the same a sure and undoubted forgiveness of their sins, and hope of
everlasting salvation: or else that the same minister, when any have
offended their brothers' minds with a great offence, with a notable and
open fault, whereby they have, as it were, banished and made themselves
strangers from the common fellowship, and from the body of Christ; then
after perfect amendment of such persons, doth reconcile them, and bring
them home again, and restore them to the company and unity of the
faithful. We say also, that the minister doth execute the authority of
binding and shutting, as often as he shutteth up the gate of the kingdom
of heaven against the unbelieving and stubborn persons, denouncing unto
them God's vengeance, and everlasting punishment: or else, when he doth
quite shut them out from the bosom of the Church by open excommunication.
Out of doubt, what sentence soever the minister of God shall give in this
sort, God Himself doth so well allow of it, that whatsoever here in earth
by their means is loosed and bound, God Himself will loose and bind, and
confirm the same in heaven. And touching the keys, wherewith they may
either shut or open the kingdom of heaven, we with Chrysostom say, "They
be the knowledge of the Scriptures:" with Tertullian we say, "They be the
interpretation of the law:" and with Eusebius, we call them "The Word of
God." Moreover, that Christ's disciples did receive this authority, not
that they should hear the private confessions of the people and listen to
their whisperings, as the common massing-priests do everywhere nowadays,
and do it so, as though in that one point lay all the virtue and use of
the keys: but to the end they should go, they should teach, they should
publish abroad the Gospel, and be unto the believing a sweet savour of
life unto life, and unto the unbelieving and unfaithful a savour of death
unto death; and that the minds of godly persons being brought low by the
remorse of their former life and errors, after they once began to look up
unto the light of the Gospel, and believe in Christ, might be opened with
the Word of God, even as a door is opened with a key. Contrariwise, that