Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

352 THE THIRD AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.years of this century determining the rules ofpenance, and a small party of rigid disciplinarians,among whom Tertullian was conspicuous, who consideredhis rules as too indulgent. It is in the vehementamhlet with which Tertullian assails thePope that we have one of the earliest expressionsof the great authority claimed by him. " I hear,"he exclaims, " that an edict has been set forth, anda peremptory one. The Pontifex Maximus, in sooth,that is, the Bishop of Bishops, issues his edict : Ipardon to those who have discharged their penancethe sins both of adultery and of fornication."27Twenty years later Pope Callistus carried the indulgenceyet further, receiving to penance thosewho had committed murder or idolatry.28 Oncemore, after a period of thirty years, the breakingout of the Decian persecution raised afresh thequestion of admitting great sinners to penance "and the actual discipline of the Roman Church, asestablished under Zehrinus and Callistus, is set.forth in a letter to Cyprian by Novatian, then oneof the most esteemed presbyters of that church.By the discipline which these facts attest it is determinedthat the Church has lodged in her thepower of pardoning any sin whatsoever accordingto the rules of the penance which she imposes.And it is the Roman Church which herein takes27 De Pudicitia, § 1. See Hagemann, p. 54.28 He is so represented by Hippolytus, PhttosopJvumen, lib. ix. p. 209See Hagemann, p. 59.