Excursus on the Public Discipline or Exomologesis of the Early
Church. (Taken chiefly from Morinus, De Disciplina in
Administratione Sacramenti Pœnitentiæ; Bingham, Antiquities; and
Hammond, The Definitions of Faith, etc. Note to Canon XI. of
Nice.) “In the Primitive Church there was a godly discipline,
that at the beginning of Lent, such persons as stood convicted
of notorious sin were put to open penance, and punished in this
world that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord;
and that others, admonished by their example, might be the more
afraid to offend.” The foregoing words from the Commination
Service of the Church of England may serve well to introduce
this subject. In the history of the public administration of
discipline in the Church, there are three periods sufficiently
distinctly marked. The first of these ends at the rise of
Novatianism in the middle of the second century; the second
stretches down to about the eighth century; and the third period
shews its gradual decline to its pract