{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/214/2140100.htm","path":"chr/ecf/214/2140100.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/214/2140100.htm","text":"A presbyter who has been promoted after having committed carnal sin, and who shall confess that he had sinned before his ordination, shall not make the oblation, though he may remain in his other functions on account of his zeal in other respects; for the majority have affirmed that ordination blots out other kinds of sins. But if he do not confess and cannot be openly convicted, the decision shall depend upon himself.\nIf a presbyter confess that he has sinned, 127 let him abstain from the oblation, and from it only. For certain sins orders remit. If he neither confess nor is convicted, let him have power over himself.\nTherefore if he who before his ordination had committed a sin of the flesh with a woman, confess it after ordination, when he is already a priest, he cannot perform the priestly office, he can neither offer nor consecrate the oblations, even though after his ordination he has preserved uprightness of living and been careful to exercise virtue; as the words \u201czeal in other respects\u201d (\u201cstudious of good\u201d) Zonaras rightly interprets.\nAnd since here the consideration is of a sin committed before ordination, and also concerning a presbyter who after his ordination was of spotless life, and careful to exercise virtue, the Fathers rightly wished that he should not, against his will, be deposed from the priestly office.\nIt is certainly curious that this canon speaks of ordination as in the opinion of most persons taking away all sins except consummated carnal offences. And it will be noted that the \u1f00\u03c6\u03b9\u03ad\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 must mean more than that they are forgiven by ordination, for they had been forgiven long ago by God upon true contrition, but that they were made to be non-existent, as if they had never been, so that they were no hinderance to the exercise of the spiritual office. I offer no explanation of the difficulty and only venture to doubt the satisfactory character of any of the explanations given by the commentators. Moreover it is hard to grasp the logical connexion of the clauses, and what this \u201cblotting out\u201d of \u03c4\u1f70 \u03bb\u03bf\u03b9\u03c0\u1f70 has to do with the matter I entirely fail to see. The \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 after \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf\u1f76 may possibly suggest that something has dropped out.\nThis canon and the following are together in the Corpus Juris Canonici, Gratian\u2019s Decretum, Pars II., Causa xv., Qu\u00e6st. viii., c. i.\nAristenus understands this of fornication.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. XIV: The Canons of the Councils of Ancyra, Gangra, Neoc\u00e6sarea, Antioch and Laodicea, which Canons were Accepted and Received by the Ecumenical Synods.: Canon IX","type":"page"}