disciple as much as if they had been suffering a personal or family bereavement. The day on which such a doom was sealed, was a season of universal and bitter lamentation. The aged considered themselves as having lost a son or a daughter-the young, as having been severed from a brother or sister. Every one felt that a tie had

been broken, and that an event had occurred which could be considered in no other light than as a dire and wide-spread calamity. Before, however, they allowed matters to reach that painful extremity, they never failed to resort to every means, in private, of reproving and admonishing the brother whom they saw to be in fault; and it was not till after they had tried all the arts of persuasion, and their repeated efforts had proved unavailing, that they brought the case under the notice of the church, and subjected the offender to that severe and impartial ordeal which few but the most daring and incorrigible had the hardihood to abide. It is scarcely possible for us, who live in a state of society so different, to conceive the tremendous effect of a sentence which cut off an obstinate offender from all connection with the church, and which, being solemnly pronounced in the name of God, seemed to anticipate the award of the judgment day. Looking upon the fallen disciple from that moment as an enemy of Christ and a servant of the devil, the brethren avoided his presence as they would have fled from plague or pestilence. They were forbid to admit him to their house, to sit with him at table, or to render him any of the ordinary offices of life,—and the man who should have been detected in his company, would have run the haz ard of bringing his own character into suspicion, and of being thought a guilty partner of the other's sins.

3. Tremendous effects of excommunication. Few, but those in whom long habits of secret wickedness had almost obliterated every religious feeling, could remain long undisturbed and tranquil in a state which, considered as forsaken by God as well as by man, was attended with such a tremendous load of present misery, and which imagination associated with the terrors of a dark and unknown futurity. The hearts even of the most hardened, if they bore up for a while, through their corrupt nature, and the love of their sinful practices, soon felt this unnatural boldness give way, and becoming alive to all the wretchedness of an excommunicated state,-the unhappy sinners, like persons standing on the brink of despair, placed themselves again at the gate of the church, and implored, in the

most importunate and abject manner, to be delivered from a condition which was more dreadful than death itself. From day to day they repaired to the cloisters, or the roofless area of the church,— for no nearer were they allowed to approach it,—and there they stood, in the most humble and penitent attitude, with downcast looks, and tears in their eyes, and smiting on their breasts; or threw themselves on the ground at the feet of the faithful, as they entered to worship, begging an interest in their sympathies and their prayers, -confessing their sins, and crying out that they were as salt which had lost its savor, fit only to be trodden under foot. For weeks and months they often continued in this grovelling state, receiving from the passengers nothing but the silent expressions of their pity. Not a word was spoken, in the way either of encouragement or exhortation; for during these humiliating stations at the gate, the offenders were considered rather as candidates for penance than as actually penitents. When at last they had waited a sufficient length of time in this state of affliction, and the silent observers of their conduct were satisfied that their outward demonstrations of sorrow proceeded from a humble and contrite spirit, the rulers of the church admitted them within the walls, and gave them the privilege of remaining to hear the reading of the Scriptures and the sermon. The appointed time for their continuance among the hearers being completed, they were advanced to the third order of penitents, whose privilege it was to wait until that part of the service when the prayers for particular classes were offered up, and to hear the petitions which the minister, with his hands on their heads, and themselves on their bended knees, addressed to God on their behalf, for his mercy to pardon and his grace to help them. In due time they were allowed to be present at the celebration of the communion, and the edifying services that accompanied it; after witnessing which, and offering, at the same time, satisfactory proofs of that godly sorrow which is unto salvation, the term of penance ended.

4. Duration of banishment from the church. The duration of this unhappy banishment from the peace and communion of the church lasted for no fixed time, but was prolonged or shortened according to the nature of the crime, and the promising character of the offender. The ordinary term was from two to five years. But in some cases of gross and aggravated sin, the sentence of excommunication extended to ten, twenty, and thirty years; and even in some cases,

though rarely, to the very close of life. During the whole progress of their probation, the penitents appeared in sackcloth and ashes,-the men were obliged to cut off their hair, and the women to veil themselves, in token of sorrow. They were debarred from all the usual comforts and amusements of life, and obliged to observe frequent seasons of fasting,-an exercise which, in the ancient church, especially among the Christians of the East, was deemed an indispensable concomitant of prayer.

5. Solemn manner of restoring offenders. On the day appointed for their deliverance from this humiliating condition, they came into the church in a penitential garb of sackcloth, and with a trembling voice and copious tears, took their station on an elevated platform, where, in presence of the assembled congregation, they made a public confession of their sins, and throwing themselves down on the ground, they besought them to forgive the scandal and reproach they had brought on the christian name, and to give them the bene fit and comfort of their intercessory prayers. The brethren, moved with the liveliest emotions, at beholding one, to whom they had often given the kiss of peace, in so distressing a situation, fell on their knees along with him, and the minister, in the same attitude of pros tration, laying his hands on the head of the penitent, supplicated, with solemn fervor, the divine compassion on him, and then raising him, placed him in the ranks of the faithful at the table of the communion.

This severe and protracted discipline, through which offenders, in the primitive church, were required to pass,-though several out. ward ceremonies usually entered as elements into the observance, was reckoned essentially a discipline of the mind; and it was as different from the bodily mortification, in which the votaries of Papal Rome comprise the whole duty of penitents, as the life-giving spirit is from the senseless form. Two grand and important objects were contemplated in its appointment,-the one to check every sin in the bud, and prevent the contagion of an evil example; for so jealous were the good and holy Christians of primitive times, of the least dishonor being done to their heavenly Master, or the smallest reproach being cast on his cause, that they lost no time in excluding from their society every one who refused compliance with the precepts of the gospel, or was not adorned with the fruits of its genuine and consistent disciples :-the other was to afford penitents sufficient

time to prove the sincerity of their sorrow, and to satisfy the church of their well-founded claims to enjoy its clemency and be restored to its privileges. It was the more necessary to adopt those measures of precaution, that in the days of primitive Christianity, multitudes, who from the ranks of idolatry came over to Christianity, retained a strong predilection for their early indulgences and habits, and were the occasion, by their vices and their crimes, of doing injury to the cause they embraced, to an extent of which we can scarcely form any idea. Accordingly, those who, under the pressure of severe sickness, or in the immediate prospect of death, were absolved and admitted to peace and communion, were, in the event of their recovery, required to place themselves again in that stage of their discipline at which they had arrived when arrested by their indisposition, and to complete the course in due order, as if no interruption had occurred; while, on the other hand, the sins of some were consid. ered as of so black a hue, and involving such enormous guilt, that a life-time appearing far too short a time to enable them to bring forth fruits meet for repentance, they were doomed by a law, as unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, to live and die under the ban of the church. In regard to those cases where penitents, in the progress of their trials, relapsed into sin, they were degraded to a lower rank, and obliged to enter on the task of probation anew,-an obligation, however, which, in such circumstances, was at once a punishment, and a favor granted to them as an act of grace, in the spirit of christian tenderness,-disposed to forbear a little longer with their weakness. But when a person who had gone through the routine of penitential observances, and was restored to the privileges of full communion, repeated his crime, or was convicted of another, the opportunity of again placing himself in the order of penitents was inflexibly denied, and no importunities or tears on his part,—no influence nor intercession on that of others, could open the gates of the church, which thenceforth were for ever shut against him.

6. Impartiality of this discipline-story of Theodosius. Nor was the discipline of the primitive church less distinguished for its impartiality than its rigor. Never was it known that the shield of protection was thrown over the head of a relative or a friend; never did a timid or time-serving policy lead its rulers to shrink from visiting with merited punishment the perpetrator of wickedness in high places. Let the offender be who or what he might,-whether old or

young, a male member of the community, or one belonging to the gentler sex; whether invested with the sacred office, or moving in the humbler sphere of an ordinary brother; whether a poor mechanic, or a christian prince,-all were equally amenable to the laws; all were doomed indiscriminately to abide the consequences of violating them; all required to submit to the same tedious and searching ordeal, as the indispensable terms of their restoration to christian society. The following historical anecdote, out of many similar ones that might be adduced, affords so interesting and remarkable a proof, with how steady and equal a hand the reins of ancient discipline were wielded, that we are confident our readers will excuse its insertion. The emperor Theodosius, who flourished about the year 370, was a prince whose character was adorned with many virtues, and who added to the other excellent qualities that distinguished him,—a firm and sincere attachment to the gospel of Christ. As the best of men, however, have their besetting sins, and their inherent faults, Theodosius inherited the infirmity of a keen and impetuous temper, which, on several occasions, hurried him to the inconsiderate adoption of measures which he afterwards found cause bitterly to lament. The most memorable of these occasions was the affair of Thessalonica. In that city of Macedonia, some enactments of the emperor had given so great and universal dissatisfaction to the inhabitants, that they assembled in an uproar, threatening to set the imperial orders at defiance, and sufficiently indicating their determined spirit of resistance by an attack upon the garrison, which was signalized by the massacre of the commanding officer, and several of the soldiery. The intelligence of this untoward event so incensed Theodosius, that he forthwith issued his mandate for reducing the whole city to ashes; and the bloody edict would have been carried into prompt execution by the military, who participated in the feelings of their monarch, and breathed revenge for the loss of their slaughtered comrades, had not some christian bishops, by their powerful and importunate intercession, prevailed on the emperor reluctantly to recal his orders. The prime minister, however, was implacable, and by his incessant representations to his imperial master, that so ill-timed clemency would produce the greatest detriment to the public service, and weaken the hands of government especially in the provinces, succeeded in inducing Theodosius to reissue his command for exterminating the Thessalonians