(Roman Catholic Church) the act of a penitent disclosing his sinfulness before a priest in the sacrament of penance in the hope of absolution

Usage examples of confession.

I do not confess anything to him because I did not examine my conscience sufficiently, and I answered him that I had nothing to say, but that if he liked I would commit a few sins for the purpose of having something to tell him in confession.

PRE-REFORMERS The men who, in later ages, claimed for their ancestors a Protestantism older than the Augsburg Confession, referred its origins not to the mystics nor to the humanists, but to bold leaders branded by the church as heretics.

In effect this allowed the government of every German state to choose between the two confessions, thus anticipating the principle of the Religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555.

As Contarini had found in the statements of the Augsburg Confession no insuperable obstacle to an understanding he was astonished at the stress laid on them by the Protestants now.

A truce between states recognizing the Augsburg Confession and Catholic states until union was possible.

The Saxon colonists in this state welcomed the Reformation, formally recognizing the Augsburg Confession in a synod of 1572.

He would have greatly liked to have seen the Peace of Augsburg, now the public law of the Empire, extended to the Low Countries, but this was made difficult even to advocate because the Peace of Augsburg provided liberty only for the Lutheran confession, whereas the majority of Protestants in the Netherlands were now Calvinists.

Practically nothing was defined save what had already been taken up in the Augsburg Confession or in the writings of Calvin, of Zwingli and of the Anabaptists.

Late that night, after most of the household had gone to bed, I sat before the fire in the great hall at Belvidere, copying out the confession that I had taken down.

Sometimes a little nudge brings an easy confession, sometimes it catalyzes uncrackable resolve.

It undoubtedly excludes from the Apostolic age the independent authority of any christological dogma besides that confession and the worship of Christ connected with it.

Since Misskelley had retracted his confession and, presumably, would not be testifying against his codefendants, his trial had to be severed from theirs.

The fact that Dupree was not in full command of his mental faculties is an astonishing confession from a man whose reputation was built upon a computerlike mind.

I am also able to take last statements or confessions of any counterrevolutionary activities, names, places.

Even the physician can but suspect, till time develops more fully by hysterias, epilepsies, spinal irritations, and a train of symptoms unmistakable even if the finally extorted confession of the poor victim did not render the matter clear.