LXXIV.  If, however, each man who has committed the former sins is made good, through penitence, ἐξομολογούμενος.  “The verb in St. Matt. xi. 25 expresses thanksgiving and praise, and in this sense was used by many Christian writers (Suicer, s.v.).  But more generally in the early Fathers it signifies the whole course of penitential discipline, the outward act and performance of penance.  From this it came to mean that public acknowledgment of sin which formed so important a part of penitence.  Irenæus (c. Hær. i. 13, § 5) speaks of an adulterer who, having been converted, passed her whole life in a state of penitence (ἐξομολογουμένη, in exomologesi); and (ib. iii. 4) of Cerdon often coming into the church and confessing his errors (ἐξομολογούμενος).”  D.C.A. i. 644. he to whom is committed by the loving-kindness of God the power of loosing and binding Here we see “binding and loosing” passing from the Scriptural sense of declaring what acts are forbidden and committed (Matt. xvi. 19 and xxiii. 4.  See note of Rev. A. Carr in Cambridge Bible for Schools) into the later ecclesiastical sense of imposing and remitting penalties for sin.  The first regards rather moral obligation, and, as is implied in the force of the tenses alike in the passages of St. Matthew cited and in St. John xx. 23, the recognition and announcement of the divine judgment already passed on sins and sinners; the later regards the imposition of disciplinary penalties. will not be deserving of condemnation, if he become less severe, as he beholds the exceeding greatness of the penitence of the sinner, so as to lessen the period of punishment, for the history in the Scriptures informs us that all who exercise penitence τοὺς ἐξομολογμουμένους. with greater zeal quickly receive the loving-kindness of God. e.g. according to the Ben. note, Manasseh and Hezekiah.