A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

§ 75. Social Significance of the State Church 421involved in the maintenance of roads, aqueducts, or any otherwork.§ 75. Social Significance of the State ChurchThe Church at no time degenerated into a mere department ofthe State. In spite of the worldly passions that invaded it andthe dissensions that distracted it, the Church remained mindfulof its duty as not merely a guardian of the deposit of faith butas a school of Christian morality. This was the principle of thepenitential discipline of the ante-Nicene period. It was savedfrom becoming a mere form, or lost altogether by the customwhich became general after 400, of having the confession ofsin made in private. In matters of great moral concern, suchas the treatment of slaves, marriage, and divorce, and the cruelsports of the arena, the Church was able to exert its influenceand eventually bring about a change in the law. And in standingfor righteousness, instances were not lacking when the highestwere rebuked by the Church, as in the great case of Ambrose andTheodosius.(a) Leo the Great, Epistula 168, ch. 2. (MSL, 54:1210.) Cf.Denziger, n. 145.Confession should no longer be public, but only private. Fromthe tone of the letter it would appear that private confessionhad been customary for some time and that public confessionhad so far gone out of use as to appear as a novelty. V. supra,§ 42.I direct that that presumptuous violation of the apostolic rulebe entirely done away, which we have recently learned has [385]been without warrant committed by some; namely, concerning