A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

208 A Source Book for Ancient Church History[187]baptism, the entrance to the kingdom of heaven, in which areloosed the sins that aforetime were bound.…What, now, has this to do with the Church and your Church,indeed, O Psychic? For in accordance with the person of Peter,it is to spiritual men that this power will correspondingly belong,either to an Apostle or else to a prophet.… And accordingly the“Church,” it is true, will forgive sins; but it will be the Church ofthe Spirit, by a spiritual man; not the Church which consists of anumber of bishops.Ch. 22. But you go so far as to lavish this power upon martyrsindeed; so that no sooner has any one, acting on a preconceivedarrangement, put on soft bonds in the nominal custody nowin vogue, than adulterers beset him, fornicators gain access tohim; instantly prayers resound about him; instantly pools oftears of the polluted surround him; nor are there any who aremore diligent in purchasing entrance to the prison than they whohave lost the fellowship of the Church.… Whatever authority,whatever reason, restores ecclesiastical peace to the adultererand the fornicator, the same will be bound to come to the aid ofthe murderer and the idolater in their repentance.(e) Tertullian, Ad Martyres, 1. (MSL, 1:693.)The following extract from Tertullian's little work addressedto martyrs in prison, written about 197, shows that in hisearlier life as a Catholic Christian he did not disapprove ofthe practice of giving libelli pacis by the confessors, a customwhich in his more rigoristic period under the influence ofMontanism he denounced most vehemently; see precedingextract from De Pudicitia, ch. 22. The reference to somediscord among the martyrs is not elsewhere explained. Forlibelli pacis, see Cyprian, Ep. 10 (=Ep. 15), 22 (=21).