And in order that they may suppose their daily sins—which they do not at all cease to commit, of whatever kind and however great they may be—can be forgiven through almsgivings, they try to enlist as both advocate and witness for themselves the prayer which the Lord himself taught. For just as there is no day, they say, on which this prayer is not said by Christians, so there is no daily sin of whatever kind which is not forgiven through it, when we say: Forgive us our debts, if we take care to do what follows: As we also forgive our debtors. For the Lord did not say, they claim: If you forgive men their sins, your Father will forgive you your daily small sins, but he said: he will forgive you your sins.
Therefore, of whatever kind or however great they may be, even if they are perpetrated daily and life does not depart from them, changed for the better, they presume that these can be remitted to them through the almsgiving of a pardon not denied. But it is well that these men admonish that worthy almsgivings for sins are to be done; for if they were to say that almsgivings of any kind whatever for sins, both daily and great, and however great a habit of crimes, could obtain the divine mercy, so that a daily remission should follow, they would see that they were saying an absurd and ridiculous thing. For thus they would be forced to admit that it could come to pass that a most wealthy man, by spending ten little coins daily on almsgivings, should redeem murders and adulteries and every wicked deed.
But if it is most absurd and most insane to say this, then assuredly, if it be asked which are the worthy almsgivings for sins—concerning which even that forerunner of Christ said: Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance—without doubt they will not be found to do them who pierce their own life, even unto death, with the perpetration of daily crimes; first, because in carrying off the goods of others they plunder far more, out of which, by bestowing a very little on the poor, they think they thus feed Christ, so that, believing they have bought—or rather daily buy—from him the license for evildoing, they securely commit such damnable things.
For if for one single crime they were to distribute all their goods to the needy members of Christ, unless they desisted from such deeds by having charity, which acts not perversely, it could profit them nothing. He, therefore, who does worthy almsgivings for his sins, let him begin to do them first upon himself. For it is unworthy that he should not do to himself what he does to his neighbor, when he hears God saying: You shall love your neighbor as yourself; and likewise hears: Have mercy on your own soul, pleasing God. Not doing this almsgiving—that is, that he please God—to his own soul, how can he be said to do worthy almsgivings for his own sins? For to this end also is that written: He who is malignant to himself, to whom will he be good? For almsgivings assist prayers;
and by all means we must consider what we read: Son, you have sinned; add not again, and pray concerning things past, that they may be forgiven you. For this reason, then, almsgivings are to be done, so that, when we pray concerning past sins, we may be heard; not so that, persevering in them, we should believe we procure for ourselves the license of doing evil through almsgivings. And therefore the Lord foretold that he would impute to those on the right the almsgivings done by them, and to those on the left the almsgivings not done, in order to show from this how much almsgivings avail for the blotting out of former sins, not for the committing of perpetual sins with impunity. But such almsgivings those cannot be said to do who are unwilling to change their life for the better from the habit of crimes. Because also in that which he says:
When you did it not to one of the least of these mine, you did it not to me—he showed that they do it not, even when they think they do it. For if they gave bread to a hungry Christian as to a Christian, assuredly they would not deny to themselves the bread of righteousness, which is Christ himself; since God attends not to whom it is given, but with what mind it is given. He, therefore, who loves Christ in the Christian, gives him alms with the mind by which he draws near to Christ, not by which he wishes to depart unpunished from Christ. For each one forsakes Christ so much the more, the more he loves what Christ disapproves. For what does it profit anyone that he is baptized, if he is not justified? Did not he who said:
Unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of God—did not he himself also say: Unless your righteousness abound above that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven? Why, fearing the former, do many run to be baptized, and, not fearing the latter, do not many care to be justified? Therefore, just as he does not say 'Fool' to his brother who, when he says this, is incensed not at the brotherhood itself but at his sin (otherwise he shall be liable to the fire of Gehenna): so on the contrary, he who offers alms to a Christian, offers it not to a Christian if he does not love Christ in him; but he does not love Christ who refuses to be justified in Christ. And just as, if anyone should be forestalled by this fault, so as to say to his brother:
'Fool'—that is, reviling him unjustly, not wishing to take away his sin—it is too little for him, in order to redeem this, to do almsgivings, unless he also join to it the remedy of reconciliation which follows there (for there it follows: If therefore you offer your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave there your gift before the altar and go first, be reconciled to your brother, and then coming you shall offer your gift); so it is too little to do almsgivings, however great, for any crime whatever, while remaining in the habit of crimes. But the daily prayer which Jesus himself taught—whence also it is named the Lord's Prayer—does indeed blot out daily sins, when it is daily said:
Forgive us our debts—and when that which follows is not only said but also done: As we also forgive our debtors; but because sins are committed, therefore it is said, not that they should therefore be committed because it is said. For through this the Saviour willed to show us that, however righteously we live in the mist and infirmity of this life, sins are not lacking to us, for the forgiving of which we ought to pray, and to forgive those who sin against us, that we too may be pardoned. Not therefore for this reason did the Lord say:
If you forgive men their sins, your Father also will forgive you your sins—that we, relying on this prayer, should securely commit daily crimes, whether by a power whereby we should not fear the laws of men, or by a cunning whereby we should deceive men themselves; but that through it we might learn not to think ourselves without sins, even though we were immune from crimes; just as God also admonished the priests of the old law of this very thing concerning the sacrifices, which he commanded them to offer first for their own, then for the people's sins. For the very words also of so great a Master and our Lord must be watchfully considered. For he did not say: 'If you forgive men their sins, your Father also will forgive you sins of whatever kind,' but he said: your sins.
For he was teaching a daily prayer, and was assuredly speaking to disciples already justified. What then is 'your sins' but 'the sins without which not even you shall be, who are justified and sanctified'? Where, therefore, those who through this prayer seek an occasion for perpetrating daily crimes say that the Lord signified even great sins, since he did not say 'he will forgive you small sins,' but 'your sins': there we, considering to whom he was speaking, and hearing 'your sins' said, ought to think nothing other than small sins, since to such as they were, they were now not great. Yet nevertheless not even those great sins, from which men must altogether depart with manners changed for the better, are forgiven to those who pray, unless that be done which is there said:
As we also forgive our debtors. For if the least sins, without which not even the life of the righteous is, are not otherwise remitted, how much more shall those who are involved in many and great crimes, even if they now cease to perpetrate them, obtain no indulgence, if they be inexorable in remitting to others what each has sinned against them—since the Lord says: But if you forgive not men, neither will your Father forgive you. For to this end also avails that which the apostle James likewise says: that judgment shall be without mercy to him who has not shown mercy.
For to mind must come also that servant to whom his lord released the debt of ten thousand talents, which afterwards he commanded him to repay, because he himself had not shown mercy to his fellow-servant who owed him a hundred denarii. In these, therefore, who are sons of the promise and vessels of mercy, avails that which the same apostle says, consequently adding: But mercy exults above judgment—since even those righteous ones, who lived in such great holiness that they receive others also into eternal tabernacles, by whom friends have been made from the mammon of iniquity, were, that they might be such, set free by mercy by him who justifies the impious, imputing the reward according to grace, not according to debt.
For in their number is the apostle who says: I obtained mercy, that I might be faithful. But those who are received by such men into eternal tabernacles, it must be confessed, are not endowed with such manners that their own life could suffice for their deliverance without the intercession of the saints; and on this account, in them much more does mercy exult above judgment.
Yet no one is on that account to be supposed to be received into the eternal dwellings while remaining a most wicked man, in no way changed to a good or even a more tolerable life, merely because he has served the saints out of the mammon of iniquity — that is, out of money or riches that had been ill-gotten, or, even if honestly acquired, are nevertheless not true riches, but such as iniquity reckons to be riches, since it does not know what the true riches are in which those men abound who also receive others into the eternal dwellings.
There is therefore a certain manner of life neither so evil that the generosity of almsgiving — by which even the want of the righteous is sustained, and friends are made who may receive men into the eternal dwellings — profits those who so live nothing toward attaining the kingdom of heaven; nor so good that of itself it suffices them for the attainment of so great a blessedness, unless they obtain mercy by the merits of those whom they have made their friends. (I am wont, moreover, to marvel that even in Virgil this saying of the Lord is found, where He says: Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, that they also may receive you into the eternal dwellings; to which that other is most similar: He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward,
and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. For when that poet was describing the Elysian fields, where they suppose the souls of the blessed to dwell, he did not only place there those who by their own merits could arrive at those seats, but he added and said: And those who by deserving well made others mindful of themselves — that is, those who won others over and by their good deserving made those others mindful of them; exactly as though these should say to them what is often repeated by Christian lips, when the humble commends himself to any one of the saints and says:
"Remember me"; and by his good deserving he brings it about that this may be possible.) But what this manner of life may be, and what are those very sins which so hinder the attainment of the kingdom of God, yet in such a way that pardon is nevertheless obtained by the merits of the holy friends, is most difficult to discover and most dangerous to define. For my part, certainly, up to this present time, though I have busied myself about it, I have not been able to reach a full tracking of these things. And perhaps they lie hidden for this very reason, lest zeal for making progress toward guarding against all sins should grow slack.
For if it were known what and of what kind are those offenses for which, even when they persist and are not consumed by an advance to a better life, the intercession of the righteous must be sought and hoped for, human sloth would wrap itself up in security, and would take no care to disentangle itself from such entanglements by the exertion of any virtue, but would seek only to be freed by the merits of others whom it had made its friends by the generosity of almsgiving out of the mammon of iniquity. But as it is, so long as the measure of venial iniquity — even should it persist — remains unknown, assuredly both zeal for advancing toward better things is applied the more watchfully by prayer and importunity, and the care of making holy friends out of the mammon of iniquity is not despised.
But this deliverance, which is effected whether by each one's own prayers or by the intercession of the saints, brings it about that a man be not cast into the eternal fire, not that, when he has been cast in, he should after some length of time be rescued from it. For even those who suppose that what is written — that the good and fertile land bears fruit, one thirtyfold, another sixtyfold, another a hundredfold — is to be so understood that the saints, according to the diversity of their merits, deliver some thirty men, others sixty, others a hundred, are wont to conjecture that this will take place on the day of judgment, not after the judgment.
By reason of which opinion, when a certain man saw people most perversely promising themselves impunity, on the ground that all could seem, in this way, to belong to deliverance, he is reported to have replied most elegantly that it were rather better to live well, so that each might be found among those who are to intercede for others to be delivered, lest they be so few that, when each one's number — whether thirty or sixty or a hundred — is quickly reached, many should remain who could no longer be rescued from their punishments by such intercession; and among these should be found whoever, by a most empty rashness, promises himself the hope of another's fruit.
Let it suffice that I have made this reply to those who do not despise the authority of the sacred Scriptures which we hold in common, but who, by understanding them ill, suppose that not what those Scriptures say, but rather what they themselves wish, shall come to pass. Having therefore rendered this reply, we bring this book, as we promised, to an end.