§ 39.2. =The Penitential Discipline.=--According to the Apostolic ordinance (§ 17, 8) notorious sinners were excluded from the fellowship of the church, _Excommunicatio_, and only after prolonged trial of their penitence, _Exomologesis_, were they received back again, _Reconciliatio_. In the time of Cyprian, about A.D. 250, there was already a well defined order of procedure in this matter of restoring the lapsed which continued in force until the 5th century. Penance, _Pœnitentia_, must extend through four stages, each of which according to circumstances might require one or more years. During the first stage, the πρόσκλαυσις, _Fletio_, the penitents, standing at the church doors in mourning dress, made supplication to the clergy and the congregation for restoration; in the second, the ἀκρόασις, _Auditio_, they were admitted again to the reading of the scriptures and the sermon, but still kept in a separate place; in the third, ὑπόπτωσις, _Substratio_, they were allowed to kneel at prayer; and finally, in the fourth, σύστασις, _Consistentia_, they took part again in the whole of the public services, with the exception of the communion which they were only allowed to look at standing. Then they received Absolution and Reconciliation (=_pacem dare_) in presence of the assembled and acquiescing congregation by the imposition of the hands of the bishop and the whole of the clergy, together with the brotherly kiss and the partaking of the communion. This procedure was directed against open and demonstrable sins of a serious nature against the two tables of the decalogue, against so called _deadly sins_, _Peccata_ or _crimina mortalia_, 1 John v. 16. Excommunication was called forth, on the one side, against idolatry, blasphemy, apostasy from the faith and abjuration thereof; on the other, against murder, adultery and fornication, theft and lying, perfidy and false swearing. Whether reconciliation was permissible in the case of any mortal sin at all, and if so, what particular sins might thus be treated, were questions upon which teachers of the church were much divided during the 3rd century. But only the Montanists and Novatians (§§ 40, 41) denied the permissibility utterly and that in opposition to the prevailing practice of the church, which refused reconciliation absolutely only in cases of idolatry and murder, and sometimes also in the case of adultery. Even Cyprian at first held firmly by the principle that all mortal sins committed “against God” must be wholly excluded from the range of penitential discipline, but amid the horrors of the Decian persecution, which left behind it whole crowds of fallen ones, _Lapsi_ (§ 22, 5), he was induced by the passionate entreaties of the church to make the concession that reconciliation should be granted to the _Libellatici_ after a full penitential course, but to the _Sacrificati_ only when in