Note 209 — LETTER X.

John xx. 23: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” All the ancient fathers, such as Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, and Chrysostom, explain this remission of sins as the work of the Holy Ghost, and not of the apostles except ministerially, in the use of the spiritual keys of doctrine and discipline, of intercessary prayer and of the sacraments. (Ussher’s Jesuits’ Challenge, p. 122 &c.) Even the schoolmen held that the power of binding and loosing committed to the ministers of the Church is not absolute, but must be limited by clave non errante, or when no error is committed in the use of the keys.