De Paenitentia

That class of men to which we ourselves once belonged — blind, without the light of the Lord — know repentance, so far as nature goes, to be a certain passion of the mind which comes from disgust at a former judgement now turned the worse. But they are as far from the rationale of it as they are from the very author of reason. For reason is a thing of God; since God, the founder of all things, foresaw, disposed, and ordained nothing without reason, and willed nothing to be handled or understood without reason. Therefore all who are ignorant of God must needs be ignorant also of his thing, since no treasure at all lies open to strangers. And so, sailing across the whole course of life without the rudder of reason, they do not know how to avoid the storm that hangs over the world. But how irrationally they go astray in the act of repentance, it will be enough to set forth from this one instance alone: that they apply it even to their good deeds. They repent of fidelity, of love, of simplicity, of patience, of mercy, according as any of these has fallen into disfavour. They execrate themselves because they have done well, and that very kind of repentance which is inflicted upon the best works they fix fast in their heart, taking care to remember it, lest they should again render any good; while, on the contrary, they brood more lightly over the repentance of evil deeds. In short, they more easily transgress through it than do rightly through it.

But if they were partakers of God, and therefore of reason too, they would first weigh the merits of repentance, and would never apply it as an argument of a perverse correction; and finally they would temper the measure of their repenting, because they would also keep in check the measure of their transgressing, fearing the Lord, of course. But where there is no fear, there is correspondingly no correction; where there is no correction, repentance is necessarily vain, because it lacks its own fruit, for which God has sown it — that is, the salvation of man. For God, after so many and so great transgressions of human rashness, begun by Adam the prince of the race; after the condemnation of man with the dower of the world; after his ejection from paradise and subjection to death — when again he had hastened to his own mercy, from that time onward in his own self consecrated repentance, rescinding the sentence of his former wrath, having covenanted to pardon his own work and image. And so he both gathered a people to himself, and cherished it with many bestowals of his goodness; and, having so often found it most ungrateful, he ever exhorted it to repentance, and by prophesying sent forth the mouths of all the prophets: presently, having promised the grace which in the last extremities of the times he would shed forth by his Spirit upon the whole world, he bade that the baptism of repentance go before, that he might first make ready, by the foreshadowing of repentance, those whom by grace he should call to the promise destined to the seed of Abraham. John does not keep silent, saying, Begin to repent, for now salvation shall draw near to the nations — namely the Lord, bringing it according to God's promise. To whom, as a fore-minister, he destined repentance, set over the cleansing of minds: that whatever the old error had defiled, whatever ignorance had contaminated in the heart of man, this repentance, sweeping and scraping and casting out of doors, might make ready the clean house of the breast for the Holy Spirit who should supervene, that he might gladly bring himself in with the heavenly goods. Of these goods there is one heading: the salvation of man, the abolition of former crimes being sent on before. This is the cause of repentance, this its work, caring for the business of the divine mercy. What profits man serves God. For the rest, its rationale, which we learn when the Lord is known, holds to a fixed form, that no violent hand, as it were, should ever be laid upon good deeds or thoughts. For God, not holding the reprobation of good things ratified — inasmuch as they are his own, of which, since he is the author, he must needs also be the defender, and accordingly the approver too; and if the approver, also the rewarder — let the ingratitude of men look to it, then, if it forces repentance even upon good deeds. Let gratitude too look to it, if the angling for it is a spur to doing well — both earthly, both mortal. For how small a gain it is, if you have done well by a grateful man! or how small a loss, if by an ungrateful! A good deed has God for its debtor, just as an evil one too, because every judge is a rewarder of the case. But since God, the judge of righteousness — most dear to himself to be exacted and protected — presides, and ratifies the whole sum of his discipline toward it, is it to be doubted that, as in all our acts, so in the case of repentance also, righteousness is to be rendered to God? — which indeed it will be possible so to fulfil, if it be applied to sins only. Moreover, nothing deserves to be called sin except an evil deed, nor does anyone transgress by doing well. But if he does not transgress, why does he invade repentance, the private possession of transgressors? Why does he impose the office of malice upon his own goodness? Thus it comes about that, when something is applied where it ought not, there, where it ought, it is neglected.

The instances, then, of which repentance may seem just and due — that is, those which are to be reckoned as transgression — the occasion indeed demands that I mark out, but it may seem idle. For when the Lord is known, the spirit, of its own accord, regarded by its author, emerges to the knowledge of the truth, and, admitted to the Lord's precepts, is straightway instructed from them what is to be reckoned a sin — namely, that from which God restrains. Since, when it is established that God is some great good, surely nothing but evil could displease the good, since between things contrary to one another there is no friendship. Yet it will not be irksome to touch in passing on this: that some transgressions are carnal, that is, bodily, but some spiritual. For since man is made up of this gathering-together of a twofold substance, he transgresses from no other source than that of which he consists. But they do not differ between themselves on this account, that body and spirit are two things — otherwise they are the rather equal, because two make one — lest anyone, for the diversity of the materials, distinguish their sins, so as to reckon one lighter or heavier than the other. Since indeed both flesh and spirit are things of God, the one wrought by his hand, the other completed by his breathing. Since therefore they belong equally to the Lord, whichever of them has transgressed offends the Lord equally. Or will you distinguish the acts of the flesh and the spirit, of which there is, both in life and in death and in resurrection, so great a communion and partnership, that then they are equally raised either unto life or unto judgement — because, namely, they have equally either transgressed or acted innocently? This we have premised, that we may understand that there hangs over the one part, if it has transgressed anything, no less a necessity of repentance than over both parts. The guilt of both is common, common too the judge — namely God — common therefore the remedy of repentance too. Thereafter they are named spiritual and bodily, because every transgression is either done or thought; so that that is bodily which is in the deed, because a deed, like a body, can be both seen and touched, but that is spiritual which is in the mind, because the spirit is neither seen nor held. By which it is shown that the transgressions, not of the deed only, but also of the will, are to be shunned and purged by repentance. For not — if human mediocrity judges the deed only, because it is not equal to the hidden recesses of the will — are we on that account to neglect the crimes of the will even before God. God is sufficient for all things. Nothing whence transgression at all proceeds is removed from his sight, because he neither is ignorant of it nor omits to decree it unto judgement. He is no dissembler or prevaricator of his own perspicacity. What of the fact that the will is the origin of the deed? For let those things look to themselves which are imputed to chance or necessity or ignorance, which being excepted, transgression is committed now by nothing but the will. Since therefore it is the origin of the deed, is it not so much the more potent unto punishment, as it is principal unto guilt? — which is not even then set free, when some difficulty intercepts the perpetration of it. For it is imputed to itself, nor will it be able to be excused through that ill fortune of accomplishment, having worked what was its own. In short, how does the Lord show that he builds an addition over the law, except by forbidding the transgressions of the will too, when he defines as an adulterer not only the man who has fallen, in close contact, into another's marriage, but also him who has contaminated with the concupiscence of a look? So thoroughly does the mind represent to itself, perilously enough, what it is forbidden to carry out, and rashly, through the will, discharge the effect. And since the force of this will is so great that, even when not glutting its own gratification, it still ranks as the deed, for the deed therefore it shall be punished. It is most vain to say: I willed, yet I did not do it. But you ought to accomplish, because you will, or not even to will, because you do not accomplish. But you yourself pronounce sentence by the confession of your conscience. For if you had desired a good thing, you would have been eager to accomplish it; and as, on the other hand, you do not accomplish the evil, neither ought you to have desired it. Wherever you set yourself, you are bound by the crime, because either you have willed evil, or you have not fulfilled good.

To all transgressions, then, whether committed in the flesh or in the spirit, whether by deed or by will, he who has appointed punishment by judgement, the same has also promised pardon by repentance, saying to the people, Repent, and I will save you. And again, I live, says the Lord, and I prefer repentance to death. Therefore repentance is life, since it is preferred to death. That repentance do you, O sinner, like myself — nay, less than I, for I acknowledge my own pre-eminence in transgressions — so seize, so embrace, as a shipwrecked man the trustworthiness of some plank. This will buoy you up, sunk in the waves of sins, and will bear you forward into the harbour of the divine clemency. Seize the occasion of an unhoped-for felicity, that you, who once before God were nothing but a drop of the bucket and the dust of the threshing-floor and the potter's vessel, may thereafter become that tree which is planted by the waters, and is perennial in its leaves, and bears fruit in its season, which shall see neither fire nor axe. Having found the truth, repent of your errors; repent of having loved what God does not love, since not even we ourselves permit our slaves not to hate the things by which we are offended. For the rationale of compliance is established in a likeness of dispositions. In enumerating the good of repentance the matter is wide and to be entrusted to a great eloquence for so great a theme. But we, for our narrow means, drive home one thing: that what God commands is good, and the best. I count it boldness to dispute concerning the goodness of a divine precept. For we ought not to give ear because it is good, but because God commands. For the exhibition of compliance the majesty of the divine power is prior, prior is the authority of him who commands to the advantage of him who serves. Is it good to repent, or not? Why do you turn it over? God commands. But indeed he not only commands, but also exhorts. He invites by a reward, salvation; even by swearing, saying, I live, he desires to be believed. O blessed are we, for whose sake God swears! O most wretched, if we believe not the Lord even when he swears! What therefore God so greatly commends, what he even attests, in human fashion, under an oath, with the utmost gravity surely we ought both to undertake and to keep, that, abiding in the assurance of the divine grace, we may likewise be able to persevere in its fruit too and its profit.

For this I say: that repentance, which, shown forth and enjoined upon us by the grace of God, recalls us into favour with the Lord, ought, once known and undertaken, never thereafter to be cancelled by a repetition of transgression. Now indeed no pretext of ignorance pleads your cause, in that, the Lord being known and his precepts admitted, having finally performed repentance of your transgressions, you again restore yourself into transgressions. So, in proportion as you are separated from ignorance, in so much are you glued to obstinacy. For if you had repented of having transgressed because you had begun to fear the Lord, why did you prefer to rescind what you did for fear's sake, unless because you ceased to fear? For nothing but obstinacy overturns fear. Since even those who are ignorant of the Lord are protected by no exception from punishment — because it is not lawful to be ignorant of God, who is set in the open and is comprehensible even from the heavenly goods themselves — how perilous it is to despise him when known! Moreover, he despises who, having attained from him the understanding of good and evil, by taking up again what he understands must be shunned and what he has already shunned, does insult to his own understanding, that is, to God's gift: he spurns the giver when he forsakes the gift, he denies the benefactor when he does not honour the benefit. How can he please him whose gift displeases him? Thus toward the Lord show yourself not only obstinate but also ungrateful. For the rest, he sins not lightly against the Lord who, when by repentance he had renounced the devil, the Lord's rival, and on this account had subjected him to the Lord, again by his own return sets the same up again, and makes himself the matter of his exultation, so that the evil one, having recovered his prey, may again rejoice against the Lord. Does he not — what it is even perilous to say, but must be brought forth for edification — prefer the devil to the Lord? For he seems to have made a comparison, who has known both, and, having judged, to have pronounced him the better whose he has again preferred to be. Thus he who by the repentance of his transgressions had purposed to make satisfaction to the Lord, will make satisfaction to the devil by another repentance of his repentance, and will be the more hateful to God in proportion as he is acceptable to his rival. But some say that God is content if he be reverenced in heart and mind, though it be done less in act; and so that they sin with their fear and faith kept safe — that is, that they violate marriages with chastity kept safe, that they temper poison for a parent with filial duty kept safe. So then they too, with pardon kept safe, shall be thrust down into Gehenna, while they sin with fear kept safe. This is the first example of perversity: that they transgress because they fear. I suppose they would not transgress, if they did not fear. Therefore let him who would not have God offended, neither reverence him at all, if the fear of offending is a patronage. But such characters are wont to sprout from the seed of hypocrites, whose friendship with the devil is inseparable, whose repentance is never faithful.

Whatever, then, our mediocrity has tried to suggest toward seizing repentance once and holding it perpetually, regards indeed all who are devoted to the Lord, as all are petitioners of salvation in deserving well of God; but it presses chiefly upon those little novices, who are just now beginning to water their ears with the divine discourses, and who, like puppies of an infancy still fresh, creep about uncertainly with eyes not yet perfect, and say indeed that they renounce their former things and take up repentance, but neglect to shut it in. For the very end of desiring solicits them to desire something of their former things — as fruits, when they begin already to grow old into sourness or bitterness, yet in some part still flatter themselves with their own former charm. Moreover, the presumption of baptism imports every fault of delay and shuffling with regard to repentance. For, sure of an undoubted pardon of their transgressions, they steal in the meantime the interval of time, and make themselves a furlough for transgressing rather than a schooling in not transgressing. How inept, moreover — not to fulfil repentance, yet to look to obtain the pardon of transgressions! This is not to hold out the price, yet to stretch out the hand for the merchandise. For at this price the Lord has appointed to make over pardon; at this compensation of repentance he proposes that impunity be redeemed. If therefore those who sell first examine the coin with which they bargain, that it be neither chipped nor scraped nor counterfeit, do we believe that the Lord too first makes a testing of repentance, who is to grant us so great a reward, namely of eternal life? But let us defer for a while the truth of repentance. Then, I suppose, it will be clear that we are corrected, when we are absolved. By no means. But when, pardon being in suspense, punishment is held in view; while we do not yet deserve to be set free, that we may be able to deserve it; when God threatens, not when he pardons. For what slave, after he has been changed into freedom, imputes to himself his thefts and runnings-away? What soldier, after he has been discharged from his camp, busies himself about his offences? A sinner ought to bewail himself before pardon, because the time of repentance is the same as that of peril and fear. Nor do I deny that the divine benefit — that is, the abolition of transgressions — is, for those who are to enter upon the water, by all means secured; but that one may attain to reach it, there must be hard labour. For who will lend you, a man of so faithless a repentance, a single sprinkling of any water whatsoever? It is easy, indeed, to set about it by theft and to circumvent the man set over this matter by your asseverations; but God provides for his treasure, and does not suffer the unworthy to creep in. What, in short, does he say? Nothing is hidden which shall not be revealed. Whatever darknesses you may build over your deeds, God is light. But some so suppose, as though God had a necessity laid upon him to grant even to the unworthy what he has promised, and they make his liberality a servitude. But if of necessity he grants us the symbol of death, then he does it unwillingly. And who allows that to abide which he has bestowed unwillingly? For do not many afterwards fall away? is not that gift taken from many? These, of course, are they who creep in, who, having set about the faith of repentance, build their house upon the sands, to fall in ruin. Let no one, then, flatter himself because he is reckoned among the recruits of the hearers, as though even now it were lawful for him to transgress. As soon as you have known the Lord, fear him; as soon as you have beheld him, reverence him. For the rest, what does it profit you to have known him, when you brood over the same things as before, when ignorant? What separates you from a perfect servant of God? Is there one Christ for the baptized, another for the hearers? Is there a different hope or reward, a different dread of judgement, a different necessity of repentance? That bath is the sealing of faith, which faith is begun and commended by the faith of repentance. We are not therefore washed that we may cease to transgress, but because we have ceased, since we have already been washed in heart. For this is the first baptism of a hearer — fear entire. Thenceforth, so long as you have perceived the Lord, faith is sound, the conscience having once embraced repentance. But if from the water we cease to sin, it is of necessity, not of our own will, that we put on innocence. Who, then, excels in goodness? he to whom it is not lawful, or he to whom it is displeasing, to be evil? he who is commanded, or he who delights to be free from crime? Let us, then, neither turn our hands from theft, unless the hardness of the prison resist, nor refrain our eyes from the concupiscences of fornication, unless drawn away by the guardians of bodies — if no one devoted to the Lord ceases to transgress unless bound by baptism. And if anyone so think, I know not whether, when baptized, he is more saddened that he has ceased to sin than glad that he has escaped. And so it behoves the hearers to desire baptism, not to presume it. For he who desires honours; he who presumes is proud. In the one modesty appears, in the other petulance. The one is busy, the other careless. The one longs to deserve, but the other promises it to himself as a debt. The one takes, the other invades. Whom would you reckon the worthier, except the more corrected? whom the more corrected, except the more fearful, and therefore one who has performed true repentance? For he feared as yet to transgress, lest he should not deserve to receive. But that presumptuous one, since he promised it to himself, secure of course, could not fear; so neither did he fulfil repentance, because he lacked the instrument of repentance — that is, fear. Presumption is a portion of immodesty: it puffs up the petitioner, despises the giver. And so it sometimes deceives. For it promises before it is due, whereby always he who is about to bestow is offended.

Thus far, O Christ the Lord, may it fall to thy servants to learn or to hear concerning the discipline of repentance — so far at least as it behoves the hearers no longer to transgress; or let them know nothing more of repentance, seek nothing of it. It is irksome to weave in mention of a second — nay, now the last — hope, lest, by treating of the residual help of repenting, we should seem to point out a space of yet transgressing. Far be it that anyone should so interpret it, as though there lay open to him a way of transgressing even now, because there lies open a way of repenting, and as though the redundance of the heavenly clemency made a lust of human rashness. Let no one be the worse because God is the better, by transgressing as often as he is pardoned. For the rest, surely he will have an end of escaping, when he will not have an end of offending. We have escaped once; thus far let us bring ourselves into perils, even though we seem about to escape again. Most men, set free from shipwreck, thenceforth bid farewell both to ship and sea, and honour the benefit of God, namely their own safety, by the memory of the peril. I praise the fear, I love the modesty. They will not again be a burden to the divine mercy; they dread to seem to trample on what they have attained; with a good anxiety, surely, they avoid experiencing again what they once learned to fear. Thus the measure of rashness is a testification of fear. But the fear of man is the honour of God. But that most stubborn enemy never makes a holiday for his malice. Nay, then he rages most, when he perceives a man fully set free; then he is most kindled, while he is being quenched. He must needs grieve and groan that, pardon of sins being granted, so many works of death in man are pulled down, so many titles of his former condemnation erased. He grieves that that sinful servant of Christ is to judge him and his angels. And so he watches, attacks, besieges, if in any way he may either strike the eyes with carnal concupiscence, or ensnare the mind with worldly allurements, or overturn faith by the dread of an earthly power, or twist one from the sure way by perverse traditions; he fails not in scandals, nor in temptations. Foreseeing therefore these poisons of his, God, although the door of pardon be shut and the bar of baptism made fast, has permitted something yet to lie open. He has placed in the porch a second repentance, which may open to those who knock; but now once only, because now for the second time; but never more, because the last time was in vain. For is not even this once enough? You have what you no longer deserved; for you have lost what you had received. If the Lord's indulgence furnishes you wherewith to restore what you had lost, be grateful for the benefit renewed, not to say enlarged. For it is a greater thing to restore than to give, since it is more wretched to have lost than never to have received at all. But the mind is not at once to be cut down and undermined by despair, if anyone has become a debtor of the second repentance. Let it be irksome, to be sure, to sin again, but not irksome to repent again; let it be irksome to be again in peril, but not to be again set free. Let no one be ashamed. For a renewed sickness the medicine is to be renewed. You will have shown yourself grateful toward the Lord, if you have not refused what the Lord offers you. You have offended, but you can yet be reconciled. You have one to whom you may make satisfaction, and one indeed who is willing.

If you doubt this, unroll what the Spirit says to the churches. He charges the Ephesians with love forsaken; he reproaches the Thyatirans with fornication and the eating of things offered to idols; he accuses the Sardians of works not full; he reprehends the Pergamenes for teaching perverse things; he chides the Laodiceans for trusting in riches; and yet he admonishes all to repentance — under threats, indeed. But he would not threaten the unrepentant, if he did not pardon the repentant. It might be doubtful, had he not elsewhere too shown forth this profusion of his clemency. Does he not say, He who has fallen shall rise, and he who has turned away shall be converted? He it is, namely; he it is who prefers mercy to sacrifices. The heavens rejoice, and the angels that are there, at the repentance of a man. Ho, you sinner, be of good cheer! you see where there is rejoicing over your return. What do those arguments of the Lord's parables mean for us? That a woman lost a drachma, and seeks it, and finds it, and invites her friends to her joy — is it not an example of the sinner restored? One little sheep of the shepherd strays, but the flock was not dearer than one: that one is searched out, that one is longed for above all, and at last is found and carried back upon the shoulders of the shepherd himself; for it had laboured much in straying. That most gentle father too I will not pass over in silence, who recalls his prodigal son, and after his want receives him, repentant, gladly, immolates the fattest calf, adorns his joy with a banquet. And why not? For he had found the son whom he had lost; dearer he had felt him whom he had gained. Whom are we to understand by that father? God, of course. So fatherly is no one, so loving is no one. He therefore will receive you, his son, even though you have squandered what you received from him, even though you return naked — because you have returned; and he will rejoice more over your return than over another's sobriety: but only if you repent from the heart, if you compare your hunger with the fullness of your father's hired servants, if you leave the swine, that unclean herd, if you seek again your father, though offended, saying, I have transgressed, father, nor am I now worthy to be called yours. The confession of transgressions relieves as much as the dissembling of them aggravates. For confession is the counsel of satisfaction, dissembling of obstinacy.

Of this second and only repentance, then, the more the business is straitened, so much the more laborious is the proof, that it be not advanced by conscience alone, but be administered also by some act. That act, which is more usually expressed and current by a Greek word, is exomologesis, by which we confess our transgression to the Lord — not indeed as to one ignorant, but inasmuch as satisfaction is arranged by confession, by confession repentance is born, by repentance God is appeased. And so exomologesis is a discipline for the prostrating and humbling of a man, enjoining a manner of life that lures forth mercy. Concerning his very bearing and diet too it commands him to lie upon sackcloth and ash, to befoul his body with squalor, to cast down his mind with mournings, to exchange the things wherein he has sinned for a sad treatment; for the rest, to know food and drink plain — not, of course, for the belly's sake, but for the soul's; and for the most part to nourish prayers by fastings, to groan, to weep, and to bellow day and night unto the Lord your God, to roll at the feet of the presbyters, and to kneel to those dear to God, to enjoin upon all the brethren the embassies of his own deprecation. All this exomologesis does, that it may commend repentance; that, out of fear of peril, it may honour the Lord; that, pronouncing sentence upon the sinner, it may itself act in place of God's indignation, and, by temporal affliction, may — I will not say frustrate, but discharge — the eternal punishments. When therefore it casts a man down, it the more raises him up; when it makes him squalid, it renders him the more cleansed; when it accuses, it excuses; when it condemns, it absolves. In proportion as you have not spared yourself, in so much, believe me, God will spare you.

Yet most men flee from this work, as a publishing of themselves, or put it off from day to day. I presume they are more mindful of shame than of salvation — like those who, having contracted some disorder in the more private parts of the body, shun the consciousness of physicians, and so perish along with their bashfulness. It is intolerable, forsooth, to shame, to make satisfaction to the offended Lord, to be restored to a salvation forfeited! Truly you are a fine fellow in your modesty — opening your brow to transgressing, but drawing it down to deprecating! I make no room for shame, when I gain more by the loss of it, when it as it were exhorts the man itself, saying, Have no regard for me; through you it is better for me to perish. Certainly its peril is then, if ever, burdensome, when it lies among those who will insult in mockery, where one is exalted by another's downfall, where one is trodden upon while prostrate: but among brethren and fellow-servants, where hope, fear, joy, grief, suffering are common — because the Spirit is common, from a common Lord and Father — what do you suppose these to be other than yourself? Why do you flee the partners of your mishaps as if they were applauders? The body cannot keep glad over the disorder of one member; the whole must needs grieve together and labour together for a remedy. In one and another the Church is; but the Church is Christ. Therefore when you stretch yourself toward the knees of the brethren, you handle Christ, you entreat Christ. Likewise when they shed tears over you, Christ suffers, Christ entreats the Father. Easily is that always obtained which the Son asks. A great profit, plainly, does the concealing of a transgression promise to modesty. Forsooth, if we withdraw anything from human knowledge, shall we likewise hide it from God too? Are men's estimation and God's consciousness so to be compared? Is it better to lie hidden when condemned than to be openly absolved? It is wretched thus to come to exomologesis! For one comes to it through wretchedness; but where there is need to repent, it ceases to be wretched, because it has become salutary. It is wretched to be cut, and burned with the cautery, and tormented by the bite of some powder; yet the things which heal by unpleasantness both excuse their offensiveness by the profit of the cure, and commend a present injury for the sake of the advantage that is to come.

What if, besides the shame which they count the more weighty, they dread also the discomforts of the body — that one ought to dwell unwashed, in dirt, apart from gladness, in the roughness of sackcloth and the horror of ash, and with a face wan from fasting? Is it then becoming for us to supplicate for our transgressions in scarlet and Tyrian purple? Come, hand over the bodkin for parting the hair, and powder for polishing the teeth, and some two-pronged thing of iron or bronze for re-trimming the nails, and whatever feigned brilliance, whatever forced redness, presses upon the lips or cheeks. Furthermore, seek out the more pleasant baths of some garden or seaside retreat, add to the expense, get together the monstrous fattening of fowls, clarify your old wine; and when anyone asks for whom you lavish these things, say, I have transgressed against God, and am in peril of perishing for ever; and so now I hang in suspense, and pine away and am tortured, that I may reconcile to myself the God whom by transgressing I wounded. But indeed those who go about canvassing for the obtaining of magistracies are neither ashamed nor irked to strive, in the cause of their ambitions, through discomforts of soul and body — and not only through discomforts, but through all manner of indignities. What ignobilities of dress do they not affect? What halls do they not crowd with nocturnal and untimely salutations? bowing low at every meeting with any greater person; conspicuous at no banquets, joined to no revellings, but exiles from the felicity of freedom and gladness — and all this for the sake of one year's fleeting joy. Do we hesitate to endure, in the peril of eternity, what the seeking of axes and rods sustains? and shall we delay to offer to the offended Lord a chastisement of food and dress, which the Gentiles inflict upon themselves with no one at all wounded? These are they of whom the Scripture makes mention: Woe to those who knit their transgressions together as it were with a long rope.

If you draw back from exomologesis, consider in your heart Gehenna, which exomologesis will extinguish for you; and first imagine the magnitude of the punishment, that you may not doubt about the adoption of the remedy. What do we reckon that treasure of eternal fire to be, when certain little vent-holes of it stir up such strokes of flames that the neighbouring cities either no longer exist, or expect the like for themselves day by day? The proudest mountains burst asunder with the fire teeming within; and — what proves to us the perpetuity of the judgement — though they burst asunder, though they be devoured, yet they are never brought to an end. Who will not reckon these chastisements, in the meantime, of the mountains as patterns of the threatening judgement? Who will not agree that such sparks are certain missiles and exercising darts of some great and inestimable hearth? Therefore, since you know that against Gehenna, after those first defences of the Lord's baptism, there is still in the second exomologesis a further refuge, why do you forsake your own salvation? why do you cease to set about what you know to heal you? Even the dumb and irrational souls recognize, in time, the medicines divinely allotted to them. The stag, pierced through by an arrow, that it may expel from the wound the iron and its irrevocable lingerings, knows that it must heal itself by dittany. The swallow, if it has blinded its young, knows how to give them eyes again from its own celandine. Shall the sinner, in restoring himself, knowingly pass by the exomologesis instituted by the Lord — that exomologesis which restored the Babylonian king to his kingdom? For long he had immolated repentance to the Lord, having wrought exomologesis by seven years of squalor, with his nails grown wild after the fashion of an eagle's and the neglect of his hair presenting a lion-like horror. O sorry treatment! Him whom men shuddered at, God received. But on the contrary the Egyptian commander, who, persecuting the people of God — once afflicted, long denied to its own Lord — rushed into battle, after so many proofs of the plagues, perished by the dividing of the sea, which to the people alone it was permitted to pass through, the waves rolling back. For he had cast away repentance and its ministry, exomologesis. Why should I say more of these two, as it were, planks of human salvation, caring rather for the business of the pen than for the office of my own conscience? For, sinner of all marks though I am, and born for nothing but repentance, I cannot easily keep silent about that of which even Adam himself — the head both of the human stock and of the offence against the Lord — restored by exomologesis to his own paradise, does not keep silent.