Confession and Absolution | Page 7

the ministry consisted in pronouncing judicial sentence of pardon on those who had shown repentance and had confessed their grievous sins. Religious strife in this case produces the interesting evidence that, as early as the second and third centuries, Confession and Absolution were held and practised as necessary for the pardoning of sin under the Christian dispensation.
4. The Penitential Canons of the first ages of the Church are another evidence to the doctrine of Absolution and Confession. The Apostolic Constitutions,[35] and Tertullian,[36] give us a picture of the severe penitential discipline to which sinners were subjected. Many painful circumstances obliged the Church modify and almost abrogate these public penances.
The accounts of the suppression given by the historians, Socrates and Zozomen, afford ample proof of confession made publicly, of the retaining of certain deadly crimes until a long time had been spent in rigid penitential exercises, and, lastly, of the absolution finally granted by bishops and priests.
These authors, as well as many who come after them, are clear in discriminating between the public confession, which is a matter of discipline, and confession the necessary condition for the pardon of sin. "Since," says Zozomen, the Greek ecclesiastical historian of the fifth century, "it is absolutely necessary to confess our sins in order to receive the pardon of them, it was thought too onerous and too painful to exact that this confession should be made in public, as in a theatre."
5. We may now turn to the writings of the Fathers of the first five centuries. It will be seen that throughout, when treating of the forgiveness of sin, it is always assumed that the priests of Holy Church were endowed with the power of absolution, and exercised it on those who had sinned after baptism. The sacrament of pardon is constantly referred to under different names: "penance," "confession," "absolution," "exomologesis," "reconciliation," "the second baptism," "the laborious baptism," "the second plank after the shipwreck." Of these, "exomologesis" occurs very frequently. Its meaning varies: at one time it signifies manifestation of sin, whether in private or in public, and at another it expresses the public penance and confession in vogue in the first ages of the Church.
At the end of the first century, St. Clement of Rome, the third Pope after St. Peter, who died in the year one hundred, and whom St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Philippians, numbers among "his fellow-laborers whose names are in the book of life," writes, in the Second Epistle ascribed to him and addressed to the Corinthians: "As long as we are in this world, let us repent with our whole heart of the evil deeds which we have done in the flesh, that we may be saved by the Lord whilst we have time for repentance. For after that we have gone forth from this world, we are no longer able to confess or repent there."[37]
In the middle of the second century, appeared the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," causing, at this moment, no small attention in the religious world. Its date is variously stated from 120 to 160 A. D. To it does St. Clement of Alexandria, who lived into the second decade of the third century, make reference. The text, together with a translation, is now published. Therein (Chap. IV) do we read: "Thou shalt by no means forsake the Lord's commandments, but shalt guard what thou hast received, neither adding thereto nor taking therefrom. In the Church thou shalt confess thy transgressions, and thou shalt not come forward for thy prayer with an evil conscience." And again (Chap. XIV): "But on the Lord's Day do ye assemble and break bread, and give thanks, after confessing your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure."
In the latter part of the second century, the pupil of the great St. Polycarp, St. Iren?us, Bishop of Lyons, born about 120 A. D., and who died in 202, writing against the Valentinians and certain Gnostics led by Marcus, states explicitly that many of the women who had been led into heresy and impurity, and who afterwards returned to the Church, confessed even publicly, and wept over their defilement. "But others, ashamed to do this, and in some manner secretly despairing within themselves of the life of God, apostatized entirely."[38]
The same writer, styled "the Light of the Western Gauls," mentions that "Cordon who appeared before Marcion, he also under Hyginus, the eighth bishop, having come into the Church and confessing, thus completed his career."
In the last decade of the second century, and in the first twenty years of the third century, the famed Tertullian, who was born at Carthage about the year 160, and who lived and labored in Rome and North Africa, ending his life, it is variously stated, from 220 to 240, wrote, before joining the Montanist