have  it  ?  Or,  again,  in  those  most  sorrowful  and  dif-
ficult cases  of  relapse  into  very  grievous  sin,  are  we  to
imitate  the  severity  of  the  Primitive  Church,  without
her  watchful  care  and  tender  love  for  penitents,  and
put  them  off  to  their  sick  or  death-bed,  ere  they  can
be  admitted  again  to  hear  that  sentence  of  pardon,  in
which  they  once  tasted  the  grace  of  God  ?  No  !  the
Church,  our  Mother,  would  not  bring  all  her  children,
with  their  varied  tempers,  needs,  languishings,  sick-
nesses, under  one  rigid,  unbending,  rule.  She  shews,
in  the  Exhortation  to  the  Holy  Communion,  that  she
would  deal,  not  with  laden  consciences  only,  but  with
timorous,  scrupulous,  doubting,  tender,  souls, the  lambs
of  the  flock  of  Christ,  otherwise  than  she  would  with
those  who  seem  to  themselves,  or  are,  the  strong  or
the  whole.  One  thing  only  she  excludes,  when  she
excludes  any  thing,  compulsory  confession  ;  "that6  any
man  should  be  bound  to  the  numbering  of  his  sins  ;"
"as  if,"  adds  Hooker f,  "remission  of  sins  otherwise
were  impossible."  But,  short  of  this,  in  that  Exhorta-
tion, she  strives,  with  an  austere,  anxious  love,  to  rouse
the  conscience,  not  only  as  to  overt,  but  as  to  secret,
mental,  sins,  "  if  any  of  you  be  in  malice,  envy,  or  any
other  grievous  crime  ;"  and  then,  after  words,  which
may  well  shake  the  soul  through  and  through,  f(  lest
after  taking  of  that  Holy  Sacrament,  the  devil  enter

e  Homily  on  repentance.  P.  II.
f  E.  P.  vi.  4.  15,  quoted  in  "Entire  Absolution  of  the  Penitent,"  Serm.  i.  p.
