Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/139

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 121 temporal as well as spiritual, which they no longer de- CHAP. rived from the gi'eat society of christians. But ahnost all those who had reluctantly yielded to the power of vice or idolatry, were sensible of their fallen condition, and anxiously desirous of being restored to the benefits of the christian connnunion. With regard to the treatment of these penitents, two opposite opinions, the one of justice, the other of mercy, divided the primitive church. The more rigid and inflexible casuists refused them for ever, and with- out exception, the meanest place in the holy commu- nity which they had disgraced or deserted ; and leaving them to the remorse of a guilty conscience, inciulged them only with a faint ray of hope, that the contrition of their life and death might possibly be accepted by the Supreme Being s. A milder sentiment was em- braced, in practice as well as in theory, by the purest and most respectable of the christian churches ''. The jrates of reconciliation and of heaven were seldom shut against the returning penitent ; but a severe and solemn form of discipline was instituted, which, while it served to expiate his crime, might powerfully deter the spec- tators from the imitation of his example. Humbled by Public a public confession, emaciated by fasting, and clothed P'^"^ in sackcloth, the penitent lay prostrate at the door of the assembly, imploring with tears the pardon of his ofiences, and soliciting the prayers of the faithful If the fault was of a very heinous nature, whole years of penance were esteemed an inadequate satisfaction to the divine justice ; and it was always by slow and pain- ful gradations that the sinner, the heretic, or the apos- tate, was readmitted into the bosom of the church. A sentence of perpetual excommunication was, however, reserved for some crimes of an extraordinary magni- 8 The Montanists and the Novatians, who adhered to this opinion with the greatest rigoui' and obstinacy, found themselves at last in the number of excommunicated heretics. See tiie learned and copious Mosheim, Secul. ii. and iii. '' Dionysius, ap. Euseb. iv. 23 ; Cyprian de Lapsis. ' Cave's Primitive Christianity, part iii. c. 5. The admirers of antiquity regret the loss of this public penance. lance.