As I was pondering, and burning intolerably in mind over what I ought to do about the pitiable brethren who, wounded not by their own will but by the onslaught of the raging devil, were still—that is, through a long course of time—paying penalties for their conduct, behold, from the opposite side there arose another enemy, and an adversary of that very fatherly compassion, the heretic Novatian: who not only, as is signified in the Gospel, would pass by the wounded man lying there like the priest or the Levite, but with an ingenious and novel cruelty would rather kill the wounded man, by taking away the hope of salvation, denying the mercy of the Father, and rejecting the repentance of the brother. How many bitter, how many harsh, how many perverse things there are!
But one will more easily perceive the mote in another's eye than the beam in his own. But let us, most beloved brethren, not be moved or troubled by the abrupt madness of that perfidious heretic, who, though he is established in so great a crime of dissension and schism, and separated from the Church, does not hesitate with sacrilegious rashness to turn his own crimes back upon us. For though he has now been made unclean by his very self, defiled with sacrilegious filth, he now contends that we are this. And though it is written that dogs shall remain outside, and the Apostle has taught that these same dogs are to be avoided, as we read, for he says:
'Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers.' He does not cease to stir up his rage with barkings, to desire, after the manner of wolves, the shadowy gloom in which he may easily, with his beastly cruelty, tear apart in a dark cavern the sheep snatched from the shepherd. He certainly declares that he and his followers, whom he gathers, are gold. Nor do we doubt that the deserters of the Church, made apostates, could now easily have been turned into gold—but that gold in which the first sins of the people of Israel were denoted. As for the golden and silver vessels which were shaken out from the Egyptians, they endure in the Lord's power, that is, in the Church of Christ: in which house, had you persevered,
you would perhaps have been a precious vessel, whereas now, turned into chaff and stubble, you neither understand nor lament it. Why then are you exalted over empty things? You reap losses rather than gains. Why do you believe yourself rich from the very point at which you have become poorer? Hear in the Apocalypse the Lord's voice rebuking you with just reproaches: 'You say,' it says, 'I am rich and have become wealthy and need nothing: and you do not know that you are wretched and pitiable and blind and poor and naked.' Let whoever, having abandoned the Church of Christ, does not tremble to be converted, with blind reasoning, to those rash leaders of schisms and authors of dissension, believe for certain that he possesses these resources, these riches of poverty:
those whom John calls antichrists, whom the Evangelist likens to chaff, whom the Lord Christ designates as thieves and robbers, as he himself declares in the Gospel, saying: 'For he who does not enter through the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.' Likewise in the same place he also says: 'All who came are thieves and robbers.' Who are these, but the deserters of the faith and transgressors of the Church of God, who strive against the ordinance of God? Whom the Holy Spirit deservedly rebukes through the prophet, saying: 'You have taken counsel, but not by me, and formed a plan, but not by my Spirit, to add sins upon sins.' What shall those most perverse Novatians, or now those most wretched few, answer to these things:
who have broken forth into so great a madness of fury that they have held reverence neither for God nor for man? There the episcopate is shamelessly and without any law of ordination sought after, here the seats and chair handed over to them by God are renounced. There the truth: 'They have spurned me, so that they should sacrifice to me; nor do they offer the holy oblations of the sons of Israel, nor do they draw near to offer the holy of holies, but they shall receive their disgrace in the error wherein they have erred.' Let it suffice to have proved in a few words what they are. Hear therefore, Novatians, among whom the heavenly Scriptures are read rather than understood, and openly too... if they are not corrupted.
For your ears are stopped up and your hearts blinded, you who admit no light from spiritual and salutary admonitions. As Isaiah says: 'The servants of God have been blinded.' And deservedly blinded, because the will of the schismatics is not in the law—the law which designates for us one and singular Church, namely in that ark which under Noah, before the flood, was constructed by God's providence, in which we find enclosed not only clean animals but also unclean, that you may be answered quickly, Novatian. This ark alone, with those who were with it, was delivered upon the water, but the rest who were not found in it perished in the flood. From that ark, then, two birds are sent out, the raven and the dove.
That raven truly bore the figure of unclean men and of those destined to be in perpetual darkness, of apostates who go by the broad way of the world and feed on unclean things and who will no more turn to the Church—the raven which, as we readers find, was sent out and returned no more. To this bird, therefore, that is, to the unclean spirit, whoever are found like it will not be able to return again to the Church: who, even if they should wish it, the Lord will forbid, who commanded Moses, saying: 'Cast out every spotted and unclean thing outside the camp.' But the dove sent out is at once signified to have returned, because it found no rest for its feet: which Noah received into the ark, and after the seventh day, sent out again, received it bearing an olive leaf in its mouth.
And I indeed, most beloved brethren, considering these things not rashly nor conspiring by human wisdom, but as it is permitted to us by the heavenly condescension of the Lord to conceive necessarily and pertinently in our minds, say that this dove signifies to us through its very self a twofold figure. Its first and principal figure, that is, its spiritual one, it presses upon from of old, that is, from the beginning of the divine administration, and it foreshows through its own mouth the sacrament of baptism, which was provided for the salvation of the human race and permitted to be celebrated by heavenly reason to the Church alone. For thrice sent out from the ark, flying through the air over the water, it signified even then the sacraments of our Church.
Whence also the Lord Christ, seated with the rest of his disciples, commands Peter, saying: 'Go, evangelize the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.' That is, that that Trinity which under Noah was figuratively at work through the dove, may now be spiritually at work in the Church through us. Let us now take up also the second person of the dove sent out from the ark, namely at the time of the flood, when all the depths burst forth, when the cataracts of heaven were laid open over the earth, on account of the wicked deeds of men which daily increased before the Lord, as Moses said: 'And the Lord God saw that the iniquities of men had overflowed upon the earth, and that all took thought toward evil from the beginning of their days, and he said:
I will destroy man whom I made from the face of the earth, from man even to beast, and from creeping things even to the birds of heaven.' The dove, therefore, is sent out at the time of the cataclysm from the ark, while the waters violently infest the land over the whole world. That ark bore the figure of the Church, as we said above, which was buffeted on this side and that only by the surging waters. That cataclysm, then, which took place under Noah, showed the figure of the persecution which has now lately been poured out over the whole world. And the waters, with the cataracts burst open, gathering from every side and swelling, signified the nations which have grown up to lay waste the Church, as the Apocalypse teaches, saying: 'The waters which you saw are peoples and nations and kingdoms.'
But that dove which could not have rest for its feet bore the image of the lapsed, who, unmindful of the divine preachings, or simply ignorant of them, or boldly dissembling them, fell: whose ruin the Lord had signified as to come in the Gospel with these words, saying: 'He who hears my words and does not do them, I will liken to a foolish man who built his house upon the sand: the storms came and dashed against that house, and it fell, and great was its ruin.' And lest we seem to have rashly compared that dove to bear the image of the lapsed, thus the prophet rebukes even the city, as a dove, that is, the person of the lapsed, saying:
'The dove does not hear the voice'—that is, the illustrious and redeemed city does not receive the doctrine, and it did not trust in the Lord. But that the dove, as we said above, could not find rest for its feet, this signified the footsteps of the deniers—that is, of those who sacrificed—wounded by the venom of the slippery serpent and turned into a fall: which could no longer mount up over the asp and the basilisk, and trample upon the dragon and the lion. This power the Lord handed over to his disciples, as he says in the Gospel: 'Behold, I give you power to tread upon every strength of the enemy and upon serpents and scorpions, and they shall not harm you.'
Since, therefore, so many and so great malignant spirits were assailing them and rising up for the slaughter of the lapsed, a way of salvation was provided for the wounded, that with whatever strength they could they might drag themselves along with their whole body, and take refuge in their camp, and once received there, might cure their wounds with spiritual remedies. The dove, therefore, being received, after a few days interposed, is sent out again from the ark: which, having returned, showed not only firm footsteps but also the tokens of its peace and victory through those olive leaves which it bore in its mouth. That twofold sending forth, then, shows us the twofold trial of persecution: the first, in which those who lapsed were conquered and fell; the second, in which these very ones who had fallen stood forth as victors.
For it is doubtful or uncertain to none of us, most beloved brethren, that those who were wounded in the first battle-line—that is, in the Decian persecution—afterward, that is, in the second combat, so bravely persevered that, despising the edicts of the secular princes, they held this as unconquered: that they did not even fear, after the example of the good Shepherd, to hand over their life, to pour out their blood, and to refuse no cruelty of the raging tyrant. Behold how glorious, how dear to the Lord these men are, whom those schismatics do not hesitate to call wood, hay, stubble: whose equals—that is, men still established in the very same crime of their lapse—they presume are not to be admitted even to repentance, on the basis of that pronouncement of the Lord who says:
'Whoever shall deny me before men, I will deny him before my Father who is in heaven.' Alas for grief! Why do they contend against the Lord's own decrees, so as now to attempt to carry out those things which Christ will do at the time of his judgment—this offshoot of Novatian, following the example of his father the devil—when Scripture says: 'Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord.' We shall answer them also concerning that pronouncement of the Lord which they wrongly understand and wrongly interpret for themselves. For that which he says:
'Whoever shall deny me before men, I too will deny him before my Father who is in heaven,' is assuredly a signification of the future time, at which time the Lord will begin to judge the secrets of men, at which time we all must stand before the tribunal of Christ, at which time many will begin to say: 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name, O Lord, do many mighty works?' And then they will hear the voice of the Lord saying: 'Depart from me, all you who have worked iniquity, I never knew you.' There will be fulfilled what he says: 'I too will deny them.' But whom will the Lord Christ most of all deny, if not all of you heretics and schismatics and strangers to his name?
For you who once were Christians, now Novatians and no longer Christians, have changed your first faith by a later perfidy through the appellation of a name; I would wish you now to answer to your own proposition. Read and show me whom the Lord denied of those who had deserted or denied him while he himself was yet present: yet even to the rest who had remained with him he said of the disciples: 'Do you also wish to go away?' Peter too, whom he had foretold would deny him, when he had denied, he himself did not deny, but bore with him, and afterward himself soothed him as he bitterly wept over his denial. What, Novatian, is this madness of yours, that you read only those things which pertain to the destruction of salvation, and pass over those which pertain to mercy, though Scripture cries out and says:
'Do penance, you who err, be converted in heart,' and likewise according to the prophet exhorting in like manner and saying: 'And be converted to me with all your heart, in fasting and in weeping and in mourning: and rend your hearts and not your garments: be converted to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate and of great compassion.' Since we have heard that the Lord is of great compassion, let us hear what the Holy Spirit attests through David: 'If his sons shall forsake my law and walk not in my commandments, and if they shall profane my ordinances and keep not my precepts, I will visit their transgressions with a rod and their sins with scourges:'
'But my mercy I will not scatter away from them.' We read that the Lord said things like these through Ezekiel also: 'Son of man, the house of Israel dwelt upon their own land, and they defiled it with their crimes. Like the uncleanness of a menstruous woman their uncleanness became before my face. I poured out my wrath upon them and scattered them among the nations, and according to their sins I judged them, because they defiled my holy name. And because it was said of these, This is the people of the Lord, I spared them for the sake of my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations.' And joining this he says: 'Therefore say to the people of Israel: Thus says the Lord:'
'It is not for your sakes, O house of Israel, that I spare you, but I will spare you for the sake of my holy name, which you have defiled among the nations; and you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall be sanctified in you.' Likewise the Lord to the same prophet: 'Son of man, say to the people of Israel: Why have you spoken, saying, We waste away in our errors, and how shall we be able to be saved? Say to them: As I live, says the Lord, I do not desire the death of the sinner, but rather I desire that the sinner be turned back from his most wicked way and live. Return therefore from your most wicked way. Why do you give yourselves over to death, O house of Israel?' So too through Isaiah the prophet: 'I will not be indignant with you forever, nor will I always fail to defend us.' And since Jeremiah the prophet, in the person of the sinful people, beseeches the Lord, saying:
'Correct us, O Lord, but in judgement and not in wrath, lest you make us few,' Isaiah went on and said: 'On account of sin I grieved him a little, and I struck him and turned away my face from him, and he went grieved and departed sorrowful in his own ways.' And because he is at work, he added and said: 'I have seen his ways and healed him, and I have given him true consolation, peace upon peace,'—to the penitent, we understand. For to those who beseech and do the works of penance, restoration is possible, even for those who have perished wretchedly and who have turned aside from Christ. Finally this is confirmed in the Gospel, where that sinful woman is described who came to the house of a certain Pharisee, where the Lord had been invited with his disciples, carrying a vessel of ointment:
who stood at the Lord's feet and washed his feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair and pressed kisses upon them—so that the Pharisee there was provoked and said: 'If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who touches him, for she is a sinner.' Whereupon at once the Lord, the forgiver of sinners and receiver of the penitent, said: 'Peter, I have something to say to you.' And he answered, saying: 'Master, say on.' And the Lord: 'Two debtors owed a certain moneylender; one owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty; and when they had nothing to pay, he forgave them both.' And he asked: 'Which of them loves him more?' And Peter answered: 'Surely he to whom he forgave more.' And he added, saying: 'Do you see this woman?'
'I entered your house, and you gave me no kiss; but this woman has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not wash my feet; but this woman has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not anoint my feet with oil; but this woman has anointed them. Wherefore I say to you, Peter, that her sins are forgiven her.' Behold, the Lord by his abundant kindness grants to both debtors their debt. Behold him pardoning offences; behold the sinful woman, penitent, weeping, beseeching, and receiving the remission of her sins. Blush now at last, if it be possible, Novatian; cease with your impious arguments to deceive the unwary; cease to terrify men by an appeal to a single passage.
We read and adore, nor do we overlook the heavenly sentence of the Lord who said that he would deny the one who denies him—but did he say so of the penitent as well? And why should I be so eager to prove each instance of his mercies one by one? Since to the Ninevites, foreigners and set far from the law of the Lord, when they besought him because of the announced overthrow of their city, the mercy of God was not denied. Even to that very Pharaoh, resisting with sacrilegious rashness, when he was being beaten by heavenly plagues and, turning, said to Moses and his brother: 'Pray for me to the Lord, for I have sinned,'—at once the wrath of God was withheld from him.
And do you now, Novatian, sit in judgement and proclaim that the lapsed can have no hope of peace and mercy, and lend no ear to the apostle rebuking you, who says: 'Who are you to judge another man's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he shall stand, for God is able to make him stand.' Whence fittingly and of necessity the Holy Spirit rebukes you in the person of those same lapsed, when he says: 'Rejoice not against me, O my enemy; for though I have fallen, I shall rise again; and though I walk in darkness, the Lord is a light to me. I will bear the wrath of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause and execute justice and judgement, and bring me forth to the light. I shall behold his righteousness, and my enemy shall see me and shall be covered with confusion.'
I pray you, have you not read: 'Do not boast, and do not speak lofty things, and let no arrogant talk go forth from your mouth; for he raises the poor man from the earth and lifts up the needy from the dunghill, and makes him sit with the princes of the people'? Have you not read: 'You who stand, take heed lest you fall'? Have you not read: 'The Lord resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble'? Have you not read: 'He who exalts himself shall be humbled'? Have you not read: 'God has destroyed the memory of the proud, and does not leave the memory of the humble'? Have you not read: 'With whatever judgement a man has judged, by that must he needs be judged'? Have you not read: 'He who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he goes, because the darkness has blinded his eyes'?
Whence, then, this Novatian should have arisen so wicked, so utterly lost, so maddened by the frenzy of discord, I cannot discover—he who was ever in the one house, that is, the Church of Christ, wont to bewail the sins of his neighbours as his own, to bear the burdens of the brethren as the apostle exhorts, and to strengthen with heavenly address those who were unsteady in the faith. But now, from the time when he began to practise that heresy of Cain, which craves only to slay, he does not even in the end spare himself.
But if he had read that 'the righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day when he errs, and the iniquity of the wicked shall not harm him from the day when he is converted,' he would long ago have repented in ashes—he who is ever the adversary of the penitent, who works more readily in the ruin of those who stand established than in the rebuilding of the fallen ruins; who has caused many of our most wretched brethren, terrified by his false hostilities, to become heathen again, by saying that the penance of the lapsed is vain and cannot avail them for salvation—while Scripture cries out and says: 'Remember whence you have fallen, and do penance; otherwise I will come to you, unless you do penance.'
And indeed, writing to the seven churches, and pressing home upon each its own crimes and offences, he said: 'Repent.' To whom? To none other, surely, than to those whom he had redeemed with the great price of his own blood. O you impious and criminal one, Novatian the heretic! You who, after so many and so great crimes were formerly committed of their own will in the Church by certain persons—crimes which you yourself, before you were an apostate, had recognized in the house of God, and had taught, when the good state was returning, that they could be blotted out of memory—according to the faith of Scripture which says: 'For if the criminal shall turn from all his crimes which he has committed and shall follow after righteousness, he shall live with eternal life,'
and shall not die in his crime—for the offences which he has committed shall be blotted out of memory by the good deeds that follow'—do you today debate whether the wounds of the lapsed ought to be healed, who, stripped bare by the devil, fell by the violence of the water which the serpent poured from his mouth after the woman? But what shall I say? The apostle says: 'Do I praise you? In this I do not praise you: because you have come together not for the better but for the worse. For where there are rivalries and dissensions among you, are you not carnal and do you not walk according to man?' Nor indeed ought we to wonder why this Novatian now dares to practise such abominable, such grievous things against the person of the lapsed, since we have preceding examples of this treachery.
That good Saul, among his other virtues, was afterwards overthrown by envy and contrived to work every hostile and inimical thing against David. That Judas, chosen among the apostles, who was ever of one mind and faithful in the house of God, afterwards himself betrayed his God. The Lord too had foretold that many rapacious wolves would come in sheep's clothing. Who are these rapacious wolves, but those who, with treacherous purpose, conspire to harass the flock of Christ? As we read it set down in Zechariah: 'Behold, I raise up a shepherd in the land, who will not visit what is turned aside, and will eat the flesh of the chosen, and will wrench their ankles.' Likewise through Ezekiel he rebukes shepherds of this kind—robbers and butchers, to put it as he judged them—saying:
'O shepherds, why do you drink the milk and eat the curds, and perchance have brought some to nothing, and have not visited the sick, nor healed the lame, nor called back the straying, and have suffered my people to wander among thorns and briars? Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I will come against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hands, and I will drive them off that they may no longer feed my sheep, and my sheep shall no more be a prey to them; and I will seek them out as a shepherd seeks his flock in the day when there is gloom and mist: so will I seek out my sheep, and will seek them out from every place wherever they have been scattered:'
'and what was lost I will seek, and what had strayed I will call back, and what was lame I will heal, and what is sick I will keep, and I will feed my sheep with judgement.' Who is it that speaks these things? Surely he who, leaving the ninety-nine sheep, sought that one which had strayed from his flock, as David says: 'I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost'—which sheep, when he had found it, Christ returns bearing on his shoulder the tender sinner: who, rejoicing and exulting, called his friends and household and said: 'Rejoice with me, for my sheep which was lost is found. I say to you,' he says, 'that such joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that does penance.' And joining this he says:
'Or what woman, having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one of them, does not light a lamp and sweep her house all day, seeking until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying: Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece of silver which I had lost. I say to you that such joy shall be in the sight of the angels of God over one sinner that does penance.' But on the contrary, let those who do not do penance for their crimes learn from the Lord's own reply what awaits them; for we read in the Gospel that certain men came from the Galileans to the Lord, telling him of those whose blood Pilate had mingled with their own sacrifices; to whom the Lord answered, saying: 'Do you think that those
Galileans were sinners above the rest of the Galileans, because they suffered such things? No, I tell you; but unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, do you think that they were debtors unto death above all the men who dwelt in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish.' Let us therefore rouse ourselves as much as we can, dearly beloved brethren, and, having broken off the sleep of sloth and false security, let us keep watch to observe the precepts of the Lord. Let us seek with our whole mind what we have lost, that we may be able to find it; for to him who seeks, Scripture says, it shall be given, and to him who knocks it shall be opened.
Let us cleanse our house with spiritual cleansing, so that all the secret and hidden things of our heart, illumined by the light of the true Gospel, may say: 'Against you only have I sinned, and I have done what is most wicked in your sight'—for the death of sinners is evil, and among the dead there is no penance—having especially before our contemplation the day of judgement and of recompense; and knowing what must be believed by us all and firmly held, that there is no respect of persons with God, since he commanded in Deuteronomy that no person is to be regarded in judgement: 'You shall not regard the person,' he says, 'nor shall you judge according to the least nor according to the greatest.' Things like these he also said through Ezekiel: 'All souls,' he says, 'are mine, both the soul of the father and the soul of the son.'
'The soul that sins, that soul shall die.' He, then, is to be revered by us, he is to be held fast, he is to be propitiated by our full and worthy confession—he who has power to send both soul and body into the hell of fire, as it is written: 'Behold, he comes with many thousands of his messengers to execute judgement upon all, and to destroy all the ungodly, and to convict all flesh of all the deeds of the ungodly which they have done impiously, and of all the impious words which sinners have spoken concerning God.' Things like these Daniel also says: 'I beheld,' he says, 'a throne set, and the Ancient of Days sat upon it, and his garment was like snow, and the hair of his head like white wool; his throne was a flame of fire, its wheels burning fire.'
'A stream of fire issued and came forth from before him; thousands of thousands ministered to him, and thousands of thousands stood before him; he sat for judgement, and the books were opened.' John, however, declares more manifestly concerning both the day of judgement and the consummation of the age, saying: 'And when he had opened,' he says, 'the sixth seal, behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood, and the stars fell to the earth, as a fig tree shaken by a great wind casts its unripe figs; and the heaven withdrew as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and the islands were moved from their places:'
'and the kings of the earth and all the great ones and the tribunes and the rich and the mighty and every bondman and free man hid themselves in the caves of the rocks and in the hollows of the mountains, saying to the mountains and rocks: Fall upon us and hide us from the face of him that sits upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the day of destruction is come, and who shall be able to stand?' Likewise in the same Apocalypse John says that this too was revealed to him: 'I saw,' he says, 'a great and white throne, and one sitting upon it, from whose face heaven and earth fled away, and no place was found for them; and I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the sight of the throne of the Lord, and the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life:'
'and they were judged, each one according to those things which were written in the book, according to their works.' But the apostle too, counselling what is good, thus exhorts us, saying: 'Let no man deceive you with empty words; for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience; do not be partakers with them.' Let us therefore, with all the strength of our faith, give praise to God; let us give full confession—since over our penance the powers of heaven rejoice, all the angels rejoice, and Christ himself rejoices, who exhorts us, once more laden with sins and overwhelmed with offences, to cease from crime with full and merciful moderation, saying: 'Turn yourselves and return from your impieties, and your iniquities shall not be a punishment to you.'
'Cast away from yourselves all your impieties which you have done against me, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. And why do you give yourselves over to death, O house of Israel? For I do not desire the death of the sinner. It is I, it is I, who blot out your crimes and will not remember you: but do you keep it in mind, and let us go to judgement. Declare your crimes first, that you may be justified.' While the door of pardon lies open, brethren, let us beseech God with full satisfactions. Let us humble ourselves that we may be exalted. Let us yield to the divine exhortation by which it is permitted to escape the day of the Lord and his wrath. For thus he says: 'Look, my son, upon the nations of men and know: who has hoped in the Lord and been confounded? Who has continued in his commandments and been forsaken?'
'Or has called upon him, and he despised him? For the Lord is kind and merciful, and forgives sins in the time of tribulation to all who seek him in truth.' He says therefore: 'Declare your crimes first, that you may be justified.' Let that prayer of full confession be ready at hand for you * * *