things, is the necessary and preliminary condition for seeking absolution from sin.  Whether this confession be made in public or in private is a mere matter of convenience, to be decided by those who absolve.  The honest humble accusation of all deadly sins constitutes the essential character of such confession or avowal of transgressions.  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity."[32]

That interior and supernatural contrition is to be followed by the judicial sentence of a duly-appointed priest, to whom confession of all deadly sins has been previously made, is the unanimous teaching of the Christian writers from the earliest date.  The existence of Penance as the Sacrament of Reconciliation, at all times in the Church, is permanent evidence to the belief and practice of early Christians.

1.  In the History of the Church given in the Acts of the Apostles, we learn that 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.