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exclusion from the synagogue was a real excommunication, and it is this to which reference is made in 1 Esdras x, 7 and 8: “and proclamation was made in Juda and Jerusalem to all the children of the captivity, that they should assemble together into Jerusalem. And that whosoever would not come within three days, according to the counsel of the princes and the ancients, all his substance should be taken away, and he should be cast out of the company of them that were returned from captivity.” It was this exclusion which was feared by the parents of the man who was born blind, who when they were questioned by the Pharisees would give no definite answer with reference to the healing of their son, “because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had already agreed among themselves, that if any man should confess him to be Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue.”^[12] Again we are told, “many of the chief men also believed in him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, that they might not be cast out of the synagogue.”^[13] The Apostles were told: “they will put you out of the synagogues; yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God.”^[14] This penalty exercised by the Jews foreshadowed later censures, for it is said: “in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them: tell the Church. And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and Publican. Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in Heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven.”^[15] According to the Orthodox Church this power was transmitted to the successors of the apostles that is to say the bishops, so that they too had the faculty of binding and loosing. But something very definite was further implied. This faculty had actual physical consequences and the Greeks held that excommunication arrested the decomposition of a body after death. In fact the incorruptibility of the body of any person bound by a curse was made a definite doctrine of the Orthodox Church. The very wording of the text certainly admitted of such an interpretation. ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ὅσα ἐάν δήσητε ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, ἔσται δεδεμένα ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ. Καἱ ὅσα ἐάν λύσητε έπὶ τῆς γῆς, ἔσται λελυμένα ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ. The word λύω “loose” expresses equally the ideas of dissolution