Collected Works 24

I. Chastity, the flower of morals, the honor of bodies, the ornament of the sexes, the integrity of the blood, the pledge of race, the foundation of holiness, a foretoken to all of a good mind—although rare, and not easily made perfect, and scarcely enduring—nevertheless in some measure used to linger in the world, if nature had prepared the way, if discipline had persuaded, if censure had restrained; seeing that every good of the soul is either born, or trained, or forced. But since evils rather prevail—which is the way of the last times—good things now can neither be born, so corrupted are the seeds, nor be trained, so abandoned are the studies, nor be forced, so disarmed are the laws.

In short, the very thing with which we begin has by now so faded away that not the abjuration but the mere moderation of lusts is believed to be chastity, and he is held to be sufficiently chaste who has not been too chaste. But let the world's chastity see to it, along with the world itself—along with its own nature if it was born, with its own study if it was trained, with its own servitude if it was forced; save that it would be even more unhappy, if it had stood firm, being fruitless, since it had not acted before God. I prefer no good at all to a vain one. What profit is there in a thing's existing, which profits nothing?

The state of our own goods is now being submerged; the principle of Christian chastity is being shaken—a chastity which draws all things from heaven: both nature, through the laver of regeneration, and discipline, through the instrument of preaching, and censure, through the judgments from either Testament, and which is more steadfastly constrained by the fear and the longing of the eternal fire and kingdom. Against this chastity now—lest I could pretend to be unaware—I hear that an edict too has been set forth, and a peremptory one at that. Namely, the Supreme Pontiff, the bishop of bishops, proclaims: 'I remit the sins of adultery and fornication to those who have performed penance.' O edict, to which cannot be appended: 'Well done!' And where shall this liberality be posted up?

In the very same place, I suppose—at the very doors of the lusts, beneath the very titles of the lusts. There is such a penitence to be promulgated, where the delinquency itself will be transacted. There is the pardon to be read, whither one will enter with the hope of it. But is this read in the church, and pronounced in the church—and she a virgin? Far be it, far be it from the bride of Christ, such a proclamation! She who is true, who is chaste, who is holy, shall be free even from the blemish of her ears. She has none to whom she may promise this; and if she had, she would not promise it—for the earthly temple of God could sooner be called a den of robbers by the Lord than of adulterers and fornicators.

There will therefore be here too a heading against the Psychics, against the former fellowship even of my own opinion in their company, so that they may the more cast this in my teeth as a mark of fickleness. Never is the repudiation of fellowship a prejudgment of fault. As though it were not easier to err with the many, whereas truth is loved with the few. But indeed a useful fickleness will no more dishonor me than a harmful one would have adorned me. I am not covered with confusion at an error which I have shed, because I delight to have shed it, because I recognize myself to be better and more chaste. No one making progress blushes. Knowledge too has its ages in Christ, through which the apostle also passed: 'When I was a little one,' he says, 'I spoke as a little one, I was wise as a little one; but when I became a man, I did away with the things that had been a little one's.'

So far did he [Paul] turn from his former opinions, and yet he did not thereby sin, because he became a zealot not of the paternal traditions but of the Christian ones, even wishing that those who urged that circumcision be retained might be cut off entirely. And would that these men too, who lop off the pure and true integrity of the flesh — amputating not the outermost surface but the innermost image of modesty itself — when they promise pardon to adulterers and fornicators against the foremost discipline of the Christian name (which the very pagan world too so far bears witness to that, if ever, it strives to punish it in our women rather by defilements of the flesh than by torments, wishing to snatch away that which they set before life itself).

But now this glory is being extinguished, and indeed by those very men who ought all the more steadfastly to have subscribed no pardon to stains of this kind — since for that reason, as often as they wish, let them marry, lest they be compelled to fall into adultery and fornication, because it is better to marry than to burn. Doubtless, for the sake of continence, incontinence is necessary; the fire shall be extinguished by fires! Why then do they afterward, under the name of penance, indulge crimes whose remedies they prescribe by the right of repeated marriage? For the remedies too will be idle when the crimes are indulged, and the crimes will remain if the remedies are idle.

So on both sides they trifle with solicitude and negligence, most vainly taking precautions against those they spare, and most foolishly sparing those against whom they take precautions — since either there should be no precaution where there is sparing, or no sparing where there is precaution. For they take precaution as though they would not have such a thing committed, yet they indulge as though they would have it committed; whereas, if they would not have it committed, they ought not to indulge; if they would indulge, they ought not to take precaution. For adultery and fornication will not be reckoned among both the slight and the greatest offences, so that both might apply — both the solicitude that takes precaution and the security that indulges. But since they are such as hold the summit of crimes, they cannot both be indulged as though slight and guarded against as though greatest.

But by us the greatest or highest offences are thus also guarded against, since we are not even permitted to know a second marriage after the faith — a marriage distinguished from the work of adultery and fornication only by nuptial and dowry tablets, if at all; and therefore, most harshly defaming us, they charge that by the enormity of the Paraclete's discipline we set the twice-married outside. The same threshold-limit we fix also for adulterers and fornicators, who shall pour out barren tears of peace and shall carry back from the Church nothing more than the publication of their disgrace. II. 'But God,' they say, 'is good and best and merciful and full of compassion and abundant in mercy, which He sets before every sacrifice, not accounting the death of the sinner of so much worth as his repentance — the Saviour of all men, and especially of the faithful.'

'Therefore the sons of God too must be merciful and peaceable, forgiving one another as Christ also forgave us, not judging, lest we be judged. For to his own Lord each one stands or falls: who art thou to judge another's servant? Forgive, and it shall be forgiven thee.' With how many contrary texts can we too beat back such and so great scattered sayings of theirs, by which they both flatter God and pander to themselves, effeminating rather than strengthening discipline — texts that both threaten God's severity and provoke our steadfastness? For although God is good by nature, yet He is also just.

For with cause, just as He knows how to heal, so also to smite; making peace, but also creating evils; preferring repentance, but also charging Jeremiah not to intercede for a sinful people. 'Even if they fast,' He says, 'I will not hear their supplication.' And again: 'And do thou not worship on behalf of this people, nor make request for them in entreaty and prayer, for I will not hear in the time in which they call upon Me, in the time of their affliction.' And still further above, the same God who prefers mercy to sacrifice [says]:

'And do thou not worship for this people, nor request that they obtain mercy, nor draw near to Me for them, for I will assuredly not hear those requesting mercy' — that is, those weeping from repentance and fasting and offering their affliction to God. For God is a jealous God, and one who is not mocked by the nose — namely by those who flatter His goodness — and who, though patient, yet through Isaiah threatens an end to His patience: 'I have kept silence; shall I also be silent forever and endure? I have been still as one giving birth; I will rise up and make [them] dry up.' For fire shall go forth before His face and shall consume His enemies, slaying in Gehenna not only the body but also the souls. Moreover, how the Lord threatens those who judge, He Himself shows:

'For with what judgment ye have judged, it shall be judged concerning you.' Thus He did not forbid judging, but taught it. Whence the apostle too judges — and indeed in a case of fornication — [saying] that such a man is to be delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, rebuking also that the brethren were not judged before the saints. For he adds, saying: 'For what have I to do to judge those who are outside?' But thou dost forgive, that it may be forgiven thee by God. Those offences are cleansed which one has committed against a brother, not against God. In the [Lord's] prayer, in short, we profess that we will forgive our debtors.

But it is not fitting to stretch further such a contentious rope of the authority of the Scriptures by alternate pulling in opposite directions, so that these texts seem to tighten the reins of discipline, those to loosen them — as though the discipline were uncertain — and those to lay low the aid of penance through leniency, these to deny it through austerity. Rather, both the authority of Scripture will stand within its own bounds without either opposition, and the aid of penance is determined by its own conditions without indiscriminate concession, and its very causes are first distinguished without confused statement. We stipulate that offences are the causes of penance. These we divide into two outcomes: some will be remissible, others irremissible.

Accordingly, it is doubtful to no one that some deserve chastisement, others damnation. Every offence is discharged either by pardon or by punishment — pardon from chastisement, punishment from damnation. Concerning this difference we have already set forth certain disputations of the Scriptures, here retaining, there remitting offences. But John too will teach: 'If anyone knows his brother to commit an offence not unto death, he shall ask, and life shall be given to him; because he does not offend unto death' — this will be remissible. 'There is an offence unto death; not for that do I say that one should ask' — this will be irremissible. Thus where there is ground for asking, there also is ground for remission; where there is none for asking, there likewise none for remission.

According to this difference of offences the condition of penance too is distinguished. One will be such as can obtain pardon — namely in a remissible offence; another such as can in no way obtain it — namely in an irremissible offence. And it remains to examine specifically concerning the status of adultery and fornication, into which category of offences they ought to be reduced. III. But first I will settle the objection interposed from the opposite side against that species of penance which we especially define as lacking pardon. 'For if,' they say, 'some penance lacks pardon, then it is not to be performed by thee at all. For nothing is to be done in vain. But penance will be performed in vain if it lacks pardon. Yet all penance is to be performed.'

'Therefore let all penance obtain pardon, lest it be performed in vain, since it will not be to be performed if it is performed in vain. But it is performed in vain if it will lack pardon.' Rightly, then, do they object thus, because they have arrogated to their own power the fruit of this penance too, that is, pardon. For as far as concerns those from whom human peace is obtained, it is performed in vain. But as far as concerns us, who remember that the Lord alone remits offences — and indeed mortal ones — it will not be performed in vain. For the penance being remitted to the Lord and the sinner thereupon prostrated before Him, will by this very fact the more effect pardon: because he begs it from God alone, because he does not believe that human peace suffices for his offence, because he prefers to blush before the Church rather than to commune with it.

For he stands before its doors and by the example of his mark admonishes the rest, and calls to himself also the tears of the brethren, and returns having assuredly gained more — compassion, namely, rather than communion. And if here he does not reap peace, with the Lord he sows. He does not lose, but prepares the fruit. He will not be void of profit, if he has not been void of duty. Thus neither is penance of this kind vain, nor is discipline of this kind harsh. Both honour God. The one, by flattering itself in nothing, will more easily obtain; the other, by assuming nothing to itself, will more fully help. IV. We can therefore, the distinction of penance having been assigned, now return to the reckoning of the offences themselves, whether they be such as can obtain pardon from men.

First of all, that we name adultery and fornication, usage requires. Faith too has a familiarity with certain names. So in every little work we keep to usage. But even if I say 'adultery' or 'defilement,' there will be one and the same designation of contaminated flesh. For it makes no difference whether one assails another's wife or a widow, provided she is not his own woman; just as it matters not concerning places, whether modesty be slaughtered in bedchambers or in towers. Every homicide is brigandage even outside the woodland. So too, wherever or in whatever woman a man adulterates and defiles himself, who uses her otherwise than by marriage.

Therefore with us, secret unions too — that is, those not first professed before the Church — are in danger of being judged as adultery and fornication, lest, being joined together on that footing, they should escape the charge under the pretext of matrimony. But the remaining impious furies of lusts, committed both against bodies and against sexes beyond the laws of nature, we remove not only from the threshold but from every roof of the Church, because they are not offences but monstrosities. V. Therefore, of how great a crime adultery — which is also the matter of fornication according to the work of the crime — is to be estimated, God's first law is at hand to show.

Indeed, after forbidding the superstition of strange gods and the fashioning of idols themselves, after commending the veneration of the Sabbath, after commanding the reverence toward parents second only to God, He laid down no other precept among such headings to be established and fortified than 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' For after spiritual chastity and holiness there followed bodily integrity. And this therefore He fortified by immediately prohibiting its enemy, adultery. Understand now what kind of offence it is, whose restraint He ordained after idolatry. Nothing 'second' is far from the 'first.' Nothing is so close to the first as the second. That which comes from the first is in a manner another first.

And so adultery, akin to idolatry — for idolatry too was often reproached to the people under the name of adultery and fornication — will be joined to it also by lot, as also by sequence; will also cohere with it in damnation, as also in arrangement. Placing 'Thou shalt not commit adultery' the more before it, He adds 'Thou shalt not kill.' He has assuredly honoured adultery, which He sets before homicide, thus on the very forefront of the most holy law, in the first headings of the heavenly edict, marked out assuredly by the proscription of the principal offences. From the place thou mayest discern the measure, from the order the status, from the neighbourhood the desert of each. There is even a dignity of evil, that it is placed at the summit or in the midst of the worst.

I behold a certain pomp and platform of adultery: on this side the leadership of idolatry going before, on that side the escort of homicide following. Between the two most eminent peaks of crimes it has without doubt worthily taken its seat, and it has filled the space between them, as though vacant, with an equal authority of crime. Who shall tear it away, enclosed by such flanks, propped about by such ribs, from the body of those cohering with it — from the bond of neighbouring crimes, from the embrace of kindred wickednesses — so as to separate it alone for the fruit of penance? Will not idolatry on this side, homicide on that, hold it back, and, if there be any voice, cry out in protest: 'This is our wedge, our joining!'

'By idolatry we are bounded; by it, as it marks us off, we are joined together; to it, flashing forth from our midst, we are united. The divine Scripture has embodied us together, the very letters are our glue, and now not even it [adultery] can stand without us. I indeed, Idolatry, most often furnish the occasion for adultery. My groves know it, and my mountains, and the living waters and the very temples in the cities — how much I contrive for the overthrow of chastity. I, Homicide, too, sometimes work for adultery. To pass over tragedies, the poisoners know today, the magicians know, how many concubinages I avenge, how many rivalries I defend, how many guardians, how many informers, how many accomplices I remove. The midwives too know how many adulterous conceptions are slaughtered.'

'Even among Christians there is no adultery without us. There is idolatry in the same place where there is the matter of an unclean spirit; there too is homicide, where a man, when he is defiled, is slain. Therefore either the aids of penance will befit not adultery either, or they will befit us too. Either we hold it back, or we follow it.' These very things speak thus. If the things fail in voice, the idolater stands by, the homicide stands by, and in the midst of them stands the adulterer too. Alike they sit in the duty of penance, they shudder in sackcloth and ashes, they groan with the same weeping, they entreat with the same prayers, they beseech on the same knees, they invoke the same mother. What art thou doing, O most soft and most humane discipline?

Either thou wilt have to be this to all of them — for 'blessed are the peacemakers' — or, if not to all, to be ours. Dost thou indeed condemn the idolater and the homicide once for all, but except the adulterer out of the midst? — the successor of the idolater, the predecessor of the homicide, the colleague of both? This is respecting of persons; thou hast left the more pitiable penances behind. VI. Plainly, if thou shouldst show from what patronage of heavenly examples and precepts thou openest the door of penance to adultery alone, and in it to fornication too, our conflict will now contend along this line. Yet I must needs prescribe to thee a rule: that thou put not forth thy hand to things of old, that thou look not back.

For 'the old things have passed away' according to Isaiah, and 'the renewal has now been renewed' according to Jeremiah, and 'forgetting the things behind, we stretch forward to the things before' according to the apostle, and 'the law and the prophets were until John' according to the Lord. For even though we have especially begun from the law in demonstrating adultery, we did so rightly, from that state of the law which Christ did not dissolve but fulfilled. For the burdens of the law were until John, not the remedies. The yokes of works have been cast off, not of disciplines. Liberty in Christ has done no injury to innocence. The whole law remains — of piety, holiness, humanity, truth, chastity, justice, mercy, benevolence, modesty — in which law 'blessed is the man who shall meditate day and night.' Concerning which the same David again says:

'The law of the Lord is blameless, converting souls; the ordinances of the Lord are right, delighting hearts; the precept of the Lord shines from afar, enlightening the eyes.' So too the apostle: 'And so the law indeed is holy, and the precept holy and most good' — that is, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' But also above: 'Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; rather we establish the law' — namely in those things which even now, forbidden in the New Testament, are prohibited by a yet more heaped-up precept. For 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' 'whoever has looked to lust, has already committed adultery in his heart'; and for 'Thou shalt not kill,' 'whoever has said to his brother Racha, shall be guilty of Gehenna.' Ask whether the law of not committing adultery is preserved, to which has been added not even coveting.

Moreover, if any examples applaud in your bosom, they will not be set against this discipline which we defend. For in vain has the law been built up over it, condemning also the origins of offences — that is, the concupiscences and wills — no less than the deeds, if for this reason pardon of adultery is granted today, because it was once granted. To what profit is it that today adultery is restrained by a fuller discipline, unless perhaps that it may be indulged with a greater pandering of thine? Thou wilt then give pardon to the idolater too and to every apostate, because we find the very people, so often guilty of these things, so often restored in time past. Thou wilt commune also with the homicide, because Ahab too blotted out the blood of Naboth by entreaty, and David purged the slaying of Uriah, together with his adultery which was its cause, by confession.

Now thou wilt also forgive incests on account of Lot, and fornications with incest on account of Judah, and base marriages contracted out of prostitution on account of Hosea, and not only frequent marriages but even several at once, on account of our fathers. For it is assuredly fitting that grace be now too made equal with regard to all things indulged in time past, if pardon of adultery be claimed from some ancient example. We too indeed have examples of the same antiquity for our position — not only of sin not indulged, but even of judgment on fornication made present. And it assuredly suffices that so great a number as twenty-four thousand of the people fornicating with the daughters of Midian fell in a single plague. But I prefer to derive discipline from Christ, to the glory of Christ.

Let the ancient times have had even the full power of all unchastity, if the Psychics wish it. Let the flesh have sported before Christ — nay, let it have perished before it was sought out by its Lord: it was not yet worthy of the gift of salvation, not yet fit for the office of holiness. It was still reckoned in Adam with its own vice, easily coveting what it had seen fair, and looking to lower things, and retaining the itch from the fig-leaves. There clung everywhere the poison of lust and the milky filth of its first uncleanness, not having that which not even the waters themselves had as yet washed away.

But when the Word of God descended into flesh not even unsealed by marriage, and the Word was made flesh not even to be unsealed by marriage — flesh which should approach the tree not of incontinence but of endurance, which should taste thence not something sweet but bitter, which should pertain not to the lower regions but to heaven, which should be girded not with the foliage of wantonness but with the flowers of holiness, which should hand over its purities to the waters — from then on the flesh, whatsoever in Christ dissolves the remaining former filth, is now another thing, a new thing emerges, now not from the mud of seed, not from the dung of concupiscence, but from pure water and a clean Spirit. Why then dost thou excuse it on the ground of the past?

It was not called the body of Christ, not the members of Christ, not the temple of God, when it obtained pardon of adultery. And so, if from the time when it changed its state, and being baptized into Christ it put on Christ and was redeemed at a great price — namely by the blood of the Lord and of the Lamb — thou holdest any example or precept or pattern or sentence of fornication and adultery indulged or to be indulged, thou hast also from us a definition of the time from which the age of the question is to be reckoned. VII. Thou mayest begin from the parables, where there is the lost sheep sought by the Lord and carried back on His shoulders.

Let the very pictures of your cups come forth, to see whether even in them the interpretation of that beast will shine through — whether it aims at the restoration of a Christian or of a heathen sinner. For we lay down, from the discipline of nature, from the law of ear and tongue, from soundness of mind, that those things are always answered which are provoked, that is, in reference to the things that provoke. That provoked the parable, as I suppose, which was that the Pharisees murmured, indignant that the Lord admitted publicans and heathen sinners, and shared food with them. To this the Lord spoke the restoration of the lost beast — to whom else must we believe it was figured than to the lost heathen, of whom it was a question, not to the Christian, who as yet was no one?

Or what kind of thing is it, that the Lord, like a quibbler of a reply, having passed over the present matter which He ought to have beaten back, should labour about a future one? But you say, 'the sheep is properly the Christian, and the flock the Lord's people of the Church, and the good shepherd Christ, and therefore the Christian is to be understood in the sheep, who has strayed from the flock of the Church.' Dost thou then mean that the Lord answered nothing to the murmuring of the Pharisees, but only to thy presumption? And yet thou wilt have to claim it in such a way that thou deniest to apply to the heathen what thou judgest to befit the Christian. Tell me, is not the whole race of men one flock of God? Is not the same God both Lord and shepherd of all nations? Who is more lost from God than the heathen, as long as he strays?

Who is more sought by God than the heathen, when he is recalled by Christ? In short, this order goes first in the heathen; since Christians are not made out of heathen otherwise than by first being lost and sought out by God and carried back by Christ. Thus this order too ought to be observed, that we should interpret some such thing of those in whom it happens first. But thou, I suppose, wouldst have this — that He made the sheep lost not from the flock, but from a chest or a cupboard.

So, even though He calls the remaining number of the heathen righteous, He does not thereby show them to be Christians — for He was dealing with the Jews and especially rebuking them because they were indignant at the hope of the heathen; but, in order to express, against the envy of the Pharisees, His own grace and benevolence even toward one heathen, He set the salvation of one sinner from repentance before that of them the Jews from righteousness. Or were not the Jews righteous, and such as had no need of repentance, having the helms of discipline and the instruments of fear — the law and the prophets? He set them, therefore, in the parable, though not such as they were, but such as they ought to have been, that they might be the more abashed, hearing that repentance was necessary for others and not for themselves.

Accordingly the parable of the drachma, as provoked from the same matter, we likewise interpret of the heathen — even though it is lost in the house, as though in the Church, even though found at the light of a lamp, as though at the word of God. But indeed this whole world is one house of all, in which the grace of God shines more upon the heathen, who is found in darkness, than upon the Christian, who is already in the light of God. In short, to both the sheep and the drachma one straying is ascribed. For if they were figured as applying to a Christian sinner already lost after the faith, it would be a matter of their repeated loss and restoration. I will now for a little withdraw from this position, that I may the more commend it even by withdrawing, since even thus I shall have refuted the presumption of the opposite party.

I concede that a Christian sinner is portended in each parable; not, however, that he is therefore to be affirmed to be one who can be restored through penance from the crime of adultery and fornication. For although he is said to have perished, there will be reason to reconsider also the kind of perishing, because the sheep perished not by dying but by straying, and the drachma not by ceasing to be but by lying hidden. Thus that may be said to have perished which is yet safe.

A faithful man perishes, therefore, when he has slipped away into the spectacle of the charioteer's frenzy and the gladiator's blood and the stage's foulness and the wrestling-school's vanity; into games, into the banquets of secular festivity; if he has applied some arts of curiosity to the service, to the ministry of another's idolatry; if he has dashed into a word of ambiguous denial or of blasphemy. For some such thing he is put outside the flock — or he himself perhaps by anger, by swelling pride, by rivalry (which indeed often happens), by disdain of chastisement has broken away. He ought to be sought and recalled. That which can be recovered does not perish, unless it has persevered outside. Thou wilt rightly interpret the parable, recalling a sinner still living.

But the adulterer and fornicator — who will not pronounce him dead immediately upon the commission? With what face wilt thou restore a dead man to the flock on the authority of that parable, which recalls not a dead beast? In short, if thou rememberest the prophets, where the shepherds are rebuked — I think it is the voice of Ezekiel: 'Shepherds, behold, ye devour the milk and clothe yourselves with the wool; what is strong ye have slain, what is weak ye have not cured, what is broken ye have not bound up, what was driven away ye have not brought back, what perished ye have not sought.' Does He reproach also concerning the dead, that they had not taken care to restore even that to the flock?

Plainly He urges that they have made the sheep perish and be devoured by the beasts of the field — sheep which can neither perish unto death nor be devoured, if they are not abandoned — not that those which perished unto death and were devoured should be taken up again. According to the example of the drachma too, even within the house of God, the Church, there may be some offences, middling according to the measure and weight of the drachma itself, which, lying hidden there, and soon found there, are straightway there transacted with the joy of amendment. But of adultery and fornication the token is not a drachma but a talent, for the seeking out of which there is need not of the point of a lamp, but of the lance of the whole sun.

As soon as the sin has appeared, straightway the man is expelled from the Church, nor does he remain there, nor does he bring joy to the Church that finds him, but grief; nor does he call forth the congratulation of the neighbouring brotherhoods, but the sorrow of those nearest. And so, this interpretation of ours being joined in conflict with theirs, the arguments both of the sheep and of the drachma will look the more toward the heathen, inasmuch as they cannot apply to a Christian of that offence for which they are forced to be applied to the Christian from the opposite side. VIII. But indeed the same outcome deceives most interpreters of the parables which very often happens in shading purple upon garments.

When thou shalt have thought that thou hast rightly harmonized the tempering of the colours, and believed that their combinations loved one another, presently, when each mass is refined and the highlights brought out, the difference, when displayed, will vomit forth all the error. So too, by the same mist, concerning the parable of the two sons, while for the moment certain figures colour alike for some, they wander from the true light of that comparison which the material of the parable holds forth. For they place two peoples in the two sons — the Jewish the elder, the Christian the younger. For they cannot then arrange that the Christian sinner in the younger son will obtain pardon, unless they have expressed the Jewish people in the elder.

Further, if I shall have shown the Jewish people to fall short of the comparison of the elder son, consequently the Christian too will assuredly not be admitted from the figuring of the younger son. For although the Jew too may be called a son and the elder, because prior in adoption; although he may also envy the Christian the reconciliation of God the Father — which especially the opposite party seizes upon — yet the saying to the father will not be the Jew's: 'Behold, how many years do I serve thee, and I have never transgressed thy precept.' For when was the Jew not a transgressor of the law, hearing with the ear and not hearing, holding in hatred him who exposed wrong in the gates, and with scorn the holy word? So neither will the father's voice be addressed to the Jew: 'Thou art always with me, and all that is mine is thine.'

For the Jews are pronounced to be apostate sons, begotten indeed and raised on high, yet who have not reckoned with God, who have forsaken the Lord and provoked to wrath the Holy One of Israel. We shall say that everything has plainly been granted to the Jew, from whom even the more agreeable condition, and whatever concerns his appetite, has been snatched away, to say nothing of the very land of the fathers' promise. And so, no less today the Jew than the younger son, having squandered the substance of God, begs in a foreign land, serving even to this day its princes—that is, the princes of this present age. Let Christians therefore seek elsewhere for this brother of theirs; for the parable does not admit the Jew.

Far more fittingly would they have matched the Christian to the elder and the Jew to the younger son, according to the comparison of faith, if the order of the two peoples—marked out from Rebecca's womb—permitted such a reversal. Except that the conclusion too would work against it. For it will be fitting that the Christian rejoice, and not grieve, over the Jew's restoration, seeing that our whole hope is bound up with the remaining expectation of Israel. Thus, even if in certain points they succeed, yet in others, being wise to the contrary, the equating of the examples is undone. And even if everything could correspond as in a mirror, there is one chief peril in interpretations: that the readiness of comparisons be not adjusted to some other end than that to which the subject-matter of each parable has assigned it.

For we remember that stage-players too, when they fit allegorical gestures to their songs, express things far removed from the present—from the plot, the scene, the character—and yet do so most aptly. But let their extraordinary skill look to itself: it is nothing to the point (nothing 'to Andromache'). So too the heretics assign the same parables to whatever they wish, not to what they ought. Most aptly do they exclude—why 'most aptly'? Because from the very beginning they framed the very subject-matter of their doctrines to suit the openings the parables afforded. Doubtless it was open to them, unbound as they are from the rule of truth, to hunt out and compose those things of which the parables seem to speak. IX.

We, however, since we do not contrive subject-matters out of parables, but interpret parables out of their subject-matters, and do not greatly labor to wrench everything in our exposition—so long as we guard against whatever is contrary—do not ask: Why a hundred sheep? And why exactly ten drachmas? And what of those brooms? It was necessary that one who wished to express how most acceptable to God is the salvation of a single sinner should name some quantity of number, out of which he might describe one indeed as lost; it was necessary that the manner of the woman seeking the drachma in the house be furnished with the help both of brooms and of a lamp. For curiosities of this kind both render certain things suspect and, by the subtlety of forced expositions, generally lead away from the truth.

There are, moreover, things set down quite simply for the building up, arranging, and weaving together of a parable, so that men may be led to that end for which the illustration is provided. And the two sons will certainly look to that same end to which both the drachma and the sheep look. For with those things to which they cohere they have the same occasion—namely, the same murmuring of the Pharisees at the Lord's dealings with the heathen. Or if anyone doubts that the publicans among the Jews were heathen—their land having long since been usurped by the hand of Pompey and Lucullus—let him read Deuteronomy: 'There shall be no tribute-payer from among the sons of Israel.' Nor would the name of publicans be so execrable before the Lord, were it not the name of outsiders who sold passage over His own heaven and earth and sea.

But when He joins 'sinners' to the publicans, He does not thereby show them to be Jews, though some of them could have been. Rather, He distinguished a single class of heathen by setting them side by side: some sinners by office—that is, publicans—others by nature—that is, non-publicans. For the rest, He would not have been reproached for sharing food with Jews, but with heathen, whose table Jewish discipline forbids. Now concerning the prodigal son, this first must be considered, as more useful: for the equating of examples will not be admitted—however most fitting on the surface—if it prove most harmful to salvation. And we see the whole state of salvation, established as it is in the tenor of discipline, overturned by that interpretation which is affected from the opposite side.

For if it is the Christian who—having received from God the Father the substance of baptism, of the Holy Spirit, and thereafter of eternal hope—strays far from the Father and squanders it, living as a heathen; if, stripped of the goods of the mind, he has handed over his service even to the prince of this age (and to whom else than the devil?), and, set by him to feed swine—that is, to tend unclean spirits—came to himself and returned to the Father: then no longer will adulterers and fornicators, but idolaters and blasphemers and deniers and every kind of apostate satisfy the Father by this parable, and truly, in this fashion all the more, the whole substance of the sacrament is shattered. For who will fear to squander what he will afterward recover? Who will care to preserve forever what he cannot forever lose?

Security in sin is itself a lust for sin. The apostate too, then, will recover his former robe, the garment of the Holy Spirit, and the ring anew, the seal of the washing; and Christ will be slain for him again, and he will recline on that couch from which those unworthily clothed are wont to be taken up by the torturers and cast into the darkness—much more, then, those wholly stripped. It is therefore too much—if indeed it is not even fitting—to make the order of the prodigal son apply to the Christian. But if the image of the son does not fully coincide even with the Jew, then the interpretation shall be steered simply toward the Lord's own purpose. The Lord had come, assuredly, to save that which had perished, being a physician more needful to the sick than to the whole. This He both figured in parables and proclaimed in His sayings.

Who among men perishes, who falls from health, save he who knows not God? Who is safe and sound, save he who knows God? These two kinds, brothers by their common kind, this parable too will signify. See whether the heathen has any substance in God the Father—the substance of endowment, of wisdom, of a natural knowledge toward God—through which even the Apostle notes that, 'in the wisdom of God the world by its wisdom knew not God,' which wisdom it had assuredly received from God. This substance, then, he squandered far from the Lord, cast by his conduct amid the errors and enticements and lusts of the age, where, driven by hunger for the truth, he handed himself over to the prince of this present age.

That one set him over the swine (that he might feed that herd familiar to demons), where neither was there any life-giving food for him, and where at the same time he saw others abounding in heavenly bread amid the divine work. He remembers God the Father, and having made satisfaction he returns; he receives his former robe—namely, that state which Adam had lost by transgression. The ring too he receives then for the first time, wherewith, being questioned, he seals the covenant of faith; and so from that point he feeds upon the richness of the Lord's body—the Eucharist, that is. This will be the prodigal son, who was never before thrifty, who was at once prodigal, because he was not at once a Christian. Him too the Pharisees, as he returned from the world to the Father's embrace, bewailed among publicans and sinners.

And therefore it is only to this that the elder brother's envy is fitted: not because the Jews were innocent and obedient to God, but because they begrudged the nations their salvation—those very ones, plainly, who ought always to have been at the Father's side. And assuredly the Jew groans at the Christian's very first calling, not at his second restoration. For the first shines out even to the heathen, but the second—which is transacted in the churches—is not even known to the Jews. I think that I have rendered interpretations better fitted both to the subject-matter of the parables, and to the congruity of things, and to the safeguarding of the disciplines.

But if in this the opposing party is eager to configure the sheep, the drachma, and the son's riotous living to the Christian sinner—so that they may grant adultery and fornication a place in penitence—then either the rest of the capital offenses will have to be conceded equally, or else adultery and fornication, being their equals, will likewise have to be kept unpardonable. But it is too much, since nothing else may be argued beyond the matter that was being treated. Finally, if it were permitted to transfer parables elsewhere, we would rather direct their hope toward martyrdom, which alone can restore the son when all his substance has been squandered, and which will proclaim with joy the drachma found among all things—even in the dung—and which will bring back on the very shoulders of the Lord into the flock the sheep that fled through every rough and precipitous place.

But we prefer, in the Scriptures, to know less, if perchance, rather than to know contrary to them. Accordingly, we ought to guard both the Lord's meaning and His precept. Transgression in interpretation is no lighter than in conduct. X.

Having thus shaken off the yoke by directing these parables against the heathen, and having once discerned or accepted the necessity of interpreting them no otherwise than the subject of the proposal demands, they now contend that even the proclamation of penitence does not befit the heathen, whose offenses are not liable to it, being imputable, forsooth, to ignorance, which nature alone makes guilty before God. Nor, they say, do those savor of remedies who do not savor of the perils themselves; whereas the rationale of penitence holds good there where sin is committed with conscience and will, where both fault has its savor and grace its own—where he mourns, he rolls in the dust, who knows both what he has lost and what he is to recover, if he offers up penitence to God, who assuredly offers it to sons rather than to strangers.

Did Jonah, then, on this account think penitence unnecessary for the heathen Ninevites, when he cavilled at the office of preaching? Or rather, foreseeing God's mercy poured out even upon strangers, did he fear that it would, as it were, undo his proclamation? And was it not indeed for the sake of a profane city, not yet sharing in God, still sinning in ignorance, that the prophet almost perished? Except that he suffered as a type of the Lord's Passion, which was to redeem the penitent heathen as well. Well too that John, making straight the ways of the Lord, was a herald of penitence no less to soldiers and publicans than to the sons of Abraham. The Lord Himself presumed penitence upon the Sidonians and Tyrians, had they but seen the proofs of His mighty works.

Nay, I will contend that penitence befits natural sinners more than voluntary ones. For he who has not yet used it will more deserve its fruit than he who has already both used and abused it, and the first remedies will savor more than the outworn. Doubtless the Lord is kinder to the ungrateful than to the ignorant, and more swiftly merciful to the reprobate than to those not yet proved—so that He is not angered by insults to His clemency rather than soothed, and does not more gladly impart it to strangers than to the sons in whom He has lost it—since He has thus adopted the Gentiles, while the Jews make sport of His patience. But this is what the psychici will have: that God, the just judge, prefers the penitence of the sinner to his death—that sinner who preferred death to penitence. But if that is so, then by sinning we earn merit! «

Come now, you tightrope-walker of modesty and chastity and all holiness concerning sex, who tread the very thinnest thread of such a discipline with a foot poised upon the true path away from the true—balancing the flesh by the spirit, steadying the soul by faith, tempering the eye by fear! Why then do you stand wholly on the rope? You will go on—if you can, if you will—so long as you are secure and, as it were, on solid ground. For if any wavering of the flesh, any distraction of the mind, any wandering of the eye should knock you from your course, God is good. To His own, not to the heathen, He offers His bosom; a second penitence will receive you; from an adulterer you will again become a Christian. » This is what you tell me, most benignant interpreter of God! But I would yield to you, if the Scripture «

Scripture of the Shepherd », which alone loves adulterers, had deserved to be inscribed in the divine instrument—if it were not judged, by every council of the churches, even your own, to be among the apocryphal and false, itself adulterous and thence a patroness of its fellows, by which you are initiated in other things as well; for whom, if perchance, that Shepherd will be advocate whom you depict on your cup, himself a prostitutor of the Christian sacrament, deservedly both an idol of drunkenness and a refuge of the adultery that follows after the cup—of which you would drink nothing more gladly than the sheep of the second penitence. But I draw from the Scripture of that Shepherd who cannot be broken. This straightway John offers me, saying, with the washing and office of penitence:

'Bring forth fruits worthy of penitence, and say not, We have Abraham for our father'—lest, that is, they should again take up flatteries of their delinquency from the grace of the fathers—'for God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.' So it follows for us too, that they who hitherto sin should bring forth fruit worthy of penitence. For what ripens from penitence but the effect of amendment? But even if pardon is rather the fruit of penitence, this too cannot stand without a ceasing from sin. Thus the ceasing from sin is the root of pardon, so that pardon may be the fruit of penitence. XI. Thereafter, as regards the Gospel, the question of the parables has now been discussed.

But if the Lord also by His deeds put forth something of this sort on behalf of sinners—as when He permits even the touch of His own body to the sinful woman who washes His feet with tears, wipes them with her hair, and by the ointment inaugurates His own burial; or as when to the Samaritan woman, now in her sixth marriage, not an adulteress but a prostitute, He even showed—what He easily showed to no one—who He was: from this nothing is contributed to our adversaries, even if He had then already granted Christians pardon of their offenses. For now we say: this is lawful to the Lord alone; today let the power of His indulgence operate. But as to those times in which He acted on earth, this we define: it prejudices nothing against us, if pardon was conferred even upon Jewish sinners.

For Christian discipline is reckoned from the renewal of the covenant and—as we premised—from the redemption of the flesh, that is, the Lord's Passion. No one was perfect before the order of faith was discovered; no one a Christian before Christ was taken back into heaven; no one holy before the Holy Spirit was made present from heaven, the determiner of that very discipline. XII. And so let these men—who received another Paraclete in and through the apostles, whom they now possess neither as acknowledged in their own prophets nor in the apostles—now teach, at least from the apostolic instrument, that the stains of the flesh besmirched after baptism can be washed away by penitence.

We, in the apostles also, discern the form of the old law dissolved as a demonstration of how great a thing adultery is—lest perchance it be reckoned milder under the newness of the disciplines than under their antiquity. When first the Gospel thundered and shook the old things, so that there was dispute about the necessity of retaining the law, first this rule the apostles, on the authority of the Holy Spirit, sent forth to those who had begun already to be gathered from the nations: 'It seemed good,' they say, 'to the Holy Spirit and to us, to lay upon you no further burden than of those things from which it is necessary to abstain: from things sacrificed to idols, and from fornications, and from blood; from which observing, you will do rightly, the Holy Spirit forbidding you.'

It suffices here too that a place of its own honor has been reserved for adultery and fornication, between idolatry and homicide. For by 'blood' we shall understand human blood all the more forbidden. Furthermore, of what sort do the apostles wish those crimes to be seen, which alone they cull out for observance from the former law, which alone they prescribe as necessarily to be abstained from? Not that they permit the others, but that they set these alone in the foreground as by no means remissible—they who, for the sake of the heathen, made the other burdens of the law remissible. Why, then, do they excuse our neck from so great a yoke, unless to impose upon us always these summaries of discipline? Why do they indulge us so many fetters, unless to bind us perpetually to the more necessary things? They loosed us from many, that we might be obliged to observe the more harmful ones.

The thing was done by way of compensation. We gained much, that we might render some things in return. But a compensation is not revocable—unless, in short, it be revoked by the repetition of adultery, and likewise of blood and of idolatry. For the whole law will then be taken up again, if the condition of pardon be dissolved. But the Holy Spirit did not make His pact with us lightly—indeed He made it unbidden, whereby He is the more to be honored. His pledge no one shall dissolve save the ungrateful. Now He will neither take back what He has remitted, nor remit what He has retained. The status of the newest testament is ever unchangeable, and assuredly the recitation of the decree and that counsel will cease only with the age. He has sufficiently denied pardon to those things whose guardianship He chose; He has claimed as His own the things He has not thus conceded.

Hence it is that peace is restored by the churches neither to idolatry nor to blood. That the apostles fell away from this their own definition, I think, one may not believe; or if some can believe it, they will have to prove it. XIII. We know full well their suspicions here too. For in truth they suspect that the Apostle Paul, in the second Epistle to the Corinthians, granted pardon to the same fornicator whom in the first he had pronounced to be delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh—the impious heir of his father as regards the marriage—as though he had afterward turned his stylus, writing: 'But if any has caused grief, he has not grieved me, but in part—that I burden not you all. Sufficient is such a rebuke as is inflicted by many;'

'so that, on the contrary, you should rather forgive and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one be swallowed up by overmuch sorrow. Wherefore I beseech you, that you confirm your love toward him. For to this end also I wrote, that I might know the proof of you, whether in all things you are obedient to me. But to whom you forgive anything, I also; for if I too have forgiven anything, I have forgiven it in the person of Christ, that we be not defrauded by Satan, since we are not ignorant of his devices.' What here is understood concerning the fornicator, concerning the defiler of his father's bed, concerning the Christian who surpassed the shamelessness of the heathen—since he would accordingly have absolved by a special pardon the very one he had condemned by a special wrath? He shows mercy more obscurely than he shows indignation. He is more open in severity than in leniency.

And yet anger is more readily oblique than indulgence. Sadder things hang back more than gladder ones. It was, forsooth, a modest indulgence that was in question—which, if it were now to be appraised, seeing that the very greatest things are not wont to be granted even without proclamation, so much the less is it granted without any indication. And you indeed, leading the adulterer's penitence into the church to entreat the brotherhood, prostrate in the midst—clad in sackcloth and ashes, composed with disgrace and horror—him who persuades all to tears, who licks the footprints of all, who clasps the knees of all; and upon such an exit of the man you, good shepherd and blessed pope, hold forth with all the enticements of mercy you can, and in the parable of the sheep do you seek your she-goats?

Lest your sheep leap out of the flock again (as though from that point onward what was not lawful even once were now permitted), you fill the rest also with fear, precisely when you are being most indulgent. But would the Apostle so recklessly have pardoned the wicked lust of a fornication laden with incest, that he did not exact from him even this at least—the appointed habit of penitence, which you ought to have learned from him himself? Would he have uttered no threat about the future, addressed nothing about the rest? Nay, rather, he even further beseeches that they confirm their love toward him—as one making satisfaction, not as one pardoning. And yet I hear of love, not of communion. As also to the Thessalonians:

'But if any obeys not our word by the epistle, note that man, that you keep no company with him, that he may be ashamed—not counting him as an enemy, but rebuking him as a brother.' So plainly could he have said that to the fornicator love only was granted, and not communion as well; but to the incestuous man not even love—him whom, forsooth, he had commanded to be taken away out of their midst, and much more, assuredly, out of their affection. But he feared lest they be defrauded by Satan as to the loss of that person whom he himself had cast out to Satan, or lest he be swallowed up by abundance of grief—he whom he had consigned to the destruction of the flesh.

Here now they interpret the destruction of the flesh as an office of penitence—as though it might, by fastings and filth and every kind of neglect and deliberate ill-treatment, make sufficient satisfaction to God by wearing the flesh away; so that from this they may argue that the fornicator, or rather that incestuous man, was delivered by the Apostle not to the perdition of Satan, but to his amendment, as though afterward, on account of the destruction—that is, the affliction—of the flesh, he was to obtain pardon, and therefore did obtain it. Plainly the same Apostle delivered Hymenaeus and Alexander to Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme, as he writes to his Timothy. But he also says that there was given to him a stake, an angel of Satan, by whom he was buffeted, lest he exalt himself.

If they touch on this too—that we should understand those delivered to Satan by him to have been given over to amendment, not to perdition—what likeness is there between blasphemy and incest, and a soul untouched by these, indeed raised up from no other source than the highest sanctity and utter innocence, which in the Apostle was restrained by buffetings, if perchance, through pain (as they say) of the ear or the head? But incest and blasphemy deserved to hand over whole men into the possession of Satan himself, not of his angel. And on this too there is a difference—nay, to this it makes the greatest difference—that we read those to have been delivered by the Apostle to Satan, but to the Apostle an angel of Satan to have been given. Finally, when Paul entreats the Lord, what does he hear? 'Hold my grace sufficient, for strength is perfected in weakness.'

This, those who are delivered to Satan cannot hear. But if the crime of Hymenaeus and Alexander is irremissible both in this age and in the age to come—blasphemy, that is—then assuredly the Apostle would not, against the Lord's own bounds, have delivered under hope of pardon to Satan men already plunged from faith into blasphemy. Whence too he pronounced them shipwrecked as regards the faith, no longer having the solace of the ship of the Church. For to those pardon is denied who from faith have dashed themselves upon blasphemy. But heathen and heretics daily emerge from blasphemy. And even if he said, 'I have delivered them to Satan, that they might receive the discipline of not blaspheming,' he said it of the rest, who, when those had been delivered to Satan—that is, cast outside the Church—were to be instructed that there must be no blaspheming.

So then, he delivered the incestuous fornicator to Satan not for amendment but for perdition—to Satan, to whom he had already passed over by sinning beyond the heathen—that they might learn there must be no fornicating. Finally 'for the destruction,' he says, 'of the flesh,' not for its torment, condemning that very substance through which he had fallen away, which from that point had already perished with baptism lost; 'that the spirit,' he says, 'may be saved in the day of the Lord.' And on this too let it be asked, whether the spirit of the man himself will be saved. Shall then the spirit polluted by so great a crime be saved—the flesh being destroyed on this account—that it may be saved in punishment? Then the contrary interpretation will reckon a punishment without the flesh. Thus we lose the resurrection of the flesh.

It remains, therefore, that he called 'spirit' that which is reckoned in the Church—the spirit that must be rendered saved, that is, whole, in the day of the Lord, when the incestuous fornicator has been cast out from the contagion of impurities. Since indeed he subjoins: 'Know you not that a little leaven maketh the whole lump insipid?' And yet incestuous fornication was no little, but a great, leaven. XIV. And these things, therefore, having been discussed, which had intervened, I return to the second to the Corinthians, that I may prove that saying of the Apostle also—'Let this rebuke which is inflicted by many suffice for such a man'—does not fit in the person of the fornicator. For if he had pronounced him to be delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, assuredly he had condemned him rather than rebuked him.

It was therefore another for whom he wished the rebuke to suffice; seeing that the fornicator had carried back from that sentence of his not a rebuke but a condemnation. For this very thing too I offer you to examine: whether there were in the first epistle others also who had grieved the Apostle by acting unruly, and were grieved by him as they took back a rebuke—according to the sense of the second epistle—out of whom someone could in it have obtained pardon. But let us mark the whole first epistle, written, so to speak, not with ink but with gall—swelling, indignant, disdainful, threatening, invidious, and, through each several cause, figured against certain men as the ringleaders of them.

For thus had schisms and rivalries and dissensions and presumptions and elations and contentions demanded it—that they be both burdened with invidiousness, and beaten back by correction, and filed down from pride, and deterred by austerity. And what a goad of humbling is invidiousness! 'I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius, lest any say that I baptized in my own name. For I judged not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.' And, 'I think God has chosen us apostles as the last, as men doomed to the beasts, since we are made a spectacle to this world, and to angels and to men, and are made the offscourings of this world, the refuse of all men.' And:

'Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Christ Jesus our Lord?' Against what haughtiness was he compelled to pronounce: 'But to me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by man's day; for I am conscious of nothing in myself'; and, 'My glory no one shall make void. Know you not that we shall judge angels?' For the rest, how open the liberty of his rebuke, how bared the edge of the spiritual sword: 'Already you are enriched, already you are filled, already you reign'; and, 'If any thinks he knows anything, he knows not yet as he ought to know!' Did he not then also, striking someone in the face, say, 'For who distinguishes you? And what have you that you did not receive? But if you received it, why do you glory as though you had not received it?'

Does he not smite those also on the mouth? 'But certain ones, in conscience even until now, eat as of a thing sacrificed to an idol. And so, sinning by wounding the weak consciences of the brethren, they sin against Christ.' Now indeed even by name: 'Have we not the power of eating and drinking, and of leading about women, even as the other apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? And if others partake of your power, do not we the more?' Equally he transfixes those too with a singular pen: 'Wherefore let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall'; and, 'If any seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the Church of the Lord.' With such a clause woven of a curse—'If any love not the Lord Jesus, let him be anathema, maranatha'—he assuredly smote someone.

But I will stand rather there where the Apostle grows more heated, where the fornicator himself made trouble for others also. 'As though I were not coming to you, some are puffed up. But I will come more quickly, if the Lord permit, and will know not the speech of those who are puffed up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in speech, but in power. And what will you? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in the spirit of gentleness?' For what lay beneath? 'It is heard that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away out of your midst.' For whom would they mourn? Assuredly for a dead man. To whom would they mourn?

Assuredly to the Lord, that he might in some way be taken away out of their midst—not, to be sure, that he be put outside the Church (for this would not be sought from God, since it lay in the office of the president), but that, through this death also—common and proper to the flesh itself, which was now a corpse, insomuch as it was a captive, festering with irrecoverable impurity—he ought the more fully to be taken away from the Church. And therefore, in the manner in which he could meanwhile be taken away, the Apostle judged that such a one must be delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. For a curse pursued that flesh which was cast forth to the devil, that it might be discharged, by the sacrament of blessing, never to return into the camp of the Church.

We see, therefore, in this passage the apostle's severity divided between a certain puffed-up man and a certain incestuous man, armed against the one with a rod and against the other with a sentence: the rod with which he threatened, the sentence which he carried out; the former still merely flashing like lightning, the latter striking home at once, the one by which he rebuked and the other by which he condemned. And it is certain from this that the one rebuked trembled under the brandishing of the rod, while the one condemned perished under the actual infliction of the penalty. For the former stands still, fearing the blow; the latter has departed, paying the penalty. When the same apostle's letters to the Corinthians are read a second time, pardon is indeed granted, but it is uncertain to whom, since neither the person nor the cause is set forth. Let me weigh the matter against its meaning. If the incestuous man is set in opposition, there too will be the puffed-up man.

Assuredly a sufficient account of the matter is given, when the puffed-up man is rebuked but the incestuous man is condemned. The puffed-up man is forgiven, but as one rebuked; the incestuous man does not appear to be pardoned, since he was condemned. If forgiveness was extended to him for whom there was fear of being swallowed up by excessive grief, then, being still only rebuked, he was in danger of being swallowed up, failing on account of the threat and grieving on account of the rebuke; but the condemned man, already swallowed up both by his guilt and by the sentence, was reckoned as one who had no cause for grief but only to suffer what before his suffering he might have grieved over. If forgiveness was extended for this reason, that we should not be defrauded by Satan, then surely the loss was being guarded against in the fact that he had not yet perished. Nothing is guarded against with respect to what is past, but only with respect to one still safe.