Such was the state of sentiment on the subject of St. Mary, which the Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite heresies found in the Church; and on which the doctrinal decisions consequent upon them impressed a form and consistency which has been handed on in the Church to this day.

§ 2.

Developments following the Doctrine of Baptism.

1. It is not necessary here to enlarge on the benefits which the primitive Church considered to be conveyed to the soul by means of the Sacrament of Baptism. Its distinguishing gift, which is in point to mention, was the plenary forgiveness of sins past. It was also believed that the Sacrament could not be repeated. The question immediately followed, how was the guilt of such sin to be removed as was incurred after its administration.

This question was felt to be so intimately and acutely personal by the early Christians, that they delayed the rite, as Christians now delay attendance on the Holy Eucharist. Of course it is difficult for us at this day to enter into the assemblage of notions which led to the postponement; other reasons besides a sense of the benefit of the baptismal privilege would concur, such as reluctance to be committed to a rule of life, and fear of the responsibilities which the baptized incur. But so it was, that Infant Baptism, which is happily a fundamental rule of Christian duty with us, was less clearly appreciated in the stupet, amimum non miratur. Pavet cœlum, tremunt Angeli, creatura non sustinet, natura non sufficit; et una puella sic Deum in sui pectoris capit, recipit, oblectat hospitio, ut pacem terris, cœlis gloriam, salutem perditis, vitam mortuis, terrenis cum cœlestibus parentelam, ipsius Dei cum carne commercium, pro ipsâ domûs exigat pensione, pro ipsius uteri mercede conquirat," &c. Serm. 140. St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and St. Cyril of Alexandria sometimes speak, it is true, in a different tone; but this is irrelevant to the argument, as will be seen by pp. 388, 389.

early Church. Even in the fourth century St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Basil, and St. Augustine, with Christian mothers, were not baptized till they were adults. St. Gregory's mother dedicated him to God immediately on his birth; and again when he had come to years of discretion, with the rite of taking the sacred books into his hands by way of consecration. He was religiously-minded from his youth, and had devoted himself to a single life. Yet his baptism did not take place till after he had attended the schools of Cæsarea, Palestine, and Alexandria, and was on his voyage to Athens. He had embarked during the November gales, and for twenty days his life was in danger. He presented himself for baptism as soon as he got to land. St. Basil was the son of Christian confessors on both father's and mother's side. His grandmother Macrina, who brought him up, had for seven years lived with her husband in the woods of Pontus during the Decian persecution. His father was said to have wrought miracles; his mother, an orphan of great personal beauty, was forced from her unprotected state to abandon the hope of a single life, and was conspicuous in matrimony for her care of strangers and the poor, and for her offerings to the Churches. How religiously she brought up her children is shown by the singular blessing, that four out of ten have since been canonized as Saints. St. Basil was one of these; yet the child of such parents was not baptized till he had come to man's estate,-till, according to the Benedictine Editor, his twenty-first, and perhaps his twenty-ninth, year. St. Augustine's mother, who is herself a Saint, was a Christian when he was born, though his father was not. Immediately on his birth, he was made a catechumen; in his childhood he fell ill, and asked for baptism. His mother was alarmed, and was taking measures for his reception into the Church, when he suddenly got better, and it was deferred. He did not receive

baptism till the age of thirty-three, after he had for nine years been a victim of Manichæan error.

Evidently then the position of Baptism in the received system was not the same in the first ages as in later times; and still less was it clearly ascertained in the first three centuries. The problem which required an answer was this, as I have already stated it. Since there was but one Baptism, what could be done for those who had received the one remission of sins, and had sinned since? The primitive Fathers appear to have conceived that the Church was empowered to grant one, and one only, reconciliation after grievous offences; at least this was the practice of the times. Three sins however, at least in the West, seem to have been irremissible, idolatry, murder, and adultery. Such a system of Church discipline, suited as it was to a small community, and even expedient in a time of persecution, could not exist in Christianity, as it spread into the orbis terrarum, and gathered like a net of every kind. A more indulgent rule gradually gained ground; yet the Spanish Church adhered to it even in the fourth century, and a portion of the African in the third, and in the remaining portion there was a relaxation only as regards the crime of incontinence. Meanwhile a protest was made against the growing innovation: at the beginning of the third century Montanus, who was a zealot for the more primitive rule, shrunk from the laxity, as he considered it, of the Asian Churches1; as, in a different subject-matter, Jovinian and Vigilantius were offended at the developments in divine worship in the century which followed. The Montanists had recourse to the See of Rome, and at first with some prospect of success. Again, in Africa, where there had been in the first instance a schism headed by Felicissimus in favour of a milder discipline than St. Cyprian approved, far more formidable stand was soon made in favour of Antiquity, headed by Novatus, who originally had Gieseler, Text-book, vol. i. p. 108.

been of the party of Felicissimus.

This was taken

up at Rome by Novatian, who professed to adhere to the original, or at least the primitive rule of the Church, viz. that those who had once fallen from the faith could in no case be received again.1 The controversy seems to have found the following issue, -whether the Church had the means of pardoning sins committed after Baptism, which the Novatians, at least practically, denied. "It is fitting," says

the Novatian Acesius, "to exhort those who have sinned after Baptism to repentance, but to expect hope of remission, not from the priests, but from God, who hath power to forgive sins."? The schism spread into the East, and led to the appointment of a penitentiary priest in the Catholic Churches. By the end of the third century as many as four degrees of penance were appointed, through which offenders had to pass in order to a reconciliation.

The length and severity of the penance varied with times and places. Sometimes, as we have seen, it lasted, in the case of grave offences, through life, and on to death, without any reconciliation; at other times it ended only in the viaticum; and if, after reconciliation they recovered, their ordinary penance was still binding on them either for life or for a certain time. In other cases it lasted ten, fifteen, or twenty years. But in all cases, from the first, the Bishop had the power of shortening it, and of altering the nature and quality of the punishment. Thus in the instance of the Emperor Theodosius, whom St. Ambrose shut out from communion for the massacre at Thessalonica, "according to the mildest rules of ecclesiastical discipline, which were established in the fourth century," says Gibbon, "the crime of homicide was expiated by the penitence of twenty years; and as it was impossible, in the period of human life, to purge the accumulated guilt of the massacre . . the murderer should have been excluded from the holy communion 'Gieseler, ibid. p. 164.

2 Socr. Hist. i. 10.

till the hour of his death." He goes on to say that the public edification which resulted from the humiliation of so illustrious a penitent was a reason for abridging the punishment. "It was sufficient that the Emperor of the Romans, stripped of the ensigns of royalty, should appear in a mournful and suppliant posture, and that, in the midst of the Church of Milan, he should humbly solicit with sighs and tears the pardon of his sins." His pen

ance was shortened to an interval of about eight months. Hence arose the phrase of a "pœnitentia legitima, plena, et justa;" which signifies a penance sufficient, perhaps in length of time, perhaps in intensity of punishment.

If

2. Here a serious question presented itself to the minds of Christians, which was now to be wrought out:-Were these punishments merely signs of contrition, or in any sense satisfactions for sin? the former, they might be absolutely remitted at the discretion of the Church, as soon as true repentance was discovered; the end had then been attained, and nothing more was necessary. Thus St. Chrysostom says in one of his Homilies, "I require not continuance of time, but the correction of the soul. Show your contrition, show your reformation, and all is done." Yet, though there might be a reason of the moment for shortening the penance imposed by the Church, this does not at all decide the question whether that ecclesiastical penance be not part of an expiation made to the Almighty Judge for the sin; and supposing this really to be the case, the question follows, How is the complement of that satisfaction to be wrought out, which on just grounds of present expedience has been suspended by the Church now?

As to this question, it cannot be doubted that the Fathers considered penance as not a mere 1 Hom. 14, in 2 Cor. fin.