32
POWER OF THE KEYS
PEJLTORIUM
answer to tlie prayer of the presbyters, and not an instruction to tlie jiiosbyters themselves, seems to be leiniired l)y tlie structure of the sentences. It is parallel in sense to croxrei and iyepeT. If St. James had intended the word to mean that the presbyters were to absolve the man, he would probably have put it in the imperative, like irpoaKoKeaiadu and Tpoaev^iaduiraii. But the forgiveness of God is a blessing granted to the faithful prayers of the pres- byters ; and, in order to encourage such prayers, the apostle proceeds to insist upon the value of tliem. ' Confess therefore your sins one to another, and pray one for another, he says, ' that ye may be healed.' By ' one to another ' he means ' to your fellow-men,' i.e. not to God only. It is clear that he cannot mean mutual confession in the ordinary sen.se of the term, for (!) he assumes that the prayers to which he ascribes such efficacy are those 01 ' righteous men,' not those of men who ' have committed sins ' ; (2) the special object with which the prayers are to be offered (not indeed the contentsof the prayers, which are directly connected ■with forgiveness) is ' that ye may be healed ' (Sttws IdO-QTe) ; if, therefore, the prayers are to be in the strict, sense mutual prayers, it is implied that both parties, praying and prayed for, are alike sick, and the mutual confession would be only between sick man and sick man, which is absurd. Evidently, the sick man is exhorted to make his confession to the presbyters whom he has called in, and they in turn are exhorted to pray for his forgiveness, upon which his recovery is made to depend, and are re- minded what power their prayers have, if only they are what they ought to be. The apostle selects from the OT history the example of one who exer- cised the ' power of the keys ' upon a national scale, bum shutting ' and ' opening' the stores of heaven for his people. Though but ' a man of like passion* with us,' Llijah by his (unrecorded) prayers shut up the rain from his guilty countrymen for three years and a half ; and on their showing signs of repentance, he opened it again for them. We need not therefore w^onder (such is St. James' argu- ment) if, when we confess our sins to beings of the same make as ourselves, their intercession is able to obtain for us the remission of them. (On the rabbinic view of Elijah and the ' Keys,' see Wiinsche, p. 195).
Our accounts of life within the Christian com- munities of the first age are so fragmentary that we cannot be surprised at not finding many refer- ences to the penitential discipline which existed among them. That there should have been some power on earth answering to what was occasionally exhibited even in OT times — as in the absolution of David by Nathan (2 S 12'^) — is only what was to be expected in the covenant of grace. When Chr'st claimed to for;.'ive sins as ' the Son of M.an,' tlie multitudes ' glorified God which had given such authority unto men' (Mt 9"). The last word may mean either that the autliority to absolve was committed by God to men, to use on His behalf ; or that by delegation of such an authority God had besiowed a olessing upon men : in other words, the ' men ' spoken of may be either the holders of tlie authority, or those on whose behalf it was given. 'Jut in either ca.se it was recognized that the assur- ance of forgiveness had been made accessible in anew way ; and Christ, in His first appearance to the assembled Church after His resurrection, gave His disciples to understand that the authority which He had exercised in relation to absolving and re- taining of sins was henceforth vested in them, as the continuators of His own mission (Jn 20-"-). It is not an exhaustive interpretation of these words which would see in them only a commission to iuiposu or to remove ecclesiastical censures. All acta of the Christian society, according to the
NT conception of it, are fraught with spiritual etUcacy.
It may be added that some eminent interpretera consider the ' laying on of hands ' in 1 Ti 5-- to be the sign of absolution (see art. LAYING ON OF Hands); but the interpretation is far from certain. A. J. MASON.
PR^TORIAN GUARD.— See PRiETORlUM.
PR/ETORIDM (Or. ri irpaiTiipioi>). —Th\s Lat. word, adopted in the later Gr., signified originally the general's {prwtor's) tent (e.g. Livy, Hist. vii. 12, X. 33). Then it was applied to the council, com- posed of the chief officers of the army, which assembled in the general's tent {e.g. Livy, Jlist. xxvi. 15, XXX. 5, xxxvii. 5) ; then to the official residence of the governor of a province (e.g. Cic. in Verr. II. iv. 28, II. v. 35 ; Tert. ad Heap. 3) then, in the post-Augustan age, to any princely house (e.g. Juv. Sat. x. 161), and even to a large \Tlla or country-seat (e.g. Suet. Octav. 72, Calig. 37, Tib. 39 ; Juv. Sat. i. 75 ; Statius, Sylv. I. iii. 25) ; and finally to the imperial bodyguard, whose commander was prmfectiis prmtorto cr prcetorii (e.g. Tac. Hist. i. 20, ii. 11, 24, iv. 46; Suet. Nero, 9 ; Pliny, NH xxv. 2). No certain example occurs of its application either to the praetorian camp or barracks or to the emperor's residence in Rome, though it was often used of the emperor's residence away from Rome.