Excerpt from God's Confessional, or Man's: Which Shall It Be? Let us hear the words of one who is boldly advocating the necessity of this kind of absolution. We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul as the gates of hell opened upon him, and he beheld the doors of the shadow of death. And we cast him in bound hand and foot, having first, with cruelkindness, stupified him with the dram-drinking of a false assurance apparently by directing to rely only upon the Saviour) when we might have loosed him and let him go. We are verily guilty concerning our brother! We have let the sin of his youth fester in his conscience and poison his whole Spiritual life, when as good physicians we should have probed the wound, extracted the deleterious matter, and healed with the absolving blood. Nay: is it so? Is this the guilt that lies at the door of Christ's ministers? Is it that we have failed to demand a revelation to us of all the evil that has dwelt within the breast? Is it that we have never lifted up the right hand and pro claimed, I absolve thee? Then are we content to share this guilt with Christ's chosen Apostles, for never did they thus act and speak. We are content to share it with all noble-hearted ministers of the Cross, who endured such fearful persecutions in the early days of Christianity. We are content to stand where Paul and Peter and John stood, hiding ourselves behind Him of whom we testify, and desiring that men should turn their eyes from the human instrumentality, if they will but Be hold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. But what saith our second witness? What is the voice of our Reformed Church? Is there any uncertainty in her testimony? Surely none, if we are willing honestly to look into the matter. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.