Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume XIV/Additional Canons 1/The Council of Ancyra/Canons/Canon VIII

Canon VIII.

those who have twice or thrice sacrificed under compulsion, be prostrators four years, and communicate without oblation two years, and the seventh year they shall be received to full communion.

Notes.

Whoever has sacrificed a second or third time, but has been led thereto by force, shall be a prostrator for seven years.

This canon shews how in the Church it was a received principle that greater penances ought to be imposed for the frequent commission of the same crime, and consequently it was then believed that the number of times the sin had been committed should be expressed in confession, that the penance might correspond to the sin, greater or less as the case may be, and the time of probation be accordingly protracted or remitted.