Protestantism in Sweden and Denmark - James Aitken Wylie

adduced in proof of the power of the prelates.
Olaf, in reply, argued that the Church was the
body of Christ, and that believers were the
members of that body. The question was not
touching those outside the Church; the question
was, whether the Pope and prelates had the power
of casting out of the Church those who were its
living members, and in whose hearts dwelt the
Holy Ghost by faith? This he simply denied. To
God alone it belonged to save the believing, and to
condemn the unbelieving. The bishops could
neither give nor take away the Holy Ghost. They
could not change those who were the sons of God
into sons of Gehenna. The power conferred in the
eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, he
maintained, was simply declaratory; what the
minister had power to do, was to announce the
solace or loosing of the Gospel to the penitent, and
its correction or cutting off to the impenitent. He
who persists in his impenitence is excommunicate,
not by man, but by the Word of God, which shows
him to be bound in his sin, till he repent. The
power of binding and loosing was, moreover, given
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