ce of
charisms, and the struggle against Gnosticism, a strictly ascetic mode
of life came to be viewed with suspicion. Euseb., H. E. V. 3 is
especially instructive on this point. Here it is revealed to the
confessor Attalus that the confessor Alcibiades, who even in captivity
continued his ascetic practice of living on nothing but bread and water,
was wrong in refraining from that which God had created and thus become
a "[Greek: typos skandalou]" to others. Alcibiades changed his mode of
life. In Africa, however, (see above, p. 103) dreams and visions still
retained their authority in the Church as important means of solving
perplexities.]

[Footnote 225: Tertullian, adv. Marc. IV. 9, enumerates "septem maculas
capitalium delictorum," namely, "idololatria," "blasphemia,"
"homicidium," "adulterium," "stuprum," "falsum testimonium," "fraus."
The stricter treatment probably applied to all these seven offences. So
far as I know, the lapse into heresy was not placed in the same category
in the first centuries; see Iren. III. 4. 2: Tertull., de praescr. 30
and, above all, de pudic. 19 init.; the anonymous writer in Euseb., H.
E. V. 28. 12, from which passages it is evident that repentant heretics
were readmitted.]

[Footnote 226: Hermas based the admissibility of a second atonement on a
definite divine revelation to this effect, and did not expressly discuss
the admission of gross sinners into the Church generally, but treated of
their reception into that of the last days, which he believed had
already arrived. See particulars on this point in my article "Lapsi," in
Herzog's Real-Encyklopaedie, 2 ed. Cf. Preuschen, Tertullian's Schriften
de paenit. et de pudic. mit Ruecksicht auf die Bussdisciplin, 1890;
Rolffs, Indulgenz-Edict des Kallistus, 1893.]

[Footnote 227: In the work de paenit. (7 ff.) Tertullian treats this as a
fixed Church regulation. K. Mueller, Kirchengeschichte I. 1892, p. 114,
rightly remarks: "He who desired this expiation continued in the wider
circle of the Church, in her 'antechamber' indeed, but as her member in
the wider sense. This, however, did not exclude the possibility of his
being received again, even in this world, into the ranks of those
possessing full Christian privileges,--after the performance of penance
or _exhomologesis_. But there was no kind of certainty as to that taking
place. Meanwhile this _exhomologesis_ itself underwent a transformation
which in Tertullian includes a whole serie