In the time of the apostles those who embraced the gospel were immediately baptized.  Thus, the three thousand persons who were converted on the day of Pentecost, were forthwith received into the bosom of the Church; and the Philippian jailor, “the same hour of the night” [493:1] when he hearkened to “the word of the Lord,” “was baptized, he and all his, straightway.”  But, soon, afterwards, the Christian teachers began to proceed with greater formality; and, about the middle of the second century, candidates were not admitted to the ordinance until they had passed through a certain course of probation.  “As many,” says Justin Martyr, “as are persuaded and believe that the things which we teach and declare are true, and promise that they are determined to live accordingly, are taught to pray, and to beseech God with fasting to grant them remission of their past sins, while we also pray and fast with them.  We then lead them to a place where there is water, and there they are regenerated in the same manner as we also were; for they are then washed in that water in the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.” [493:2]

These confessions and penitential exercises were repeated and enlarged when persons who had lapsed into gross sin, and who had, in consequence, forfeited their position as members of the Church, sought readmission to ecclesiastical fellowship.  It would be difficult, on scriptural grounds, to vindicate the system of discipline enforced on such occasions; and yet it is evident that it was established, at least in some quarters, as early as the beginning of the third century.  Tertullian gives a very striking account of the course pursued by those called penitents about that period.  “Confession of sins,” says he, “lightens their burden, as much as the dissembling of them increases it; for confession savours of making amends, dissembling, of stubbornness. .....  Wherefore confession is the discipline of a man’s prostrating and humbling himself, enjoining such a conversation as invites mercy.  It restrains a man even as to the matter of dress and food, requiring him to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to hide his body in filthy garments, to afflict his soul with sorrow, to exchange for severe treatment the sins in which he indulged; for the rest to use simple things for meat and drink, that is, for the sake of the soul, and not to please the appetite:  for the most part also to quicken prayer by fasts, to groan, to weep, and to moan day and night before the Lord his God; to throw himself on the ground before the presbyters, and to fall on his knees before the beloved of God; to enjoin all the brethren to bear the message of his prayer for mercy—­all these things does confession that it may commend repentance.” [493:1]