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SOME ACCOUNT OF THE PENITENTIAL DISCIPLINE OF THE EARLY CHURCH IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES BY R. S. T. HASLEHURST, B.D. Brethren, in the Primitive Church there was a godly discipline . . . until the said discipline may be restored again which is much 10 be .-COUMINATON SERVICE, 1549. The age it will be said is loose, and will not hear it though that be indeed a reason which most requires it.-MARSHALL, 1714. Many of those now alienated wouId, in days of stricter discipIinc and sterner faithfulness, have bten excommunicated, forbidden, that is, instead 01 entreated to tnter our churchts.-ARCHBSHOP IACEE, 1672. LONDON SOCIETY FOR PROfilOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE NORTttUhtDERLAWD AVENUE, .C. NEW YORK TlfE hlACMILLAN CO. 1921 PREFACE I N the following pages X have endeavoured to sketcl briefly the institution and development of the penitentiary discipline of the Christian Church. The subject, so far as X havc been able to discover, has not received treatment since Marshall wrote his work, The Penitential Disciplirze of the Primitive Church 1714 except in encyclopaedias. AI1 the material was brought together and arranged in the sixteenth century by hlorinus, whose work must always be the standard book of referencca on the subject. But thc arrangement is not chronological, and he deals with it under ccrtain headings rather than as a historica1 growth. bIy object has been to trace it from the earliest times till the year 400, allowing the Fathcrs to tell their own story, so far as is possible. I have been obliged to deal more cursorily than they descrve with TertuIlian and Cyprian, far fear of prolonging the work unduly. I have taken for granted the knowledge of the chief events in the period, which any Church History iill give if I have a preference it is for the work of Dr. Foakesackson, though all the works that I have discovered are eminently readable, and each has somc merit of its own. If I have made unduly proIix extracts from patristic sources it is because they are to me of such intense interest that I cannot bring myself to condense them. I havc had in my mind not so much the professed theological student, who has Migne at his elbow, as thc morc amateur student, acquainted with the brief outline of the courts of carly Church history, and glad to have one aspect of it brought before him so far as possible in the words of those who made the history. 1 have been glad to avail myself of Lightfoots Apostolic Fathers, and of the translations of patristic works edited by Pusey, Robertson and DonaIdson, Wace and Schaff, though I have not always followed them verbatim. vi PREFACE Various causes have led me to mite this book. I took part three or four years ago in a friendly argument with a priest of the Roman communion, and to all his objections to Anglicanism I was able to reply to my own, if not to his, satisfaction. But I confess that I had no answer when he said, You have no disupline. I could only quote the wellknown phrase at the beginning of the Commination Service. That led me to Marshall, and thence to Morinus, and I determined to put before my fellow-churchmen some account of those practices of the apostles and thei rimmediate successors which we should surely try to follotv. About the same time I read Fr. Figgis Churches in the Modern State, and Archdeacon Hobhouses Bampton Lectures on The Church and the World in Idea and History I owe much to their stimulus. Itis the fashion to speak of everything being at the cross-roads, and the ideal of establishment has certainly received some hard knocks lately. Erastianism may be said to be in its coffin, and erstwhile vigorous defenders of the Establishment of the English Church have had their ardour very much cooled, Many tvho did their utmost for the Church of Wales in the hour of her danger have come to feel that she will be perhaps the gainer as much as, if not even more than, the loser by being disestablished...