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 sin was given by Christ to the Apostles and their successors, Montanus wished to restrict that power, excluding from its domain idolatry, impurity, and homicide.

Some eighty years later, two schisms were created:  the one in North Africa, led by the priest Novatus, aided by the deacon Felicissimus, the other by the anti-pope Novatian, in Rome.  Both were prompted by the question of receiving into the communion of the Church those who had lapsed into idolatry, or had denied the faith during the times of persecution.  The African schism insisted on the laxest possible line of action, namely, to receive indiscriminately without proof of penitence.  The schism in Rome pursued the most unyielding rigorism.  “Whoever,” said Novatian, its leader, “has offered sacrifice to idols, or stained his soul with the guilt of sin, can no longer remain within the Church; and if he be of those who have denied the faith, he can not again enter her communion:  for her members consist only of pure and faithful souls.”

These contentions had one great advantage:  they brought into prominence the teaching of the Church concerning “the forgiveness of sin,” and occasioned a more scientific and dogmatic statement of the doctrine concerning the Sacrament of Penance.  In the controversy, figure the names of St. Cornelius, Pope, of St. Cyprian, of St. Athanasius, of St. Pacian, of St. Gregory Nazianzen, of Tertullian.  Until the schismatics were driven to extremities, it is plain both sides take it for granted that the Ministry of Reconciliation was given to the Church by Jesus Christ, and that the exercise of the ministry consisted in pronouncing judicial sentence of pardon on those who had shown repentance and had confessed their grievous sins.  Religious strife in this case produces the interesting evidence that, as early as the second and third centuries, Confession and Absolution were held and practised as necessary for the pardoning of sin under the Christian dispensation.

4.  The Penitential Canons of the first ages of the Church are another evidence to the doctrine of Absolution and Confession.  The Apostolic Constitutions,[35] and Tertullian,[36] give us a picture of the severe penitential discipline to which sinners were subjected.  Many painful circumstances obliged the Church modify and almost abrogate these public penances.

The accounts of the suppression given by the historians, Socrates and Zozomen, afford ample proof of confession made publicly, of the retaining of certain deadly crimes until a long time had been spent in rigid penitential exercises, and, lastly, of the absolution finally granted by bishops and priests.