arus : the siimer, like Lazarus, is dead, and, so to speak, rests spellbound in the grave ; Mercy awakens him, and restores him to life by w<junding him inwardly, and, amid great pain, brings him to a consciousness of his offences ; upon Slercy's call he arises, like Lazarus, from the grave, and comes to light, bowed down by his guilt, and, with an acknowledgment to the bishop, seeks the means of salvation in the jiractice of penance ; he is at last freed by the activity of the priests, as Lazarus was freed by the disciples. This picture we find, from this time forward, in most representations of the penance- process, down to the Middle Ages; and especially did the Yictorinians form their conception of absolution upon it. If in this picture the act of loosing can only designate the united action of the Church on the fallen, viz. the imposition of penance, intercession, the removal of excommunication, and the admission to the means of grace, it would seem that in other places Augustine holds that the forgiveness of sin is to be mediated by the Church ; yet even here he does not speak of the Church as a professed institution of mercy, but rather the community of saints, or of the predestined, by whom the Spirit of God performs its work. Thus lie says {Serm. 99, cap. 9) : " The Spirit forgives, not the Church ; this Spirit is God. God dwells in his temple, i. e. in his saintly believers, in his -C'hurch, and he forgives sin by this agency, because it is the living temple." But even this forgiveness is considered only as the fruit of pray- ers pleasing to God, and therefore answered by him. While, therefore, Augustine traces forgiveness in recon- ciliation mainly to the prayerful intercession of the faithful, Leo the Great argues that the priests alone are specific intercessors for the fallen, and that without their intercession forgiveness cannot bo secured (''nt indid- gentia nisi supidicationibus sacerdotura nequeat obtiiie- ri"). He bases this exclusive intercession prerogative of the priests upon the fact that the Saviour, according to his promise (Matt, xxviii, 29), which Leo refers sim- ply to the clerus, always assists the action of his priests, I and that he makes them the channel of his spiritual gifts (£>). 82, al. 108 ; ad Theod. cap. 2). It is thus that the Catholic notion of the clerical priesthood, which, independent of the laity, communicates God's mercy, and regards this mediatorship as essential, has taken definite shape; and what has been added in later times is simply a more complete or perfect development of the idea as it originated with Leo. But even he does not make the assertion that the priest, instead of being a mediator by prayer for forgiveness, has himself the au- thority, by virtue of his office, to absolve from sin.
We do not possess an absolution-fonnula of the first ages of the Church, but we have every reason to sup- pose, upon the premises stated, that it could only have been deprecative. Augustine even denounced the ex- pression " I forgive thj^ sins," of the Donatists, as heret- ical {Serm. 99, c. 7-9). If, in our last allusion to the reconciliation of the siimer by means of prayerful inter- cession, the priest alone seemed to be entitled to be dep- recator, we find a very different view was entertained by other Church fathers. In accordance with Lev. xiv, 2, Jerome says that the priests cannot make the leper clean, nor the reverse; they can simply distinguish be- tween the clean and the unclean (Comm. in J\I nit . lib. iii). Not understanding, therefore, JNIatt. xvi, 19 to con- cede to the bishops and the elders any other power, it follows that he concedes to the ecclesiastical office sim- ply the authority of distinction, i. e. the judicial |iower of pronouncing those as loosed who by the mercy of God had l)een inwardly loosed, and those as bound who have not yet been loosed by God's mercy — a judicial decision whose validity is essentially confine<l to the forum of the Church, and dues not extend to the forum of God. Just so says (iregory the (ireat {Horn. 2(), in Ev. No. 6), '• It must be determined what guilt has preceded and what penitence has followed guilt in order that the shepherd may loose those whom the Lord in his mercy visits with a sense of repentance. Only when the judg-
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ment of the inner judge is obeyed can the action of the officer to loose be a correct and real one." Adding, as he does, like Augustine, the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus, it is evident that Gregory did not consider the bishop's action in mortal sins as anything more than constituting a recognition of the inner condition of the sinner ; those into whose heart God has breathed the spirit of life the ecclesiastical judge is to pronounce as loosed, those yet spiritually dead as bound.
As in the early Church great penitence was conceded only once, so reconciUation by the Church was not re- peated a second time. In the writings of Sozomen (lib. vii, 1<3) we first find a witness ft)r the principle of ad- mitting also backsliders to penance and reconciliation. This change of practice was a necessary consequence of the enactment of penitential laws which extended the use of the term mortal sin also to such offences as had formerly been considered simply venial.