I. Paenitentiamhocgenushominesquodetipsiretrofuimus, caecisinedominilumine, naturatenusnoruntpassionemanimiquandamessequaeobveniatdeoffensasententiaeprioris. Ceterumarationeeiustantumabsuntquantumabipsorationisauctore. Quipperesdeiratioquiadeusomniumconditornihilnonrationeproviditdisposuitordinavitnihilquenonrationetractariintellegiquevoluit. Igiturignorantesquiquedeumremquoqueeiusignorentnecesseestquianulliusomninothesaurusextraneispatet. Itaqueuniversamvitaeconversationemsinegubernaculorationistransfretantesinminentemsaeculoprocellamevitarenonnorunt.
Chapter I. Repentance—this kind of men, which we ourselves also formerly were, blind and without the Lord's light, know only so far as nature reaches, to be a certain passion of the soul which arises from displeasure at a former resolve. But from the reason of it they are as far removed as from the very Author of reason. For, since reason is a thing of God—because God, the Founder of all things, has foreseen, disposed, and ordered nothing without reason, and has willed nothing to be handled or understood without reason—therefore those who are ignorant of God must of necessity be ignorant also of His property, since to no strangers whatsoever is any man's treasure laid open. And so, ferrying across the whole intercourse of life without the rudder of reason, they know not how to avoid the storm that hangs over the world.
Now how irrationally they conduct themselves in the act of repentance, it will suffice to unfold from this one instance alone: that they apply it even to their good deeds. They repent of faith, of love, of simplicity, of liberality, of patience, of mercy: according as any of these has fallen into ingratitude, they execrate themselves for having done well, and that species of repentance especially which is inflicted upon their best works they fix fast in their heart, taking care to remember never to do any good again. On the contrary, over the repentance of evil deeds they brood more lightly: in short, they transgress more readily through the same means than they do right through the same. Chapter II. But if they acted as partakers of God, and thereby also of reason, they would first weigh the merits of repentance, and never apply it to the increase of a perverse amendment;
in fine, they would temper the measure of their repenting because they would also hold the measure of their transgressing, fearing the Lord, to be sure. But where there is no fear, there is likewise no amendment; where there is no amendment, repentance is necessarily vain, because it lacks its fruit, for the sake of which God sowed it, that is, the salvation of man. For God, after so many and so great transgressions of human temerity—begun by Adam, the head of the race—after man's condemnation together with the dowry of the world, after his ejection from paradise and his subjection to death, when He had again ripened toward His own mercy, from that time onward consecrated repentance in His own self, rescinding the sentence of His former wrath, having pledged to pardon His own work and image.
And so He gathered a people to Himself, and cherished them with many lavish gifts of His goodness; and though He had so often found them most ungrateful, He ever exhorted them to repentance, and sent forth the mouths of all the prophets to proclaim it. Presently, promising the grace which in the last times He was about to shed upon the whole world through His Spirit, He commanded the baptism of repentance to go before, so that those whom He would call by grace to the promise destined for the seed of Abraham He might first prepare by the seal of repentance. John is not silent, saying, 'Enter into repentance'; for now salvation was drawing near to the nations, the Lord, that is, bringing it according to God's promise.
For this salvation He had appointed repentance as its handmaid and forerunner, set over the cleansing of minds, so that whatever the old error had defiled, whatever ignorance had contaminated in the heart of man, repentance might sweep away, root out, and cast forth, and so make the house of the breast clean for the Holy Spirit about to come, that He might gladly enter therein with His heavenly goods. Of these goods there is one chief title: the salvation of man, once the abolition of his former crimes has gone before. This is the cause of repentance, this its work, tending the business of divine mercy; and what profits man serves God. For the rest, its principle, which we learn when we have come to know the Lord, holds to a fixed form, that no violent hand should ever be laid, as it were, upon good deeds or thoughts.
For God does not hold as ratified the rejection of good things, seeing that they are His own; and since He is their author and defender, He must likewise be their approver; and if approver, then also their rewarder. Let a man's ingratitude look to itself, then, if it drives even good deeds to repentance; and let his gratitude look to itself, if the courting of it is a spur to well-doing: both are earthly and mortal. For how little the gain, if you have done well to a grateful man, or how little the loss, if to an ungrateful one? A good deed has God as its debtor, just as an evil one does, since the Judge is the rewarder of every cause.
But since God the Judge presides over the exacting and safeguarding of justice, which is most dear to Him, and ratifies it as the whole sum of His discipline, can it be doubted that, as in all our acts, so also in the matter of repentance, justice must be rendered to God? And this indeed may be fulfilled if repentance be applied to sins alone. Moreover, nothing deserves to be called sin except an evil deed, nor does anyone offend by doing good. But if he does not offend, why should he invade repentance, the peculiar province of offenders? Why does he impose upon his goodness the office of malice? Thus it comes about that, when something is applied where it ought not to be, there where it ought to be it is neglected. III.
To point out, then, those things whose repentance may seem just and due—that is, those which must be reckoned as fault—the place indeed demands it, yet it may seem superfluous. For once the Lord is known, the spirit, of its own accord regarded by its own Author, emerges to the knowledge of the truth; and being admitted to the Lord's precepts, is straightway taught by them what must be reckoned a sin, namely that from which God restrains it; since, as it is certain that God is some great good, surely nothing but evil would displease the good, seeing that among things contrary to each other there is no friendship. Yet it will not be irksome to note briefly that some faults are carnal, that is, bodily, and some indeed spiritual—for since man is composed of this conjunction of a twofold substance, he sins from no other source than that from which he is constituted;
yet they do not differ from each other in this, that body and spirit are two; nay rather, they are the more equal in that the two make one, lest anyone should distinguish their sins according to the diversity of their materials, so as to reckon the one lighter or graver than the other. For both flesh and spirit are things of God, the one shaped by His hand, the other perfected by His breath; since therefore they belong equally to the Lord, whichever of them offends offends the Lord equally. Or will you distinguish the acts of flesh and of spirit, which have so great a communion and fellowship both in life and in death and in resurrection, that they are then raised up together either unto life or unto judgement, precisely because they have equally either sinned or acted innocently?
We have premised this so that we may understand that repentance is no less necessary for the one part than for both, if either has sinned; the guilt of both is common, common too is the Judge, namely God: therefore common also is the remedy of repentance. Henceforth things are named spiritual and bodily, because every fault is either done or thought, so that it is bodily which lies in the deed, since a deed, like a body, can be both seen and touched; but spiritual is that which lies in the mind, since, like a spirit, it is neither seen nor grasped. Whereby it is shown that not only the faults of deed, but also those of the will, are to be shunned and purged by repentance.
For even though human mediocrity judges the deed alone, because it is not equal to the hidden things of the will, we should not on that account neglect even its crimes as they stand before God. God is sufficient for all things; nothing whence sin arises is at all removed from His sight, since He is not ignorant of it, nor does He fail to decree it to judgement: He is no dissembler or betrayer of His own discernment! What of the fact that the will is the origin of the deed? For let those things look to it which are imputed to chance or necessity or ignorance—with these excepted, sin is henceforth committed by nothing but the will. Since, then, the will is the origin of the deed, is it not so much the more liable to punishment as it is principal in guilt? From which it is not freed even when some difficulty cuts off its perpetration:
for it is imputed to itself, nor can it be excused by that misfortune of failing to accomplish, since it has done what was its own. Finally, in what way does the Lord show that He builds His addition upon the Law, except by also forbidding the faults of the will? When He defines as an adulterer not only him who has fallen upon another's marriage in close encounter, but also him who has defiled it by the lust of a look. So then the mind represents to itself, perilously enough, that which it is forbidden to carry out, and rashly discharges the effect through the will. And since the force of this will is so great that it sates us with its own consolation and takes the place of the deed, it shall therefore be punished in place of the deed. It is most vain to say, 'I willed it, yet did not do it';
for you ought to accomplish it, because you will it, or else not to will it, because you do not accomplish it. But you yourself pronounce the confession of your own conscience: for if you were desiring a good thing, you would have longed to accomplish it; and further, if you do not accomplish it as an evil thing, then you ought not to have desired it either: wherever you place yourself, you are bound to the charge, since you have either willed evil or not fulfilled good! IV. To all faults, then, whether committed in flesh or in spirit, whether in deed or in will, He who has appointed punishment through judgement has likewise pledged pardon through repentance, saying to the people: 'Repent, and I will save you.' And again: 'As I live,' says the Lord, 'I would rather repentance than death.' Therefore repentance is life, since it is set before death.
Do you, O sinner, like myself—nay, less than I, for I acknowledge my pre-eminence in sins—so seize upon it, so embrace it, as a shipwrecked man the trust of some plank. This will lift you up, submerged as you are in the waves of your sins, and will bear you forward into the harbour of the divine clemency. Snatch the occasion of unlooked-for happiness, that you, who once before God were nothing but a drop of the bucket and the dust of the threshing-floor and the potter's little vessel, may thereafter become a tree, that tree which is planted beside the waters and keeps its leaves perennially and brings forth its fruit in due season, which shall see neither fire nor axe. Having found the truth, repent of your errors; repent of having loved what God does not love, since not even we ourselves permit our own servants to know those things by which we are offended:
for the principle of obedience is established in a likeness of dispositions. The matter of enumerating the good of repentance is diffuse, and on this account is to be entrusted to great eloquence: we, however, in keeping with our own limitations, drive home this one point—that whatever God enjoins is good and best. I count it audacity to dispute concerning the good of a divine precept; for we ought to hearken not because it is good, but because God has enjoined it: for the exhibition of obedience, the majesty of the divine power comes first, the authority of Him who commands comes before the profit of him who serves. 'Is it good to repent, or not?' Why do you turn it over? God has enjoined it! And yet He not only enjoins, but even exhorts; He invites with a reward: salvation; swearing too, He says 'As I live,' desiring to be believed.
O blessed we, for whose sake God swears! O most wretched, if we do not believe even the Lord when He swears! What God so greatly commends, what He even attests after the manner of men under an oath, we surely ought both to undertake and to keep with the utmost seriousness, so that, abiding in the assurance of the divine grace, we may likewise be able to persevere in its fruit and profit. V. For this I say: that repentance, which, shown and enjoined upon us by God's grace, recalls us into grace with the Lord, ought—once known and undertaken—never thereafter to be cancelled by a repetition of sin.
Now indeed no pretext of ignorance shields you, in that, having come to know the Lord and having admitted His precepts, and finally having performed repentance for your faults, you restore yourself again to faults. Thus, in proportion as you are set apart from ignorance, in that same proportion you are glued fast to obstinacy; for if you repented of having sinned because you had begun to fear the Lord, why did you choose rather to rescind what you had done for fear's sake, unless because you have ceased to fear? For nothing but obstinacy overturns fear. But since not even those who are ignorant of the Lord are protected by any exception from punishment—because it is not permitted to be ignorant of God, who is set forth in the open and is comprehensible even from His heavenly goods—how much more perilous is it to despise Him once known?
Moreover, he despises Him who, having obtained from Him the understanding of good and evil, by resuming what he understands must be fled from and what he has already fled, does insult to his own understanding, that is, to God's gift: he spurns the giver when he deserts the gift; he denies the benefit when he does not honour the benefactor! In what way can He be pleasing to him whose gift displeases him? Thus toward the Lord he appears not only obstinate but also ungrateful. For the rest, no lightly does a man sin against the Lord who, having by his repentance renounced the devil, the Lord's rival, and by this very act subjected him to the Lord, again by his own relapse sets him up and makes himself that rival's exultation, so that the evil one, having recovered his prey, may once more rejoice against the Lord.
Do you not—a thing perilous even to say, yet to be brought forth for edification—prefer the devil to the Lord? For he seems to have made a comparison, who has come to know both, and by his verdict to have pronounced that one the better, whose again he has chosen rather to be! Thus he who had set himself to make satisfaction to the Lord through repentance for his faults, will make satisfaction to the devil through another repentance of his repentance, and will be the more hateful to God the more he is acceptable to His rival. But some say that the Lord is content enough if He be received with heart and mind, though in act it be less carried out; and so they sin with fear and faith safe—that is, they violate marriages with chastity safe, they mix poison for a parent with piety safe.
So then they too, with pardon safe, shall be thrust down into Gehenna, while with fear safe they sin. What a marvellous example of perversity: because they fear, they sin; I suppose they would not sin, if they did not fear! Therefore he who would not have God offended, let him not revere Him at all, if the fear of offending is his patronage! But such dispositions are wont to sprout from the seed of hypocrites, whose friendship with the devil is undivided, whose repentance is never faithful. VI.
Whatever, then, our mediocrity has attempted to suggest for the once seizing and perpetually retaining of repentance, regards indeed all who are debtors to the Lord, as all who seek salvation in meriting God's favour; but it presses especially upon these little novices, who are just now beginning to water their ears with the divine discourses, and who, like puppies of infancy still fresh, with eyes not yet perfected, crawl uncertainly, and say indeed that they renounce their former ways and take up repentance, but neglect to shut it in. For that very end of desiring itself calls them back to desire something of their former things—just as fruits, when they are already beginning to age into sourness or bitterness, yet in some part still flatter their own former grace.
Omnepraetereacunctationisettergiversationisergapaenitentiamvitiumpraesumptiointinctionisinportat. Certienimindubitataeveniaedelictorummediumtempusinterimfuranturetcommeatumsibifaciuntdelinquendiquameruditionemnondelinquendi. Quamporroineptum, quam (perversum), paenitentiamnonadimplereetveniamdelictorumsustinere, hocestpretiumnonexhibereetadmercemmanumemittere! Hocenimpretiodominusveniamaddicereinstituit, hacpaenitentiaeconpensationeredimendamproponitinpunitatem.
Besides, the presumption of baptism introduces every fault of delay and shuffling with regard to repentance. For being sure of the undoubted pardon of their faults, they steal the intervening time in the meanwhile, and make for themselves a furlough of sinning rather than a schooling in not sinning. How unfitting, moreover, how perverse, not to fulfil repentance and yet to expect the pardon of faults—that is, not to pay the price and yet to put forth the hand for the merchandise! For at this price the Lord has appointed to adjudge pardon; He proposes that impunity be redeemed by this compensation of repentance.
If, then, those who sell first examine the coin with which they bargain, lest it be scraped, or turned, or counterfeit, do we not believe that the Lord likewise first makes trial of our repentance before He grants us so great a wage—namely, of eternal life? 'But let us defer for a little while the truth of repentance: then, I suppose, it will be permitted us to be amended, when we are absolved.' By no means; but when, with pardon still hanging in the balance, punishment is kept in view; when as yet we do not deserve to be freed, that we may be able to deserve it; when God threatens, not when He forgives. For what slave, after he has been changed into liberty, imputes to himself his thefts and runnings-away? What soldier, after he has been discharged from his camp, busies himself over his marks of punishment?
The sinner ought to bewail himself before pardon, because the time of repentance is the very same as that of peril and fear. Nor do I refuse the divine benefit—that is, the abolition of faults—to those about to enter the water, that they be altogether saved; but effort must be spent that one may attain to arrive there. For who will lend even a single sprinkling of any water to you, a man of such faithless repentance? Indeed, to attempt it by theft, and to lead astray by your protestations the one set over this matter, is easy; but God provides for His treasure, nor will He allow the unworthy to creep in. What, in fine, does He say? 'Nothing is hidden that shall not be revealed': however great the darkness you build up over your deeds, God is light!
But some so suppose, as if God were bound to bestow even upon the unworthy what He has pledged, and they turn His liberality into a servitude. But if He grants us the token of death out of necessity, then He does it unwillingly; and who promises that what He has bestowed unwillingly will endure? For do not many afterwards fall away? Is not that gift taken away from many? These, forsooth, are they who creep in, who, having attacked the faith of repentance, set upon the sands a house that is going to collapse! Let no one, then, flatter himself because he is reckoned among the beginnings of the hearers, as if it were still permitted him even now to sin: as soon as you have known the Lord, fear Him; as soon as you have beheld Him, revere Him! For the rest, what does it profit you to have known Him, when you lie upon the same things as before when you were ignorant?
But what separates you from the perfect servant of God? Is Christ one thing to the baptized, another to the hearers? Is there another hope or reward, another dread of judgement, another necessity of repentance? That washing is the sealing of faith, which faith is begun and commended from the faith of repentance. We are not therefore washed in order that we may cease to sin, but because we have ceased, since we are already washed in heart: for this is the first baptism of the hearer. From then on there is entire fear, in that he has felt the Lord; there is sound faith, having once embraced repentance with a good conscience! For the rest, if we cease from sin only from the waters, we put on innocence by necessity, not of our own accord. Who then excels in goodness? He to whom it is not permitted to be evil, or he to whom it is displeasing?
he who is commanded, or he who delights to be free from crime? Then let us not turn our hands from theft, unless the hardness of bolts resists; nor rein in our eyes from the lusts of debauchery, unless barred by the guardians of bodies—if no one who is a debtor to the Lord will cease to sin unless bound by baptism. But if anyone should think thus, I know not whether, once baptized, he would be more saddened that he has ceased to sin, than gladdened that he has escaped! And so hearers ought to wish for baptism, not to presume upon it. For he who wishes, honours; he who presumes, is haughty; in the one modesty appears, in the other, however, insolence; the one is busy, the other neglectful; the one desires to earn it, but the other promises it to himself as a debt owed to him; the one receives, the other invades.
Whom would you judge the worthier, but the more amended? and whom the more amended, but the more fearful, and therefore one who has performed true repentance? For he still feared to sin, lest he should not deserve to receive. But that presumptuous one, since he promised it to himself, being secure of course, could not fear: thus neither did he fulfil repentance, because he lacked the instrument of repentance, that is, fear. Presumption is a portion of shamelessness: it puffs up the petitioner, despises the giver; and so it sometimes deceives. For it promises before it is due, whereby always He who is about to bestow is offended. VII. Thus far, Christ the Lord, may it fall to Your servants to speak or to hear concerning the discipline of repentance, so far as it is not yet fitting even to sin, and for the hearers:
or rather let them know nothing yet of repentance, let them require nothing of it. It irks me to subjoin mention of a second—nay, now a last—hope, lest by treating of the remaining aid of repenting we should seem to point out a space for still sinning. Far be it that anyone should so interpret it, as if for that reason it still lies open to him for sinning, because it lies open for repenting, and should make the overflow of heavenly clemency into a licence for human rashness! Let no one be the worse because God is the better, sinning as often as he is also forgiven: for he shall assuredly have an end of escaping who has none of offending. We have escaped once: thus far let us plunge ourselves into perils, even if we seem likely to escape again.
Very many, having been delivered from shipwreck, thenceforth pronounce a divorce upon both ship and sea, and honour God's benefit—that is, their own safety—by the memory of the peril. I praise their fear, I love their modesty: they are unwilling to be a second time a burden to the divine mercy; they dread to seem to trample upon what they have obtained; with a good solicitude, surely, they avoid experiencing again what they have once learned to fear. Thus their restraint of rashness is a testimony of fear; and the fear of man is the honour of God. But indeed that most stubborn enemy never grants a truce to his malice; nay, then most of all does he rage, when he perceives a man fully delivered; then is he most kindled, when he is being extinguished.
He must needs grieve and groan that, once the pardon of sins is granted, so many works of death in man are destroyed, so many titles of his former dominion erased. He grieves that that sinner, once a servant, is going to judge both him and his angels in Christ. And so he watches, assaults, besieges, to see whether he can either strike the eyes with carnal lust, or ensnare the mind with worldly enticements, or overthrow faith by the dread of earthly power, or wrench one aside from the sure way by perverse traditions; he fails not in stumbling-blocks, nor in temptations. Foreseeing, therefore, these his poisons, God, though He has closed the door of forgiveness and barred it with the bolt of baptism, has yet allowed something still to lie open:
He has stationed in the vestibule a second repentance, which may open to those that knock—but now only once, because now a second time; and never again beyond this, because the last time was in vain. For is not even this once enough? You have what you no longer deserved: for you had lost what you had received. If the Lord's indulgence accommodates you with the means of restoring what you had lost, be grateful for the benefit renewed, still more for it enlarged. For it is a greater thing to restore than to give, since it is more wretched to have lost than never to have received at all. Yet the soul is not straightway to be cut down and undermined by despair, if anyone has become a debtor to a second repentance. Let it indeed irk one to sin again, but let it not irk one to repent again; let one be ashamed to be endangered a second time, but let no one be ashamed to be delivered a second time:
when health is to be renewed, the medicine too must be renewed. You will prove yourself grateful toward the Lord if you do not refuse what He offers you anew. You have offended, but you can still be reconciled: you have One to whom you may make satisfaction, and One who is willing! VIII. If you doubt this, unroll what the Spirit says to the churches: He imputes to the Ephesians the love they have forsaken; He reproaches the Thyatirans with fornication and the eating of things offered to idols; He accuses the Sardians of works not full; He rebukes the Pergamenes for teaching perverse things; He upbraids the Laodiceans for trusting in riches: and yet He admonishes them all to repentance—under threats, indeed. But He would not threaten one who does not repent, unless He forgave one who does repent. It would be doubtful, had He not elsewhere too displayed this profusion of His clemency:
'Shall not he who has fallen,' He says, 'rise again? and he who has turned away, be converted?' It is He, of course—it is He who prefers mercy rather than sacrifice. The heavens rejoice, and the angels who are there, over the repentance of a man; ho there, sinner, be of good cheer: you see where there is rejoicing over what is yours! What do those proofs of the Lord's parables mean for us? That a woman loses a drachma, and seeks it, and finds it, and invites her friends to rejoice—is it not an example of the sinner restored? A single little sheep also strays from the shepherd, but one was not dearer than the flock; that one is sought out, that one is longed for above all, and yet it is found and carried back upon the very shoulders of the shepherd: for by much straying it had grown weary.
That most gentle father too I will not pass over in silence, who recalls his prodigal son, and after his destitution gladly receives him when repentant, and, slaying the fatted calf, adorns his joy with a banquet: and why not? for he had found again the son whom he had lost, and had felt him the dearer whom he had regained. Whom are we to understand by that father? God, of course: none so fatherly, none so kind.
He then will receive you, His son, even though you have squandered what you received from Him, even though you return naked—He will receive you because you have returned, and will rejoice more over your return than over another's sobriety; but only if you repent from the heart, if you compare your hunger with the fullness of your father's hired servants, if you leave the swine, that unclean herd, if you seek again your father, though offended, saying, 'I have sinned, father, nor am I any longer worthy to be called yours.' Confession relieves a fault as much as dissembling aggravates it; for confession is the counsel of satisfaction, dissembling the counsel of obstinacy. IX. Of this second and single repentance, then, the business is as much in a narrow strait as its proof is more laborious, so that it may be attested not by conscience alone, but administered also by some act.
That act, which is more often expressed and used by a Greek word, is exomologesis, whereby we confess our fault to the Lord—not indeed as to one ignorant of it, but inasmuch as satisfaction is disposed by confession, of confession repentance is born, and by repentance God is appeased. And so exomologesis is a discipline for prostrating and humbling a man, enjoining a manner of conversation that entices to mercy, from his very habit and diet as well: it bids him lie in sackcloth and ashes, to darken his body with filth, to cast down his spirit with mournings, to exchange for a sad treatment the very things which sinned; for the rest, to know only plain food and drink—not, that is, for the sake of the belly, but of the soul;
and for the most part to nourish prayers with fastings, to groan, to weep and moan day and night unto the Lord your God, to grovel at the feet of the presbyters, to kneel before the altars of God, to enjoin upon all the brethren the embassy of his own deprecation. All these things exomologesis does, that it may commend repentance, that it may honour the Lord out of the fear of peril, that, by pronouncing sentence upon the sinner himself, it may act in place of God's indignation and, by temporal affliction, not indeed frustrate, but discharge the eternal punishments. When therefore it rolls a man on the ground, it the more raises him up; when it makes him squalid, it renders him the more cleansed; when it accuses, it excuses; when it condemns, it absolves: in proportion as you have not spared yourself, in that proportion, believe me, God will spare you! X.
Yet I presume that most men either shun this work as a publication of themselves, or defer it from day to day, more mindful of shame than of salvation—like those who, having contracted an ailment in the more shameful parts of the body, avoid the physicians who could heal them, and so perish together with their bashfulness. It is intolerable, forsooth, to make satisfaction to the offended Lord, to be restored to one's forfeited salvation! You are a fine one for modesty, opening wide your brow to sinning, but drawing it down when it comes to deprecating! I make no room for a blush, when I gain more from the loss of it, when it in a manner exhorts the man, saying, 'Have no regard for me; it is better for me to perish for your sake.'
Surely its peril is then burdensome, if at all, when it consists among mockers in derisive talk, where by another's downfall another is exalted, where one is trodden upon while prostrate; but among brethren and fellow-servants, where the hope, the fear, the joy, the grief, the suffering is common, because the Spirit is common, from a common Lord and Father—what else do you think these are than yourself? Why do you flee the partners of your own misfortunes as though they were applauders? The body cannot rejoice at the ailing of a single member: the whole must needs suffer together and labour together toward a remedy. In one and another the Church is present, and the Church, indeed, is Christ: therefore, when you stretch yourself out at the knees of the brethren, you are handling Christ, you are entreating Christ;
and likewise, when they shed tears over you, it is Christ who suffers, Christ who entreats the Father. Easily is that always obtained which the Son asks. Plainly, the concealment of a fault promises a great reward to bashfulness! Namely, if we withdraw something from human knowledge, shall we likewise hide it from the Lord? Are the estimation of men and the conscience of God to be so compared? Or is it better to lie hidden while condemned, than to be openly absolved? 'It is wretched thus to come to exomologesis.' Yes—it is wretched to sin; but where one must repent, wretchedness departs, because it has become salutary. It is wretched to be cut and burned with the cautery and tormented by the sharpness of some powder:
yet the things that heal by their unpleasantness both excuse the offence they give by the profit of the cure, and commend the present injury for the sake of the advantage to come. XI. What if, besides the shame which they count the weightier thing, they also dread the discomforts of the body—that one must sojourn unwashed, sordid, apart from cheerfulness, in the roughness of sackcloth and the horror of ashes, and with a countenance wan from fasting? Is it fitting, then, that we should make supplication for our faults in scarlet and Tyrian purple? 'Fetch me the pin for parting my hair, and the powder for polishing my teeth, and some two-pronged instrument of iron or bronze for trimming my nails!
If there be any counterfeit sheen, if any forced blush, let it press upon lips or cheeks!' Besides, seek out the more pleasant baths of some garden or seaside retreat, add to your expense, hunt up the huge fattening of fowls, refine the age of every wine: and if anyone should ask why you lavish upon your soul, say: 'I have sinned against the Lord, and I am in peril of perishing forever: and so now I hang in suspense, and I mortify and torment myself, that I may reconcile to myself God, whom by sinning I have wounded!'
But consider those who go about canvassing for the winning of magistracies: they are neither ashamed nor grieved to strain themselves in pursuit of their ambitions amid disadvantages of soul and body, and not only amid disadvantages but even amid every kind of indignity. What meanness of dress do they not affect? What halls do they not besiege with nocturnal and premature salutations, bowing lower at every encounter with any person of greater rank, frequenting no banquets, joining in no feastings, but exiles from the blessedness of liberty and gladness — and all this for the fleeting joy of a single year!
Shall we, then, hesitate to endure for the sake of eternity what the seeking of the axes and rods sustains, and shall we fail to render to our offended Lord a chastisement of food and dress, such as the heathen inflict upon themselves though no one at all is harmed? These are they of whom Scripture makes mention: Woe to them who bind their sins as it were with a long rope! XII. If you draw back from confession, consider in your heart the hell which confession shall extinguish for you; and first imagine the greatness of the punishment, that you may not doubt about accepting the remedy. What must we reckon that treasury of eternal fire to be, when certain little vents of it stir up such strokes of flame that the nearest cities either no longer stand or expect the same for themselves from day to day?
The proudest mountains, teeming with fire within, burst asunder; and — what proves to us the perpetuity of the judgment — though they burst asunder, though they are devoured, yet they are never brought to an end! Who will not reckon these punishments of the mountains meanwhile to be patterns of the threatening judgment? Who will not agree that such sparks are certain missiles and practice-javelins of some great and inestimable furnace? Therefore, since you know that against hell, after those first defences of the Lord's baptism, there are still further aids in a second confession, why do you abandon your salvation? Why do you delay to approach what you know will heal you? Even dumb and unreasoning creatures recognize in due season the medicines divinely bestowed upon them:
the stag, pierced through by an arrow, that it may expel from the wound the iron and its irrevocable lingering, knows that it must eat dittany; the swallow, if she has blinded her young, knows how to give them eyes again from her own celandine: shall the sinner, in restoring to himself the confession appointed by the Lord, knowingly pass it by — that confession which restored the Babylonian king to his kingdom? For long had he offered penitence to the Lord, working out his confession in a seven-year squalor, with a savagery like a lion's claws and a neglect of hair presenting an eagle-like ruggedness. O the blessedness of that evil treatment! Whom men shuddered at, God received.
But on the contrary, the Egyptian ruler, who having persecuted the people of God — once afflicted, and long denied to their Lord — rushed into battle, after so many proofs of the plagues perished by the splitting of the sea, which it was granted to that people alone to pass through, when the waves rolled back: for he had cast away penitence and its ministry, confession! Why should I say more of these two, as it were the planks of human salvation, caring rather for the business of the pen than for the duty of my conscience? For sinner as I am, of every mark, and born for nothing but penitence, I cannot easily keep silence about that thing concerning which even Adam himself, the head both of the human race and of the offence against the Lord, restored by confession to his own paradise, does not keep silence!