The situation is that analysed by Thomas Luber, a Professor of Medicine at Heidelberg, well or ill known in Scottish ecclesiastical disputes by his Graecised name, Erastus.

He argued, about 1568, that excommunication has no certain warrant in Holy Writ, under a Christian prince.

Erastus writes:-- "Some men were seized on by a certain excommunicatory fever, which they did adorn with the name of 'ecclesiastical discipline.'.

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