These contentions had one great advantage: they brought into prominence the teaching of the Church concerning "the forgiveness of sin," and occasioned a more scientific and dogmatic statement of the doctrine concerning the Sacrament of Penance. In the controversy, figure the names of St. Cornelius, Pope, of St. Cyprian, of St. Athanasius, of St. Pacian, of St. Gregory Nazianzen, of Tertullian. Until the schismatics were driven to extremities, it is plain both sides take it for granted that the Ministry of Reconciliation was given to the Church by Jesus Christ, and that the exercise of the ministry consisted in pronouncing judicial sentence of pardon on those who had shown repentance and had confessed their grievous sins. Religious strife in this case produces the interesting evidence that, as early as the second and third centuries, Confession and Absolution were held and practised as necessary for the pardoning of sin under the Christian dispensation. 4. The Penitential Canons of the first ages of the Church are another evidence to the doctrine of Absolution and Confession. The Apostolic Constitutions,[35] and Tertullian,[36] give us a picture of the severe penitential discipline to which sinners were subjected. Many painful circumstances obliged the Church modify and almost abrogate these public penances. The accounts of the suppression given by the historians, Socrates and Zozomen, afford ample proof of confession made publicly, of the retaining of certain deadly crimes until a long time had been spent in rigid penitential exercises, and, lastly, of the absolution finally granted by bishops and priests. These authors, as well as many who come after them, are clear in discriminating between the _public_ confession, which is a matter of discipline, and confession the necessary condition for the pardon of sin. "Since," says Zozomen, the Greek ecclesiastical historian of the fifth century, "it is absolutely necessary to confess our sins in order to receive the pardon of them, it was thought too onerous and too painful to exact that this confession should be made in public, as in a theatre." 5. We may now turn to the writings of the Fathers of the first five centuries. It will be seen that throughout, when treating of the forgiveness of sin, it is always assumed that the priests of Holy Church were endowed with the power of absolution, and exercised it on those who had sinned after baptism. The sacrament of pardon is constantly referred to under different names: "penance," "confession," "absolution," "exomologesis," "reconciliation," "the second baptism," "the laborious baptism," "the second plank after the shipwreck." Of these, "exomologesis" occurs very frequently. Its meaning varies: at one time it signifies manifestation of sin, whether in private or in public, and at another it expresses the public penance and confession in vogue in the first ages of the Church.