133 



CONFESSION. 



CONFESSION. 



134 



&c. ; these are much more numerous in kind than marmalades or 

 jams. 



Besides the compounds mentioned in thelast paragraph, there are many 

 others to which the attention of the confectioner is directed. Preserved 

 fruits consist of the scarcely ripe fruit, boiled with sugar until the pulp 

 has become thoroughly saturated with the saccharine agent ; apricots, 

 peaches, nectarines, fi^s, greengages, damsons, gooseberries, melons, 

 lemons, oranges, pine-apples, cherries, grapes, currants, barberries, 

 raspberries, pears, quinces, &c.. as well as cucumbers, gherkins, orange 

 or lemon peel, angelica, eringo, and ginger, may be thus treated. 

 Compiles bear some resemblance to the preserved fruits just noticed 

 Brandy fruits are fruits in which brandy as well as sugar is employed 

 as a preserver. Bottled fruits are preserved in wide-mouthed bottles, 

 and have undergone a careful process, by which air and moisture have 

 as much as possible been removed from them. Fruit waters, for 

 beverage, such as lemonade, raspberry-water, &c., in most cases consist 

 of the juice of the fruit, treated with water, syrup, and lemon- juice. 

 Ices are sweetened compounds which have been exposed to the action 

 of a freezing mixture ; they are made from , a large variety of fruits 

 and vegetable substances, and are classed into ice-creams and ice-icaters, 

 according to their consistence some few being ice-custards. A good 

 deal of apparatus, and much practical skill, are required for making 

 ices. Essences such as those of lemon, orange, bergamot, allspice, 

 clove, vanilla, &c. consist of the volatile or essential oils of fruits and 

 other vegetable substances, extracted by means of spirits of wine, with 

 or without distillation. A skilful confectioner possesses a wide range of 

 knowledge in the treatment of liquids. He can distil or obtain spirit 

 from various vegetable substances ; he can extract the essential oils ; 

 he can prepare distilled waters, such as rose-water, cinnamon-water, &c. ; 

 he can make the numerous liqueurs, such as maraschino, kirchwasser, 

 curacoa, &c., by a peculiar application of spirit of wine to vegetable 

 substances; or ratafias, which differ from liqueurs chiefly in being 

 filtered and sweetened instead of distilled. 



A peculiar part of the confectioner's trade is that which appeals to 

 the eye, not to the sense of taste. He has to prepare table-ornaments, 

 that may present much grace and, beauty though cheap in the materials. 

 He must know how to make gum-paste for ornaments ; to prepare a 

 paste that will bear to receive gold or colours on its surface ; to form 

 papier-mache 1 into rocks for a piece monte"e, or into vases, &c. ; to 

 design complicated table ornaments, in which some knowledge of archi- 

 tecture and of sculpture may come to his aid ; to lay his plans so that 

 the parts of his temples, &c., not intended to be eaten may be made of 

 cork, papier mache', flock, paper, or gum paste, while the rest may 

 comprise any of the sweetmeats which it is his trade to produce. The 

 confectioner must also know how to prepare colours, and to combine 

 them with his confections in proper kind and degree. 



When the confectioner makes cakes and other articles in which 

 flour is used, and which require the process of baking in an oven, he 

 does so ae a pastrycook, not as a confectioner. 



The cheap confectionary now so largely sold in England has long 

 been suspected of being adulterated ; the price at which it is sold not 

 being sufficient to pay for an honest course of dealing. Plaster and 

 other substances are often used with the sugar ; and poisonous dye- 

 stuffs or pigments a/e used us colouring agents. Cases have been re- 

 ported by medical practitioners, of children being poisoned by eating 

 uch sweetmeats. Towards the close of the year 1858, about twenty 

 persons died, and two hundred were more or less injured, in and near 

 Bradford, in Yorkshire, by eating sweetmeats ; the maker thought he 

 was using " daff," an adulterating preparation of plaster of Paris, as a 

 cheap substitute for sugar ; instead of which, through a mistake at a 

 druggist's shop, be was using white arsenic. 



An ingenious machine for making lozenges has lately been introduced 

 by Messrs. Chase of Birmingham. A ball of prepared sugar, flavoured 

 with the vegetable ingredient which may be selected, is worked up to 

 the consistence of soft dough, and rolled on a board to the thickness of 

 ordinary pie-crust. It is then laid upon a band, which carries it 

 between a pair of rollers, after which it is flattened and passed through 

 other rollers, until reduced to the thickness of a lozenge. The thin 

 layer goes again upon the band, and is by it conveyed underneath a 

 row of stamps. These stamps bear a motto, name, or other device, 

 as may be chosen. The layer is then punched out by circular or other 

 shaped cutters, which throw off clean glossy lozenges. The machine 

 can produce three hundred pounds weight of lozenges in an hour. 



N FESSION means a solemn acknowledgment of some principle 

 or fact. Hence the early Christians, who suffered imprisonment and 

 other penalties from the Roman magistrates for having publicly de- 

 clared their belief in the gospel, were called confessors. Others, in 

 later times, acquired the some title from having embraced a life of 

 austerity, or retired to some solitude or convent to do penance for their 

 ins. Confession thug became synonymous with penitence, in which 

 sense both words are understood by the Roman Catholics. The prac- 

 tice of confessing one's sins, either in public before the congregation of 

 the faithful, or privately to a priest, dates undoubtedly from the 

 earliest ages of the Church. In those times the Christians, scattered 

 about the Roman world, and exposed to persecution, formed m.-my 

 small communities, living under the discipline of their presbyters, who 

 knew every individual of their respective flocks, the members of which 

 watched carefully over each other's conduct. Any gross irregularity, 



or any compliance with heathen rites by one of the flock, was sure to 

 be known to the rest, and the offender was thereby subject to inter- 

 diction from Christian worship and communion. If he wished to be 

 re-admitted to the communion of the Church, he must publicly 

 acknowledge and repent of his guilt, and submit to the penance 

 imposed by the presbyter. This appears to have been the original mode 

 of confession. It does not seem to be clearly determined when the 

 practice of private, or "auricular," was substituted for pub ,c, con- 

 fession. Cyprian, who lived towards the middle of the thir I < < ntury 

 (' Epist.,' Rom. 12), defines several kinds of sins for which penance 

 ought to be done before the transgressor could be admitted to the 

 communion ; and in his treatise, ' De Lapsis in Persecutionibus,' he 

 exhorts those who have fallen into heathen practices to confess their 

 sins to the ministers of God, and thus unburthen their souls of their 

 weight, " because this satisfaction and the remission by the priest are 

 acceptable to God." Tertulliau, who lived at the beginning of the same 

 century, says (' De Posnitentia,' ch. ix.) that penitence consists of three 

 parts, confession, contrition, and satisfaction. In the eastern churches 

 the custom of confessing sins before the assembled congregation was 

 prevalent down to the fourth century ; but the practice having led to 

 scandal, especially on the occasion of a lady revealing that she had been 

 seduced by a deacon, Nacterius, patriarch of Constantinople, abolished 

 the custom, and removed the pcenitentiarius or priest (' qui prsepositus 

 erat poenitentise ') by whose advice the revelation had taken place. 

 (Sozomen, ' Histor.,' lib. vii.) Some passages in Chrysostom have been 

 urged against the obligatory practice of confession. In Homily 11, he 

 says, " God commands that to him alone we should give account of our 

 conduct, and to him we should confess ;" which agrees with the prin- 

 ciple and practice of the Protestant and reformed churches. Yet in his 

 Homily of the Samaritan woman, he says, " He who blushes now to 

 reveal his sins to a man, and will not confess, at the last day will be 

 arraigned, not before one or two persons, but before the whole world.' 

 In the fifth century, Pope St. Leo I., called the Great (' Epist.' Rom. 

 Ixxx., ch. v.), says that the priests ought not to enforce " public con- 

 fession of secret sins," but that it is enough if the penitent confess 

 them privately to a priest. This passage seems to throw some light on 

 the transition from public to private confession. When, and under 

 what circumstances, confession, either public or private, was deemed 

 absolutely necessary for the remission of sins, is another subject of 

 controversy. Innocent III., in the fourth Lateran council, A. D. 1215 

 (Canon 21), made confession (meaning auricular or private) obligatory 

 upon every adult person once a year, and that continues to be one of 

 the rules of the Roman Catholic church to the present day, which 

 numbers penitence among the sacraments. The Council of Trent, in 

 its catechism, defines it to be " a, declaration by the penitent of his 

 sins, made to a priest, in order to receive the penance and absolution." 

 Penitence, therefore, consists of four parts, confession, contrition, abso- 

 lution, and penance ; and it is a positive doctrine of the same Church, 

 that without the concurrence of all these parts or conditions, the sacra- 

 ment is null and void. The penitent is also obliged to confess all the 

 sins that he can recollect having committed and not confessed before, 

 at least all the mortal sins, for Roman Catholic dogmatists draw a dis- 

 tinction between mortal and venial sins. By contrition it is meant 

 that the penitent should fully repent of his guilt, and form at the same 

 time a firm resolution not to sin again, without which repentance and 

 resolution the absolution of the priest is of no avail, being always con- 

 ditional upon a corresponding disposition on the part of the penitent. 

 It is not therefore true, as it is often erroneously stated, that the priest 

 can absolve from any sins by merely pronouncing the words, " Ego te 

 absolve," &c. ; it is the penitent who, by his contrition and trust in the 

 merits of the Saviour only, can give effect to the words of the priest, 

 and in this respect the principle is common to all the Christian 

 churches, except the formula of the absolution, which differs in some, 

 while others omit it altogether. [ABSOLUTION.] The indispensable 

 condition for obtaining absolution is often explained and inculcated 

 Erom the pulpits and chairs of theology hi Roman Catholic countries, 

 though it happens of course that ignorant or weak people overlook or 

 misconceive the absolute necessity of inward contrition, and think that 

 by merely confessing their sins and reciting the formula of repentance 

 with their lips, they have acquitted themselves of their part, and that 

 ;he priest can do the rest. Again, the priest absolves " a culpa, sed non 

 a pcena ;" he removes the guilt, but not the punishment, here or here- 

 after; and accordingly Roman Catholics admit a purgatory. The 

 penance which the priest imposes consists generally of satisfaction to be 

 given if the penitent has injured any one in his property, honour, &c., 

 in a manner that can admit of reparation, and also of prayers, absti- 

 nence, or other religious practices to be performed. The secrecy im- 

 posed on confessors is strict and unconditional ; whatever be the crime 

 of which a penitent may accuse himself, they are solemnly bound to 

 keep it secret, under the most severe denunciations and penalties, both 

 here and hereafter, that of excommunication ipso facto included. Not- 

 withstanding the number of individuals who have exercised the office 

 of confessors all over the Roman Catholic world, and the manifold 

 temptations to which they are exposed, there are few authenticated 

 instances of their having betrayed their trust. That there may be 

 other inconveniences likely to result from private confession, is another 

 question, which it is not our business to discuss. Every priest is not a 

 confessor, although every incumbent of a parish is. The qualifications 



