esteemed, or by whom he
had been the most tenderly beloved; and as far as an expulsion from a
respectable society could imprint on his character a mark of disgrace,
he was shunned or suspected by the generality of mankind. The situation
of these unfortunate exiles was in itself very painful and melancholy;
but, as it usually happens, their apprehensions far exceeded their
sufferings. The benefits of the Christian communion were those of
eternal life; nor could they erase from their minds the awful opinion,
that to those ecclesiastical governors by whom they were condemned,
the Deity had committed the keys of Hell and of Paradise. The heretics,
indeed, who might be supported by the consciousness of their intentions,
and by the flattering hope that they alone had discovered the true path
of salvation, endeavored to regain, in their separate assemblies, those
comforts, temporal as well as spiritual, which they no longer derived
from the great society of Christians. But almost 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 communion.

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 forever, and without
exception, the meanest place in the holy community, which they had
disgraced or deserted; and leaving them to the remorse of a guilty
conscience, indulged them only with a faint ray of hope that the
contrition of their life and death might possibly be accepted by the
Supreme Being. A milder sentiment was embraced in practice as well as
in theory, by the purest and most respectable of the Christian churches.
The gates 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 spectators from the imitation of his example.
Humbled by a public confession, emaciated by fasting and clothed in
sackcloth, the penitent lay prostrate at the door of the assembly,
imploring with tears the pardon of his offences, 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