4. _Medieval and Monastic Usage._--The writings of the church Fathers give sufficient evidence that two degrees of excommunication, the [Greek: aphorismos] and the [Greek: aphorismos pantelês], as they were generally called, were in use during, or at least soon after, the apostolic age. The former, which involved exclusion from participation in the eucharistic service and from the eucharist itself, though not from the so-called "service of the catechumens," was the usual punishment of comparatively light offences; the latter, which was the penalty for graver scandals, involved "exclusion from all church privileges,"--a vague expression which has sometimes been interpreted as meaning total exclusion from the very precincts of the church building (_inter hiemantes orare_) and from the favour of God (Bingham, _Antiquities of Christian Church_, xvi. 2. 16). For some sins, such as adultery, the sentence of excommunication was in the 2nd century regarded as [Greek: pantelês] in the sense of being irrevocable. Difference of opinion as to the absolutely "irremissible" character of mortal sins led to the important controversy associated with the names of Zephyrinus, Tertullian, Calistus, Hippolytus, Cyprian and Novatian, in which the stricter and more montanistic party held that for those who had been guilty of such sins as theft, fraud, denial of the faith, there should be no restoration to church fellowship even in the hour of death. On this point the provincial synods of Illiberis (Elvira) in 305 and of Ancyra in 315 subsequently came to conflicting decisions, the council of Elvira forbidding the reception of offenders into communion during life, and the council of Ancyra fixing a limit to the penalty in the same cases. But the excommunication was on all hands regarded as being "medicinal" in its character. It is noteworthy that the word [Greek: anathema] had fallen into disuse about the beginning of the 4th century, and that, throughout the same period, no instance of the judicial use of the phrase [Greek: paradounai tô Satana] can be found.