Commentaria in Leviticum
Hence you may see here again a type and figure of the priestly confession of the new law, as also of satisfaction, in what is added: “According to the measure . . .”; if the offence were grave, the offerer gave a better ram; if light, a cheaper one of less price, at the judgment and discretion of the priest to whom he confessed the offence, as Josephus says; for those words allow no other sense unless they be wrenched. See what was said on chapter 5, verse 18. The priest was here, then, as a judge, the sinner was the accused and his own accuser, his satisfaction was present, and the priest’s prayer was present, which was in place of absolution.
“He that hideth his sins shall not prosper; but he that shall confess and forsake them shall obtain mercy,” says the Wise Man, Proverbs 28:13.
St. Augustine on that of Psalm 31:5, “I have made known my sin to thee”: “I covered it not,” he says, “but laid it open, that thou mightest cover it; I hid it not, that thou mightest cover it. For when man uncovers, God covers; when man hides, God lays bare; when man acknowledges, God forgives.” “Confession,” says Tertullian, in the book On Penance, “extinguishes hell.” And below: “The sinner, knowing the confession instituted for him by the Lord, will he pass by that which restored the Babylonian king to his kingdom? When thou stretchest thyself to the knees of the brethren, thou touchest Christ, thou entreatest Christ.” Hear what Paulinus writes in the Life of St. Ambrose, hearing the confessions of his people privately: “Whenever anyone, to receive penance, had confessed his falls to him, he wept so that he compelled the other to weep; he seemed to himself to lie down with the fallen. But the causes of the crimes which they confessed to him he spoke of to no one but the Lord alone, with whom he interceded.” St. Pacian in the Exhortation to Penitents: “You, brethren,” he says, “I address, who after shamelessness are timid, after sins bashful, who blush not to sin, and blush to confess. I beg you by that Lord whom hidden things deceive not, cease to cover a wounded conscience; the sick prudently fear not their physicians, though they are to cut even in hidden parts, though to burn.”
St. Chrysostom, homily 33 on John: “I exhort you, dearly beloved,” he says, “that, though no one see our works, each enter his own conscience, and set reason as judge over himself, and bring his errors into the open, unless they would have them manifest to the whole world on that dreadful day.” John Climacus, step 4: “Before all things,” he says, “let us confess our faults to our glorious judge alone, and be ready to confess to all if he command.” And he adds that without confession made to man none can obtain remission.
Do you want the fruit of confession and examples? Astion the Martyr, as his Life has it, was cured by confession of a foul thought, and the devil departed from him in the form of a black boy with a fiery torch, saying: “Thy confession, O Astion, has crushed my great strength, and left me unarmed.”
St. Macarius, by confessing his own sins to Theopemptus, who was ashamed to confess, drove him to confession, and freed him from the temptation of blasphemies and from the devil. St. Ignatius did the same. For at Paris, confessing the sins of his youth to a certain impure priest with great contrition and many tears, he likewise moved him to tears and confession.
Serapion in Cassian, Conference 2, chapter 11, being wont to steal a little loaf to satisfy his gluttony, having publicly confessed this very thing, was for ever freed from all temptation of gluttony and theft. For a demon in the form of a lamp was seen to go out from his bosom, and filled the whole cell with stench. “Nothing, then,” says Cassian, “is so harmful to monks, and gladdens demons, as if spiritual fathers conceal their thoughts.”
Another, tempted to fornication for 14 years, when with constant abstinence he could not overcome it, at length by publicly confessing it overcame it. “Confession,” says St. Isidore, book 2, chapter 12, “heals, confession justifies, confession grants pardon to sins. No fault is so grave but that by confession it has pardon.”
Nay Hugh, in his book On the Cloister of the Soul, dares to say: “If a demon came to the chapter of confession (if, namely, he could seriously repent, be contrite and confess), he would obtain the indulgence of remission. Satan was expelled from the chapter of heaven, Adam from the chapter of paradise, Judas from the chapter of Christ. In the first was the fault of pride, in the second of disobedience, in the third of avarice,” which none of them would acknowledge and confess.
Hear the Gentiles too. Seneca, in his book On Manners: “Where there is confession,” he says, “there is remission.” Pythagoras said that sins are not to be covered with words but uncovered, that they may be cured by reproofs. Aristotle said that he who confessed a sin as is fitting is not far from being sinless. Maximus is witness, sermon On Confession.
Attila, asked by St. Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who he was who, having conquered so many kings, subdued all things to himself, confessed and said: “I am Attila king of the Huns, the scourge of God.”
Creusa in Euripides’ Ion, to soothe the stings of her scourging conscience by confession, disclosed her secret rape.
Verses 4 and 5. He shall restore all that he would have gotten by fraud.—“To get” is to retain; for if he only wished and coveted another’s property, and did not obtain it, he is not bound to restitution: for for an internal act no restitution is to be made, nor ever was; but only for another’s property taken away, or damage actually done to another, as is plain from the Hebrew. Restitution of what is another’s is enjoined here, lest anyone think that by sacrifice alone he can appease God, and having done so, retain what is another’s, and enrich himself from the plunder; which was the error of some Greeks, according to Guido the Carmelite.
And the fifth part besides.—The sinner is commanded to add this, both for the injury, and for the damage which the owner meanwhile suffered from the absence of his property.
Verse 6. And for his sin he shall offer a ram.—Note: Moses, in sins committed through ignorance, commanded the commoner to offer a she-goat; but here, in sins committed knowingly, commands the same man to offer a ram, which is better and more precious than a she-goat: as a sin committed with knowledge is greater than a sin committed through ignorance. Moses does not mention here the pontiff, or the prince, or the whole people, because he presupposes that these will not sin knowingly. So Solon, asked why he had not appointed a penalty for parricide, answered that he had thought no one would do it, lest he should seem not so much to forbid as to suggest it. If, however, it should happen that a pontiff, prince or the whole people sinned knowingly, God willed that they too be visited with the penalties of the lowest men, and offer the same sacrifices as they, that they might be equal in penalty to those whom they were not superior to in virtue . So Ribera, book 4 On the Temple, chapter 6.
Verse 9. This is the law of the holocaust—the perpetual one, namely; for God commanded two lambs to be offered Him daily continually in holocaust, one in the morning, the other in the evening, as is plain from Numbers 28:3. Hence one is called the morning one, because in the morning it was offered first, before all other sacrifices; the other the evening one, because it was offered in the evening and last: the one for the daily, the other for the nightly benefits of God, says Philo. See what was said on Exodus 29:38.
Note: As in chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4, Moses described the rite of immolating, first, the holocaust; second, the mincha; third, the peace-victim; fourth, the victim for sin: so in this chapter he describes what is to be done with each victim, namely what is to be burnt and what eaten; in this verse, then, he writes of the holocaust; in verse 14, of the mincha; in verse 25, of the victim for sin; in the following chapter, verse 11, of the peace-victim.
Tropologically Hesychius: The priest, he says, and he who wishes to be perfectly wise, ought to be a constant and continual holocaust of perfection, that beginning from perfect wisdom in the morning of age and youth, he may end it in the evening of his old age and life.