of the deacons. This crime also she confessed; but, when the report of it reached the ears of the people, the public indignation was strongly expressed against the deacon, and against the whole ecclesiastical order, as thereby, they said, the whole Church was disgraced.—Nectarius was at a loss what to do; when he was advised, having deposed the deacon, to suppress the office of Penitentiary, “and to leave each one to approach the holy mysteries, as his conscience and his resolution might incline him.” By no other means, it seems, the public disgrace could be cancelled. The office, therefore, was suppressed; and the example of Constantinople, adds the historian, was followed by almost all other Bishops. He goes on to observe: “The regulation, from this time, remained unaltered; and now, I think, lax and dissolute manners began to take place of antiquity, with its concomitant gravity and studious care. For then, as it seems to me, on account of the shame that attended the public disclosure of crimes, and the severity of those who were appointed Judges, the guilt of those crimes was less frequent.” Hist. Eccles. L. vii. c. xvi. p. 299.
On the same event, the historian Socrates, who relates it in the same manner, observes: “I said to the Priest Eudæmon, (who had advised Nectarius to suppress the Penitentiary)— God knows, whether your advice has been advantageous to the Church. For I see that, now, men will no longer rebuke one another for their crimes, and therefore will neglect the command of the Apostle, which says: Have no fellowship with the fruitless works of darkness; but rather reprove them. Ephes. vii.”—Hist. Eccles. L. v. c. xix. p. 288.
On this suppression of the public Penitentiary at Constantinople by Nectarius, I said, an undue stress had been laid; for from it men have argued, that the whole practice of Confession was then annulled in the Churches of the East, and also of the West; and therefore that, in its origin, it could be nothing more than an ecclesiastical institution, subject to
