The authority to grant such discharge was conceived to be included in the power of binding and loosing committed by Christ to His Church; and when in the course of time the vaguer theological conceptions of the first ages of Christianity assumed scientific form and shape at the hands of the Schoolmen, the doctrine came to prevail that this discharge of the sinner's debt was made through an application to the offender of what was called the " Treasure of the Church " (Thurston, p. 315).
The Russians retaliated by loosing their squadron from Sevastopol, and on the 3oth of November it attacked and destroyed the Turkish fleet at Sinope.
What Austria desired to be was a state at once conciliatory and just, and it opposed no national demand which did not overstep the limits of state security; but this loosing of bonds unchained at the same time a number of national passions before which the state retired step by step.
But it should be noted that the primary reference of "binding and loosing" is, according to rabbinical usage, rather to the laying down of rules than to condoning breaches of them; and nothing is said to confine the words "Whose soever sins ye forgive" to the offences of Christians already baptized, and they should be held to include preaching the Gospel and baptizing converts as well as the administration of internal discipline.
It must, however, be noted that the power of binding and loosing is given in Matt.
