Note 513 — Chapter IX · PROBLEMS OF THE ARABIAN CULTURE (C) PYTHAGORAS, MOHAMMED, CROMWELL
Charles Francis Atkinson translation
Hence it is that this sacrament has conferred a position of such immense power upon the Western priest. He receives the personal confession, and speaks personally, in the name of the Infinite, the absolution, without which life would be unbearable.
The notion of confession as a duty, which was finally established in 1215, first arose in England, whence came also the first confession-books (Penitentials). In England, too, originated, the idea of the Immaculate Conception, and even the idea of the Papacy—at a time when Rome itself thought of it as a question of power and precedence. It is evidence of the independence of Faustian Christianity from Magian that its decisive ideas grew up in those remote parts of its field which lay beyond the Frankish Empire.