Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

practice. At all events, it must be observed that the now and milder views
were applied only to the sins of the flesh. As none, who in the peaceful
period, between 220 and 250, relapsed into Paganism, was likely to ask for readmittance
into the Christian church, idolatry was left entirely out of the
consideration. But with the outbreak of the Decian persecution a great change
took place. The number of the lapsed became so great that the very existence
of the congregation was endangered. … Novatian was not from principle
opposed to the re-admittance of the lapsed. … It is simply a stubbornly
repeated calumny that Novatian or his party ever declared penitence to be of
no use. … Cyprian’s argument was, that since salvation could be obtained
only through the church, every one who was definitely severed from her must
forever perish. Consequently, to refuse communion of the church to one who
had definitely separated himself from the church, would be an anticipation of
the judgment of God; while the re-admittance of a lapsus could in no wise
prevent God from refusing him salvation. On the other ‘side, when Novatian
considered it the right and duty of the church to exclude forever all heavy
sinners, and denied her power to give absolution to the idolater, it is apparent
that his idea of the church, of the right of the priest, in short, his idea of the
power of the keys is another than that held by his adversaries. The church is to
him not the ‘conditio sine qua non,’ for salvation is an institution educating
mankind for salvation, but the congregation of saints, whose very existence is
endangered if there is one single heavy sinner among its members. To him the
constitution of the church, the distinction between laity and clergy, the
connection with the clergy, are questions of secondary importance. The one
question of primary importance is to be a saint in the communion of saints. It
is unquestionable that the Novatians retained many most valuable remnants of
old traditions, and their idea of the church as a communion of the saints
corresponds exactly to the idea prevalent in the first days of Christendom.”
f144
Socrates says that Novatian exhorted those who were excluded from the
church for the gross offence of being traitors to the faith,: “to repentance,
leaving the pardoning of their offence to God, who has the power to forgive all
sin.” f147
Neander says:
“Novatian, too, declared the fallen brethren must be cared for and exhorted to
repentance. He, too, acknowledged God’s mercy toward sinners, and allowed
it right to recommend the fallen to that mercy; but that men could once more
surely announce to them that forgiveness of sins they had trifled away, this he
was unwilling to concede, because he could find no objective ground for such
confidence.” f148
Of course, Baptists know how to regard Harnack’s succeeding statement, that
such discipline was: “an open injustice,” and that “the idea of the church as a