absolution and confession they have the same teaching and practice. It
is no question of unburdening a troubled conscience for peace and
counsel, but confession is exacted as a necessary condition for
obtaining pardon. In 1576, the patriarch Jeremias of Constantinople
sent to the Protestant theologians of Tübingen a declaration of the
belief of the Greeks. In it, among other doctrines, that of the
absolute necessity of detailed confession to a priest is asserted.
These sects then are, by their practice and teaching, witnesses to the
truth concerning the sacrament of reconciliation as taught by Holy
Church in our day.

3. Early heresies contribute, in like manner, their part to the mass
of irrefragable evidence in support of the doctrine. As early as the
second century, Eusebius says A. D. 171, the Montanists arose in Asia
Minor. Among other things, Montanus, their founder, taught that were
any to "commit grievous sin after baptism, to deny Christ, or have
been stained with the guilt of impurity, murder, or like crimes, they
were to be for ever cut off from the communion of the Church." While
admitting that power to forgive sin was given by Christ to the
Apostles and their successors, Montanus wished to restrict that power,
excluding from its domain idolatry, impurity, and homicide.

Some eighty years later, two schisms were created: the one in North
Africa, led by the priest Novatus, aided by the deacon Felicissimus,
the other by the anti-pope Novatian, in Rome. Both were prompted by
the question of receiving into the communion of the Church those who
had lapsed into idolatry, or had denied the faith during the times of
persecution. The African schism insisted on the laxest possible line
of action, namely, to receive indiscriminately without proof of
penitence. The schism in Rome pursued the most unyielding rigorism.