he hear thee not_, (that is to say, if he deny that he hath done it, or if having confessed the fact, he denies it to be unjustly done), _take with thee yet one or two; and if he refuse to hear them, tell it to the Church_. But why to the Church, except that she might judge whether it were a sin or not? But if _he refuse to hear the Church_; that is, if he do not submit to the Church’s sentence, but shall maintain that to be no sin, which she judges to be a sin; that is to say, if he repent not; (for certain it is, that no man repents himself of the action which he conceives not to be a sin); he saith not, _Tell it to the apostles_; that we might know that the definitive sentence in the question, whether it were a sin or not, was not left unto them; but to the Church. _But let him be unto thee_, says he, _as an heathen, or publican_; that is, as one out of the Church, as one that is not baptized, that is to say, as one whose _sins are retained_. For all Christians were baptized into remission of sins. But because it might have been demanded, who it was that had so great a power, as that of withholding the benefit of baptism from the impenitent; Christ shows that the same persons, to whom he had given authority to baptize the penitent into the remission of sins, and to make them of heathen men Christians, had also authority to retain their sins who by the Church should be adjudged to be impenitent, and to make them of Christian men heathens: and therefore presently subjoins: _Verily I say unto you, whose soever sins ye shall bind upon earth, they shall be bound also in heaven; and whose soever sins ye shall loose upon earth, they shall be loosed also in heaven_. Whence we may understand, that the power of binding and loosing, or of remitting and retaining of sins, which is called in another place the power of the keys, is not different from the power given in another place in these words (Matth. xxviii. 19): _Go, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost_. And even as the pastors cannot refuse to baptize him whom the Church judges worthy, so neither can they retain his sins whom the Church holds fitting to be absolved, nor yet remit his sins whom the Church pronounceth disobedient. And it is the Church’s part to judge of the sin, the pastor’s to cast out or to receive into the Church those that are judged. Thus St. Paul to the Church of Corinth (1 Cor. v. 12): _Do not ye judge_, saith he, _of those that are within?_ Yet he himself pronounced the sentence of excommunication against the incestuous person. _I indeed_, saith he (verse 3), _as absent in body, but present in Spirit_, &c. [Sidenote: What excommunication is, and on whom it cannot pass.]