(b) The very fact, that sin is committed essentially against God, is a violation of his law, implies that no other being, not even an angel or archangel, much less a man, can forgive it, “Against thee, thee only have I sinned,” said the Psalmist, “and done this evil in thy sight.”

(c) The offers of pardon in God’s Word, are all conditional and general, and these alone has the minister the right to proclaim, either to a congregation or to an individual.  The implication of the promise to individuals is made by the Holy Spirit, working faith in the individual, or enabling him to trust in Christ.  “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God,” and this peace is the believer’s evidence, is the Testimony of the Spirit, that our sins are forgiven.

(d) The actual pardon of individuals by God, depends on their possessing the moral fitness required by him.  It is based on their having performed the prescribed moral conditions sincerely, of which none but the Omniscient Jehovah can certainly judge; hence, even the declarative annunciation of pardon to individuals, is not only unauthorized but dangerous.  Because, even if conditionally announced, the formality of the absolution, and the fact that the church has made a special rite of it, are calculated to beget the idea, especially in the unintelligent, that the granting of absolutions by the minister, is proof of the genuineness of their faith, and reality of their pardon.

(e) Finally, the doctrine of ministerial absolution, or the supposed sin-forgiving power of the ministry, is inconsistent with the doctrine, that justification or pardon can be attained only by a living faith in Jesus Christ, a doctrine of cardinal importance in the eyes of the Reformers, and the one which Luther has styled the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae, the doctrine with which the church must stand or fall.”  The Scriptures and also the Reformers, teach that pardon or justification can be obtained only through the merits of Christ, which merits must be apprehended by a living faith, which living faith can be found only in the regenerate or converted soul.  Hence, as none but a regenerate sinner can exercise living faith, no other can be pardoned, whatever else he may do or possess.  Now those who attend confession are either regenerate, or they are not.  If they were regenerated or converted before they went to confession, they had faith, and were pardoned before; if they were unregenerate or unconverted, then neither their confession, nor the priest’s absolution, can confer pardon on them, because they have not a living faith, although they may be sincere and exercise some sorrow for their sins.  On the other hand, if any amount of seriousness and penitence, short of true conversion or regeneration, could, through the confessional, or any other rite, confer pardon of sin; the line of distinction between converted and unconverted, between mere formalists and true Christians would be obliterated; we should have pardoned saints and pardoned sinners in the church, converted and unconverted heirs of the promise, believing and unbelieving subjects of justification, and the words of the Lord Jesus would prove a lie, “That, unless a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven!"-Def.  Platform, p. 25.