“For they who inhabit the earth
and make their abode there are entrusted with the administration of things
heavenly, and have received an authority which God has not given to angels or
archangels. For it has not been said to them, ‘Whatsoever . . . ‘ (Matt. xviii.
18). They who rule on earth have indeed authority to bind, but only the body:
whereas this binding lays hold of the soul and penetrates the heavens; and what
priests do here below God ratifies above, and the Master confirms the sentence
of His servants. For, indeed, what does he give them but all manner of heavenly
authority when he says, ‘Whose sins ye remit . . . ‘ (John xx. 23)? What
authority could be greater than this?” (Chrysostom, De Sacerdotis, iii. § 5).
“Our priests have received
authority to deal, not with bodily leprosy, but with spiritual uncleanness, not
to pronounce it removed after examination, but actually and absolutely to take
it away” (ib., § 6).
“The remissions of sins is the
loosing. For what would it have profited Lazarus to come forth from the tomb,
unless it had been said to him, ‘Loose him and let him go’? He Himself did,
indeed, with His voice arouse him from the tomb, Himself restored his life by
crying to him, Himself overcame the mass of earth that was heaped upon the
tomb, and he came forth bound hand and foot, not therefore with his own feet,
but by the power of Him Who drew him forth. This takes place in the heart of
the penitent: when thou hearest a man is sorry for his sins he has already come
to life; when thou hearest him lay bare his conscience in confession, he is
already drawn forth from the tomb, but he is not yet loosed. When is he loosed,
and by whom is he loosed? ‘Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth,’ he says,
‘shall be loosed in heaven.’ Forgiveness of sins may justly be granted by the
Church: but the dead man himself cannot be aroused except by the Lord crying within
him” (Aug. on Ps. cii; ii. § 3; cf. Sermo de Verbis Domini, viii.—Migne, 67)
(R. S. T. Haslehurst, Some Account of The Penitential Discipline of the
Early Church in the First Four Centuries [London: Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, 1921], 97)