These wise words were fully endorsed by Lord Salisbury, who,
in a most impressive speech, regretted the spread of the practice of habitual confession. "Bat," said Lord Salisbury,
"remember you are dealing with a spiritual matter, and I very much doubt whether Parliament will find that its powers are adequate to accomplish the end which I believe the enormous mass of the people desire. If there were any means of repressing or discouraging the practioe of habitual con- fession, such means would deserve all our consideration. I fear, however, that you are undertaking an effort to coerce consciences which greater powers even than the British Parliament have failed to effect, and that you are more likely to increase the disease than to stop it." This is a powerful and most noteworthy statement of the bed-rock fact which underlies the whole of the present controversy. You can only fight a spiritual battle with spiritual weapons. Lord Salisbury ended with the declaration : "It is for them [i.e., the clergy] to teach their flocks—and they cannot do it too earnestly or too often—the evils which may attend habitual and systematic secret confession. But let us be careful lest we hinder their work and prevent them from doing that which it is their proper charge to carry out, by bringing in the arm of the flesh, which never yet beat down a religious error and has often made the evil worse than before." Much as we hate the confessional, our hope of purging the Church from systematised, habitual, and un- spontaneous confession is through more light and greater vigilance by the milers of the Church and by the laity, and not through actions at law.
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