many of those who believed at Ephesus, after St. Paul's
preaching, "came _confessing and declaring their deeds_. And many of
those who had followed curious things brought their books together,
and burnt them before all."[33] Here is a clear instance of
contrition, confession, and determination of purpose.

Again, the incestuous Corinthian is judged by St. Paul, and sentenced
in the strongest language: "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you
being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of the Lord
Jesus, to deliver such a one to Satan."[34] The offender repented, and
lest he should "be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow," the Apostle
reversed sentence, and forgave the wrong done, "in the _person of
Christ_." A clearer case of retaining and remitting is unnecessary.

These instances are sufficient to show that the Apostles themselves
exercised the power of the keys in binding and loosing.

2. Among the living Greek Communions are to be found descendants of
those sects which either separated from or were cast off by the Church
centuries ago. The Photians date back to the tenth century; the
Nestorians, the Jacobites, the Abyssinians, the Copts, to the fifth
and sixth centuries. Differing as these do in some points of doctrine,
and parted by the bitterest antipathies, yet on the matter of
absolution and confession they have the same teaching and practice. It
is no question of unburdening a troubled conscience for peace and
counsel, but confession is exacted as a necessary condition for
obtaining pardon. In 1576, the patriarch Jeremias of Constantinople
sent to the Protestant theologians of Tuebingen a declaration of the
belief of the Greeks. In it, among other doctrines, that of the
absolute necessity of detailed confession to a priest is asserted.
These sects then are, by their practice and teaching, witnesses to the
truth concerning the sacrament of reconciliation as taught by Holy
Church in our day.

3. Early heresies contribute, in like manner, their part to the mass
of irrefragable evidence in support of the doctrine. As early as the
second century, Eusebius says A. D. 171, the Montanists arose in Asia
Minor. Among other things, Montanus, their founder, taught that were
any to "commit grievous sin after baptism, to deny Christ, or have
been stained with the guilt of impurity, murder, or like crimes, they
were to be for ever cut off from the communion of the Church." While
admitting that power to forgive