reason, then, at this Holy season, when the Universal Church is every where at the same time, prostrating herself before the Lord, that we should pray for a return of those golden days when the faithful were one in heart and name? Yes-though oceans may roll between, and we never meet face to face on earth, we have still an interest in each one who is united with the Church, wherever he may be, for we are all "members of one another." Let us then petition our Common Father, that he will grant us more of that spirit which distinguished the Christian host in earlier and better days, until we realize, that He "has knit together his elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of His Son Christ our Lord."25

The other class of persons, who were preparing at this time to be received into the Church, were the Penitents, who had once been cut off for their sins, but after having completed their Canonical time of probation, during which they were excluded from her services, were generally absolved and readmitted at the time of the Easter Festival. Some of them for flagrant sins had 25 Collect for All Saints' Day.

been kept under this penitential discipline for years, until by evident humility and earnestness, they had given the fullest proof of their contrition and amendment.26 It is to this that an ancient Bishop refers, when he says-" The Anniversary solemnity of Easter, was not only the time of regenerating Catechumens, but of begetting those again to a lively hope, who had forfeited it by their sin, but were desirous to regain it by repentance and conversion from dead works, to walk again in the paths of life."2 Cyprian also in his Epistles, speaks of Easter as the great and solemn time of readmitting Penitents.

These indeed were the days of rigid discipline

26 The discipline was far from being nominal. It was often such as nothing but the deepest feelings of contrition could have induced them to bear. In some cases, they were obliged to appear in sackcloth, with ashes on their heads the men to cut off their hair, and the women to go veiled, as a token of sorrow and mourning-to abstain from feasting, and even the innocent diversions of lifeto practice abstinence, mortification and fasting, in private, as well as to observe the public fasts of the Church-to show their liberality to the poor in an eminent degreeand in some Churches to exercise their humility by taking upon themselves the office and care of burying the dead. See BINGHAM, lib. xviii., ch. 2, sec. 4.

27 Gregory Nyssen. (BINGHAM, lib. xxi., ch. 1, sec. 13.)

in the Church, when the offender was obliged to make his confession and his repentance as open as his sin, that no stain might rest upon the purity of the faith. And in enforcing these rules, no immunity was granted to rank or power. Look, for example, at the case of the Emperor Theodosius. Having ordered a massacre by his troops at Thessalonica, in which several thousand lives were sacrificed, St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, at once charged him with his guilt, and refused to hold intercourse with one thus stained with innocent blood. The doors of the Church were closed against the Master of the world, and he was commanded to bow to that authority which is above all earthly rule. The subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power was clearly proclaimed in that emphatic sentence — "The Emperor is of the Church, and in the Church, but not above the Church." Having desired, even on the Festival of the Nativity, to attend its services, he was met at the entrance of the sanctuary by the intrepid prelate, who boldly rebuked him for his want of humility, and ordered him not to pollute the temple with his presence until he had been absolved from his iniquity.

Thus, for eight months, he was ignominiously excluded from those holy offices of the Church which were freely afforded to the meanest of his subjects even to the beggar and the slave. Theodosius pleaded in his defence the example of David. "Since then you have imitated his offence"-replied the Bishop-"imitate also his penitence." At length, on his public humiliation, St. Ambrose consented to admit the Emperor, not into the Church itself, but into the outer porch, the place for the public penitents. There, prostrate on the pavement, stripped of his imperial ornaments, beating his breast, and watering the ground with his tears, the master of the Roman Empire, and the legislator of the world, received his hard wrung absolution. Thus it was that the Church then stood forth as the champion of the oppressed, and extended her penalties over the mightiest of the earth.2

28

"The

But how imposing must have been this penitential discipline, so rigorously enforced! Church was not then divided into separate independent bodies, holding no communication with

28 MILMAN'S History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 230.

each other, which might enable an offender when expelled from one to attach himself to another, and thus maintain, in defiance of his condemners, an outward union with Christ. He might as well have endeavored to escape the penalties of rebellion against the head of the Roman Empire by removing from one province to another. So spotless too was her innocence, so bright her holiness, that none dared question for a moment the justice of her decisions; and her sentence, however rigorous it might be, was deemed to be ratified in Heaven; to be cut off from her, was effectually to be cut off from Christ. Thus, both her blessings and her censures were an outward expression, an earthly type, by which men were warned of what judgment was proceeding in Heaven upon their conduct of life, and her slowness of forgiveness, and the fiery probation to which she submitted the penitent, were well calculated to dispel those hurtful notions which men now so generally entertain of the ease and the speed of the process of forgiveness of sins."29 The multitude, often but partially reclaimed from

29 Rectory of Valehead, p. 164.