21] be held to, namely that confession falls only under a precept of the Church, it cannot be rejected easily save either because the Church would not have accepted the imposition of so hard a precept on Christian men if it were not a divine precept; or because there is no place found where this precept is imposed by the Church without this being before the time the saints reckoned a precept about confession was obligatory. For if the chapter from Gregory IX, Decretals V tit.38 ch.12, ‘About penances and remissions’, be alleged, it is clear that that chapter is from Innocent III in the [Fourth] Lateran Council [1215 AD].
c. In the Time of the Gospel Law before Lateran Council IV
35. Now before that time, there was for many years, for more than 800 years, the advice of Augustine, and he himself proved that confession is very necessary, as is plain in [Ps. Augustine] On True and False Penitence [in fact Augustine Sermon 392, To the Married, ch.3 n.3, and Expositions on Psalms ps.68 sermon 1 n.19], and certain of his authorities are put in the text [Lombard, Sent. IV d.17 ch.1 nn.8-9] and certain in Gratian [Decretum, p.2 cause 33 q.3, d.5 ch.1, d.6 ch.1]. Nor would a canonist easily find any Council of the Church, or any precept proper, where a precept about making confession, as we are here speaking of it, is expressed.
36. This opinion is held by the glossator, ‘On Penitence’ d.5 at the beginning [Gloss on Gratian’s Decretum, p.2 cause 33 q.3, d.5 ch.1], where, after reciting diverse opinions about the institution of confession, he adds his own saying, “The better statement is that it was instituted by a certain universal tradition of the Church rather than from the authority of the New and Old Testaments.”
37. But, saving his grace, he speaks unreasonably as a canonist. For it would be unseemly for a theologian to say that something is in the Bible and not know where it is found; and so should it to be for a canonist to say that something was instituted by the universal tradition of the Church and not to find it in Canon [Law] if Canon [Law] sufficiently contain the universal traditions of the Church. Now he does not allege any chapter of Canon [Law] for this tradition, but he only afterwards adds that “the tradition of the Church is obligatory” [Gloss on Gratian’s Decretum p.2 cause 33 q.3, d.5 ch.1], and for this he alleges the article ‘In these things’ in d.11 [Gratian, Decretum p.1 d.11 ch.1, “In these things, about which nothing certain has been established by divine Scripture, the custom of the people of God and the institutes of the ancestors are to be held as law”].
38. Again, if this opinion were true, the Pope would not be bound to confess because, as is contained in Boniface VIII Decretals Book Six V tit.12 ch.3, “an equal has no command over an equal.”51
Again, it would not seem that infidels were bound to the precept about confession, because according to the Apostle I Corinthians 5.12, “For what have I do to judge them that are without?”52
39. However, the glossator hints at an argument for his opinion of this sort: confession is not necessary among the Greeks; but it would be necessary if the precept about it came from the authority of Sacred Scripture [sc. therefore the precept does not come from the authority of Scripture].
40. But the antecedent is not manifest; for just as baptism of water is necessary among them as the first plank (as also for us), so too (as it seems) is penitence, indeed the sacrament of penitence counts as the second plank [cf. supra d.14 n.13].
41. And if the antecedent is proved because there is no custom of confessing among them - I reply: the Greeks omitted many laudable customs after they departed from the Church, and so they could omit this custom, a custom not only laudable but necessary. Nor does the denial of that act introduce a custom. Nor is what he himself takes as antecedent, namely ‘that they are not bound [to confess]’, so known for Greeks but that their not confessing is not known the more.53 And this [sc. the Greeks not confessing] is not expressed anywhere by any doctor who was writing against their other abuses, although however there would have been a noteworthy disagreement with the Roman Church if in this they had disagreed - more noteworthy, to be sure, than their confecting [the Eucharist] in fermented bread, or their using this form of baptizing, ‘may the servant of Christ be baptized etc.’, about which the Latins do not keep silent.