ABSOLUTION. To absolve is " to set free from " or " to acquit." Absolution is the act of pronouncing a person free from sin or penalty. According to the Christian idea of God, God Himself is strictly the only one who can do this. The Church, however, has taught that God deputed ministers, in the first instance the Apostles, to act for him. The crucial passage in the Bible is John xx., 23, " Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." The origin and precise meaning of these words have been disputed. But In any case cer tain Church practices and doctrines have been connected with them. In the early days of the Christian Church anyone who had Incurred its censure was required to do public penance involving exclusion from the Lord's Table. This having been duly performed, he was ab solved publicly by Bishop and clergy, and re-admitted to Communion. In course of time and by slow degrees it came about that the sinner confessed privately to a priest and received from him alone the requisite absolution.
At the Reformation the Church of England is commonly supposed to have renounced this practice. It cannot be denied, however, that there are passages in the Book of Common Prayer (the Holy Communion and Ordination Services) which do not altogether favour this view. In the Roman Catholic Church the practice has been main tained and elaborated. It has had, at least from 1215 (Innocent III.), a Tribunal of Penance, and has made the Sacrament of Penance consist of (1) Contrition or Attrition, (2) Confession, (3) Satisfaction, (4) Absolution. Confession is made In secret to the priest. The absolu tion afterwards pronounced by a duly authorised or delegated priest is a judicial act or sentence. There is a prescribed form of absolution in the Roman Ritual : " I absolve thee from thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." See Prot. Dict.; Oath. Diet.