Excerpt from A Treatise on the History of Confession Until It Developed Into Auricular Confession A. D. 1215 To my brethren, the Clergy and lay-members of the Christian Church, I offer this Treatise on the History of Confession in the hope that, by following the sequence of the authorities in the Church, they may gain a more sure and correct knowledge of the doctrine of Confession as to the occasion of its practice during the first twelve centuries and to the lack of any necessity during that period of revealing to a Priest all the evil thoughts and lesser sins, of which a member of the society of Christians may have been guilty. I have endeavoured to put forward facts of history rather than theories, based upon the teaching of the Church which gained ascendancy in subsequent ages. I have carefully verified all the passages put forward except the few marked with an asterisk. 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.