De Pudicitia

Modesty, the flower of character, the honour of bodies, the grace of the sexes, the integrity of the blood, the good faith of the family, the foundation of holiness, the prejudgement in favour of every good disposition — though rare, not easily made perfect, and scarcely ever lasting — will yet abide in the world to some degree, if Nature has laid the groundwork, if discipline has persuaded, if censure has held in check; since every good of the mind is either born, or trained, or constrained. But just as evils prevail the more — which is the way of the last times — so good can now neither be born, so corrupted are its seeds; nor be trained, so abandoned are its studies; nor be constrained, so disarmed are its laws. In short, the very virtue from which we begin has already so far fallen into disuse that modesty is now thought to be not the renouncing but the moderating of lusts, and a man is held chaste enough who has not been too chaste. But let the modesty of the world look to itself, along with the world itself: along with its own native gift, if it was being born; along with its own study, if it was being trained; along with its own servitude, if it was being constrained — except that it would be the more unhappy if it had stood firm only to be fruitless, having done its work not in the sight of God. I would rather have no good than an empty one. What profit is it to be what it profits not to be? The standing of our goods is now sinking; the principle of Christian modesty is being shaken — that modesty which draws everything from heaven: its nature through the laver of regeneration, its discipline through the instrument of preaching, its censure through the judgements of both Testaments, and which is constrained more steadfastly by the fear and the vow of eternal fire and of the kingdom. Against this could I not have held my peace? I hear that an edict too has been published, and a peremptory one at that. The Pontifex Maximus, that is, the bishop of bishops, proclaims: "I remit, to those who have discharged penance, the offences both of adultery and of fornication." O edict, to which cannot be subscribed the words GOOD DEED! And where will this liberality be posted up? On the very spot, I suppose: at the very doors of the lusts, beneath the very titles of the lusts. There must such penance be promulgated, where the very delinquency will be transacted; there must the pardon be read, into which men will enter with the hope of it. But this is read in the Church, and pronounced in the Church, and the Church is a virgin! Away, away with such a proclamation from the bride of Christ! She who is true, who is modest, who is holy, will be free even from the stain of the ears. She has none to whom she may make such a promise; and if she had, she would not promise it — since even God's earthly temple could sooner be called by the Lord a den of thieves than of adulterers and fornicators. There will therefore be here too a title against the Psychics, against the partnership which they once held with my own past opinion — wherefore they may the more cast this at me as a mark of fickleness. Never is the repudiation of a partnership a prejudgement of an offence. As though it were not easier to err with the many, when truth is loved by the few. Indeed, no useful change will disgrace me more than a harmful one would adorn me. I do not blush at an error which I have laid aside, because I rejoice to have laid it aside, because I recognize myself the better and the more modest. No one is ashamed of his own advance. Even knowledge in Christ has its ages, through which the Apostle too passed. "When I was a little child," he says, "I spoke as a little child, I understood as a little child; but when I became a man, I did away with the things that were a child's." So he turned aside from his former opinions, nor did he offend on that account, since he became an emulator not of paternal traditions but of Christian ones — wishing even that those should be cut off who were urging that circumcision be retained. And would that these men too, who lop off the pure and true integrity of the flesh — amputating not the topmost surface but the inmost likeness of modesty itself — when they promise pardon to adulterers and fornicators against the principal discipline of the Christian name, which the very world too so far attests that, whenever it would punish that modesty in our women, it would do so rather by defilement of the flesh than by torments, wishing to snatch away the thing which they prefer to life! But now this glory is being extinguished, and that by the very men whom it had so much the more steadfastly behoved to subscribe no pardon to stains of this kind, by how much the more, on that account, as often as they wish, they marry, lest they be forced to fall into adultery and fornication, "since 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 also afterwards indulge the crimes under the name of penance, whose remedies they provide beforehand by the right of repeated marrying? For the remedies will be idle, when the crimes are indulged, and the crimes will remain, if the remedies be idle. Thus on both sides they trifle, in their solicitude and their negligence — taking most vain precaution against those whom they spare, and most foolishly sparing those against whom they take precaution; when either no precaution ought to be taken where there is sparing, or no sparing where there is precaution. For they take precaution, as though they were unwilling that anything be admitted, but they indulge, as though they were willing that it be admitted; whereas, if they are unwilling that it be admitted, they ought not to indulge; if they are willing to indulge, they ought not to take precaution. For adultery and fornication will not be reckoned among the moderate and among the greatest offences, so that both should suit them — both the solicitude which takes precaution, and the security which indulges. But since they are such as hold the very summit of crimes, it does not admit both of being indulged as though moderate, and of being precautioned against as though the greatest. But with us even the greatest, or the highest, are thus precautioned against, since not even second marriages after the faith are we permitted to know — being, by their nuptial and dotal tablets, if it so happen, distinct from the work of adultery and fornication; and therefore, while they most harshly defame us, by the strictness of the Paraclete's discipline we set bigamists outside the door. The same threshold of the door we fix for adulterers and fornicators too, who shall pour forth the fasting tears of peace, and shall carry back from the Church nothing more than the publication of their disgrace.

"But God," they say, "is good and most good, and merciful and compassionate and most rich in mercy, which he prefers to every sacrifice, not so much accounting the death of the sinner as his repentance — the saviour of all men, and especially of the faithful. And so the sons of God too ought to be merciful and peacemakers, forgiving one another as Christ also forgave us, not judging, lest we be judged. For to his own Lord a man stands or falls: who are you, that you should judge another's servant? Forgive, and it shall be forgiven you." Such, and so great, are their futilities, by which they both flatter God and play the pander to themselves, effeminating rather than invigorating discipline; which we can beat back with arguments as many and as contrary, that may both probe the severity of God and provoke our own steadfastness. For although God is good by nature, yet he is also just. For according to the cause, 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. "For if they fast," he says, "I will not hear their entreaty." And again: "And as for you, do not worship for the people, and do not ask for these 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 yet earlier, the same who prefers mercy to sacrifice: "And as for you, do not worship for this people, and do not ask that they obtain mercy, and do not approach me for them, for I will surely not hear" — surely those who ask for mercy, surely those who from repentance weep and fast, and offer their affliction to God. For God is jealous, and is not mocked through the nose — namely, by the goodness of those who flatter him; and though he is patient, yet through Isaiah he threatens an end to patience: "I have held my peace; shall I also for ever hold my peace and endure? I have been quiet as one in travail; I will rise up and make it wither. For fire shall go forth before his face, and shall consume his enemies" — slaying not only the body, but also the souls, in Gehenna. But as to those who judge, the Lord himself shows in what way he threatens them. "For with what judgement you have judged, judgement shall be made concerning you." Thus he did not forbid to judge, but taught how. Hence too the Apostle judges, and that in a case of fornication, that such a man should be handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh — rebuking also that the brethren were not being judged before the saints. For adding, he says, "What is it to me to judge those who are without? But you forgive, that it may be forgiven you by God." The offences are cleansed which one has committed against a brother, not against God. In short, in our prayer we profess that we shall forgive our debtors. But it is not fitting, beyond this, from the authority of the Scriptures, to stretch out a contentious rope of this kind by alternate pulls in opposite directions, so that the one should seem to tighten the reins of discipline, the other to loosen them, as though they were uncertain — that the one should prostrate the support of penitence through leniency, the other deny it through austerity. Rather, the authority of Scripture will stand within its own limits, without opposition on either side. And the support of penitence is determined by its own conditions, without indiscriminate concession; and the very causes of it are first distinguished, without confused proposition. We call offences the causes of penitence. These we divide into two issues. Some will be remissible, others irremissible. According to which 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 premised certain disputations of the Scriptures which here retain, there remit, offences. But John too will teach: "If anyone knows his brother to be committing a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and life shall be given him; because he sins not unto death" — this will be remissible. "There is a sin unto death; not for that do I say that one should ask" — this will be irremissible. Thus, where there is the force of asking, there too is that of remission; where there is not even of asking, there likewise is not even of remission. According to this difference of offences, the condition of penitence too is distinguished. The one will be such as can obtain pardon, namely in a remissible offence; the other such as can in no way obtain it, namely in an irremissible offence. And it remains to examine specifically concerning the standing of adultery and fornication, into which part of offences they ought to be reduced.

But first I will dispose of an answer that intervenes from the other side, against that kind of penitence which we are at this very moment defining to be without pardon. "For if," they say, "some penitence lacks pardon, then it is not to be undergone by you at all. For nothing ought to be done in vain. But penitence will be done in vain, if it lacks pardon. Now all penitence ought to be done. Therefore let all penitence obtain pardon, lest it be done in vain — since it will not be to be done, if it be done in vain. But it is done in vain, if it shall lack pardon." Deservedly do they so object, since they have usurped into their own power the fruit also of this penitence — that is, pardon. For as far as concerns those from whom one obtains human peace — but as far as concerns us, who remember that the Lord alone remits offences, and surely mortal ones, it will not be done in vain. For, being remitted to the Lord and thereby prostrate before him, the penitent will the more work out pardon for this very reason: that he begs it of God alone, that he does not believe human peace sufficient for his offence, that he prefers to blush before the Church rather than to communicate with it. For he stands before her doors, and by the example of his own brand admonishes the rest, and calls to himself too the tears of the brethren, and returns the richer in trade — having gained, namely, compassion rather than communion. And if here he does not reap peace, with the Lord he sows it. He does not lose, but prepares his fruit. He will not be without profit, if he be not without duty. Thus neither is penitence of this kind in vain, nor is discipline of this kind hard. Both honour God. The one, by flattering itself in nothing, will the more easily obtain; the other, by assuming nothing to itself, will the more fully assist.

We can therefore, the distinction of penitence being committed to memory, now return to the reckoning of the offences themselves — whether these are such as can obtain pardon from men. In the first place, that we name "adultery" and "fornication," usage demands. Faith too has a familiarity with certain names. So in every little work we keep to usage. But if I should say "adultery" and "defilement," it will be one indictment of the contaminated flesh. For it makes no difference whether one assaults another's wife or a widow, provided she is not his own woman; just as it makes no difference as to places, whether modesty be slaughtered in bedchambers or on towers. Every homicide, even outside the wood, is robbery. So too, wherever and on whomever a man defiles and corrupts himself who uses anything otherwise than by marriage. Therefore with us even secret unions — that is, those not first professed before the Church — run the risk of being judged next door to adultery and fornication. Nor let those that are knit together elude the charge under the pretext of matrimony. But the remaining furies of lust, impious both upon bodies and upon the sexes beyond the laws of Nature, we remove not only from the threshold, but from every shelter of the Church, because they are not offences, but monstrosities.

Therefore, of adultery — which is also a matter of fornication — according to the work of the crime, how great a wickedness it should be esteemed, the first law of God is at hand. For after the forbidden superstition of strange gods and the fabrication of the idols themselves, after the veneration of the sabbath enjoined, after the religious duty toward parents commanded as second from God, he laid down no other precept in establishing and admonishing such titles than, "You shall not commit adultery." For after spiritual chastity and holiness, bodily integrity followed. And this too, therefore, he fortified, by at once forbidding its enemy, adultery. What kind of offence it is, now understand, whose restraint he ordained next after idolatry. Nothing is far distant from the first that comes second to it. Nothing is so near the first as the second. What comes from the first is in a manner a second first. Therefore adultery is akin to idolatry. For idolatry too, often upbraided to the people under the name of adultery and fornication, will be joined with it by lot, as also by sequence; it will cohere with it in damnation too, as also in arrangement. So much the more, premising "You shall not commit adultery," does he add, "You shall not kill." He surely honoured adultery, which he sets before homicide — surely in the very forefront of the most holy law, in the first titles of the heavenly edict, sealed surely with the proscription of the principal offences. From the place you may discern the measure, from the order the standing, from the bordering the desert of each. There is a dignity even of evil, in that it is set in the highest or in the midst of the worst. I behold a certain pomp and platform of adultery: on this side the leadership of preceding idolatry, on that the train of following homicide. Between the two most eminent peaks of crimes it has without doubt taken its worthy seat, and through the midst of them, like a vacant place, it has filled it up with equal authority of crime. Who shall tear it away, enclosed within such sides, propped about with such ribs, from the body of those that cohere — from the bond of neighbouring crimes, from the embrace of kindred wickednesses — so as to set it alone apart for the fruit of penitence? Will not idolatry on this side, homicide on that, detain it, and, if there be any voice, cry out, "This is our wedge, this our framework? From idolatry we take our measure; by its distinguishing we are joined; to it, leaping forth from the midst, we are united. The divine Scripture has incorporated us; the very letters are our glues; now not even it can be without us. I, idolatry indeed, very often supply the occasion of adultery. My groves know it, and my mountains, and the living waters, and the very temples in the cities, how much we procure for the overthrowing of modesty. I, homicide too, sometimes work out adultery. To pass over tragedies, the poisoners know today, the magicians know, how many seductions I avenge, how many rivalries I defend, how many guards, how many informers, how many accomplices I make away with. The midwives too know how many adulterous conceptions are slaughtered. Even among Christians adultery is not without us. There is idolatry, where the business of the unclean spirit is; there is homicide, where a man, when he is defiled, is slain." Therefore either the supports of penitence will not be fitting for them either, or even for us. Either we detain it, or we follow it. The very facts say so. If the facts fail of voice, the idolater stands by, the homicide stands by, and in the midst of them stands the adulterer too. Equally, in the duty of penitence, they sit in sackcloth and shudder in ashes, they groan with the same weeping, they sue with the same prayers, they entreat on the same knees, they invoke the same Mother. What are you doing, most soft and most humane discipline? Either you must be this to all of them — "for blessed are the peacemakers" — or, if not to all, you must be ours. Do you indeed damn once for all the idolater and the homicide, but except the adulterer from the midst — the successor of the idolater, the predecessor of the homicide, the colleague of both? It is respect of persons: you have left behind the more pitiable penitents.

Plainly, if you can show from what patronages of heavenly examples and precepts you fling open the door of penitence to adultery alone, and in it to fornication too, our engagement will now be fought to this line. Yet it is necessary that I prescribe to you a form, lest you put forth your hand to the old things, lest you look back. "For the old things have passed away," according to Isaiah, "and the renewing is now renewed," according to Jeremiah; and, "forgetting the things behind, we reach forth to the things before," according to the Apostle; and, "the law and the prophets were until John," according to the Lord. For although we did at this very moment begin from the law in demonstrating adultery, it was deservedly from that standing 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 are cast off, not of disciplines. Liberty in Christ has done no injury to innocence. There remains entire the law of piety, of holiness, of humanity, of truth, of chastity, of justice, of mercy, of benevolence, of modesty. In which law, "Blessed is the man who shall meditate day and night." Of which the same David again: "The law of the Lord is unblameable, converting souls; the ordinances of the Lord are right, delighting the heart; the precept of the Lord shines from afar, enlightening the eyes." So too the Apostle: "Therefore the law indeed is holy, and the precept holy and most good" — surely, "You shall not commit adultery." But also above: "Do we then make void the law through faith? Far from it; rather we establish the law" — namely in those things which now too in the New Testament are forbidden, prohibited even by a more abundant precept. For "You shall not commit adultery," "He who has looked to lust has already committed adultery in his heart"; and for "You shall not kill," "He who shall say to his brother, Racha, shall be guilty of Gehenna." Inquire whether the law against adultery is preserved, to which there has been added the law against coveting. But for the rest, if any examples applaud you in your bosom, they will not be set against this discipline which we defend. For in vain has the law been built up over them, condemning the very origins of offences — that is, lusts and wishes — no less than deeds, if for that reason pardon is to be granted to adultery today, because it was once granted. To what profit is a fuller discipline today held in restraint, unless that, by some greater pandering of yours perchance, indulgence may be shown? You will therefore grant pardon also to the idolater and to every apostate, because we find the very people too, so often guilty of these things, so often afterward restored. You will communicate also with the homicide, because Ahab too blotted out the blood of Naboth by entreaty, and David purged the slaughter of Uriah, together with the adultery that was its cause, by confession. Now you will pardon incests too, on account of Lot, and fornications joined with incest, on account of Judah, and shameful marriages from prostitution, on account of Hosea, and not only frequented ones, but even several at once, on account of our fathers. For surely it is fitting that grace be made equal now too with regard to all that was formerly indulged, if from some ancient example pardon for adultery is claimed. We too indeed have examples of the same antiquity for our view, not of an offence indulged, but even of the judgement of fornication presented at once. And surely it suffices that so great a number, twenty-four thousand of the people fornicating after the daughters of Midian, fell by one plague. But I prefer to draw down discipline, to the glory of Christ, from Christ. Let the former times have had every kind of unchastity — let them even have had, if the Psychics will, the power of it. Let the flesh have made sport before Christ; nay, let it have perished before it was sought out by its own 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 lusting after what it had seen beautiful, and looking to lower things, and retaining from the fig-leaves an itching. There clung to it everywhere the poison of lust (from the milk they have these defilements), which not even the waters yet, fitted for that, had 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, which should approach the tree not of incontinence but of endurance, which should taste therefrom not anything sweet but anything bitter, which should pertain not to the lower world but to heaven, which should be girt about not with the foliage of wantonness but with the flowers of holiness, which should commit its cleanness to the waters — thereafter the flesh, whatever in Christ dissolved its remaining former defilements, is now another thing; a new thing emerges, now not from the mire of seed, not from the dung of lust, but from pure water and a clean Spirit. Why therefore do you excuse it from the old time? It was not called the body of Christ, not the members of Christ, not the temple of God, when it obtained pardon for adultery. So if from the time when it changed its standing, and, baptized into Christ, put on Christ, and was redeemed at a great price — namely, by the blood of the Lord and the Lamb — you hold some example, or precept, or form, or sentence of fornication and adultery indulged or to be indulged, you have also from us a definition of the time from which the age of the question is to be reckoned.

From the parables you may begin, where the sheep is sought out by its Lord and carried back upon his shoulders. Let the very paintings of your chalices come forward, if even in them the interpretation of that beast will shine through — whether it points to the restoration of a Christian or of a heathen sinner. For we prescribe, from the discipline of nature, from the law of ear and tongue, from the soundness of the mind, that those things are always answered which are provoked — that is, in answer to those things which provoke. There provoked, as I suppose, the fact that the Pharisees, indignant, were muttering that the Lord admitted publicans and heathen sinners and shared food with them. To this, when the Lord had figured the restoration of the lost beast, to whom else must we believe him to have configured it than to the lost heathen, of whom the matter was — not the Christian, who as yet was no one? Or how can it be that the Lord, like a quibbler of an answer, omitting the present case which he ought to have parried, should labour about a future one? "But the sheep is properly the Christian, and the Lord's flock is the people of the Church, and the good shepherd is Christ; and therefore the Christian is to be understood in the sheep, who has strayed from the flock of the Church." Therefore you will have it that the Lord answered nothing to the muttering of the Pharisees, but to your own presumption. And yet you will have to vindicate it so as to deny that it suits the heathen, what you esteem 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, so long as he strays? Who is more sought out by God than the heathen, when he is recalled by Christ? In short, this order comes first in the heathen; since Christians are not made from heathens otherwise than by being first lost, and sought out by God, and brought back by Christ. So this order too ought to be kept, that we interpret some such thing in those in whom it is first. But you, I suppose, would have this: that he should have made the sheep lost not from the flock, but from the chest or the cupboard. Thus, even though he calls the remaining number of the heathen "just," he does not thereby show them to be Christians — since, dealing with the Jews, and at this very moment confounding them, because they were indignant at the hope of the heathen, but that he might express, against the envy of the Pharisees, his own grace and benevolence even toward one heathen, he set before them the salvation of one sinner from penitence rather than theirs from justice. Or were not the Jews "just," and such as had no need of penitence, having the helms of discipline and the instruments of fear, the law and the prophets? He set them therefore in the parable, even if not as they were, but as they ought to have been, that they might be the more confounded, hearing that penitence was necessary for others, and not for themselves. Likewise the parable of the drachma, as provoked from the same matter, we equally interpret of the heathen — even though it is lost in the house, as it were in the Church, even though it is found by the light of a lamp, as it were by 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 now feigned of a Christian sinner, after the loss of the faith, a repeated losing of them and a restoration would be noted. I will now for a little descend from this footing, that I may the more commend it even by descending, since even thus I shall have overthrown the presumption of the other party. I grant that a Christian, already a sinner, is portended in either parable; yet not for that reason is he to be affirmed such as can be restored through penitence from the deed of adultery and fornication. For although he is said to have perished, there will still be room to consider the kind of his perishing, since the sheep perished not by dying but by straying, and the drachma not by being destroyed but by lying hid. Thus what is safe may be said to have perished. There perishes, therefore, even the faithful man who has slipped into the spectacle of the charioteer's frenzy, and the gladiator's gore, and the foulness of the stage, and the vanity of the wrestling-school; or if for games, for banquets of a worldly solemnity, he has applied to the office, to the ministry, some arts of curiosity belonging to another's idolatry; if he has struck against a word of ambiguous denial or of blasphemy. For some such thing he has been put outside the flock; or even, perchance, by anger, swelling, jealousy — which, in short, often happens — by disdain of chastisement, he has broken away. He ought to be sought and recalled. What can be recovered does not perish, unless it has persevered outside. Rightly will you interpret the parable, recalling a sinner still living. But the adulterer and fornicator — who has not pronounced him dead the instant the deed is admitted? With what face will you restore the dead man to the flock, from the authority of that parable which recalls a beast not dead? In short, if you remember the prophets, when the shepherds are rebuked, it is, I think, the voice of Ezekiel: "Shepherds, behold, you devour the milk and clothe yourselves with the wool; what was strong you have killed, what was weak you have not cured, what was broken you have not bound up, what was driven away you have not turned back, what perished you have not sought out." Does he upbraid them also concerning the dead, that they have not taken care to restore even that to the flock? Plainly he urges that they have made the sheep perish and be eaten by the beasts of the field. But neither can they perish into death nor be eaten, if they are left alone. Granted that, after the example of the drachma too, even within the house of God, the Church, there may be some offences moderate according to the very measure and weight of the drachma — offences which, lurking there, and soon there found, may at once there be transacted with the joy of amendment — yet not such that those lost into death and eaten should be taken up again. But of adultery and fornication there is not a drachma, but a talent, for the seeking out of which there is need not of the lamp's point of light, but of the lance of the whole sun. As soon as it appears, at once the man is expelled from the Church, nor does he remain there, nor confer joy upon the Church that finds him, but mourning; nor call forth the congratulation of the neighbour communities, but the sorrowing of the nearest brotherhoods. Therefore, this our interpretation being joined with theirs, the arguments both of the sheep and of the drachma will look the more toward the heathen, by how much they cannot befit the Christian in that offence on account of which they are forced toward the Christian by the other party.

But indeed the same outcome deceives most interpreters of parables which very often occurs in eyeing purples in garments. When you have thought you rightly reconciled the tempering of the colours, and believed you had skilfully enlivened their comparisons among themselves, presently, both bodies being brought to the light and expressed, the diversity, exposed, vomits forth all your error. By the same fog, therefore, certain men, colour-matching the figures for the moment in the parable also of the two sons, swerve from the true light of that comparison which the matter of the parable holds before us as a pretext. For they place two peoples in the two sons: the Jewish, the elder; the Christian, the younger. Nor can they thence dispose the Christian sinner in the younger son, as one who shall obtain pardon, unless in the elder they express the Jewish. Now if I shall have shown the Jewish to fall short of the comparison of the elder son, consequently neither will the Christian be admitted from the configuration of the younger son. For although the Jew may be called both son and elder, because he is prior in adoption — although he envies the Christian even the reconciliation of God the Father, which the opposite party especially carps at — yet it will not be the Jew's word to the Father: "Behold, so many years do I serve you, and I have never passed by your precept." For when is the Jew not a transgressor of the law, hearing with the ear and not hearing, holding in hatred the one who exposes in the gates, and with scorn the holy word? Likewise it will not be the Father's voice to the Jew: "You are ever with me, and all that is mine is yours." For the Jews are pronounced apostate sons — begotten indeed and raised on high, but who have not reckoned with the Lord, and who have forsaken the Lord, and provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel. Everything plainly we say was conceded to the Jew, from whom even the more agreeable condition, whatever was snatched from his gullet, was taken away — not to speak of the very land of the fatherly promise. And indeed no less today does the Jew than the younger son, having squandered God's substance, beg in a strange country, serving until now its princes — that is, of this world. The Christians therefore seek another for their own brother; for the parable does not receive the Jew. Much more aptly 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 each people, designated from the womb of Rebecca, permitted the exchange. Save that the conclusion too would resist it. For it will be fitting that the Christian rejoice and not grieve over the restoration of the Jew, since our whole hope is joined with the remaining expectation of Israel. Thus, even if certain points favour, the equation of the examples is destroyed by others savouring the contrary. Although, even if all things could answer to the mirror, there is one chief peril of interpretations: that the felicity of the comparisons be not tempered to any other end than that to which the matter of each parable has consigned it. For we remember that even actors, when they accommodate allegorical gestures to songs, express things far other than the present fable and scene and person — and yet most congruously. But let that extraordinary ingenuity look to itself: it is nothing to the point of "Andromache." So too the heretics assign the same parables whither they will, not, where they ought, most aptly exclude them. Why "most aptly"? Because from the beginning, according to the occasions of the parables, they have feigned the very matters of their doctrines. They had leisure, namely, being loosed from the rule of truth, to seek out and compose those things whose parables they seem to be.

But we, because we do not invent matters from parables, but interpret parables from matters, do not greatly labour to twist everything in the exposition, provided we beware of whatever is contrary. Why a hundred sheep? And why, pray, ten drachmas? And what is that besom? It was necessary that one who wished to express the salvation of one sinner as most welcome to God should name some quantity of number, of which he might describe one indeed to have perished; it was necessary that the bearing of one seeking a drachma in a house should be accommodated to the aid both of the besom and of the lamp. For curiosities of this kind both make certain things suspect, and for the most part, by the subtlety of forced expositions, lead away from the truth. But there are things which are set down even simply, for the building and arranging and weaving of the parable, that they may be carried thither for which the example is procured. And the two sons too will surely look thither whither both the drachma and the sheep. For with whom they cohere, they have the same cause, and surely the same muttering of the Pharisees concerning the dealing of the Lord with heathens. Or, if anyone doubts that the publicans among the Jews were heathens — the Jews having been seized long since by the hand of Pompey and Lucullus — let him read Deuteronomy: "There shall be no tribute-payer from the sons of Israel." Nor would the name of the publicans be so execrable with the Lord, were it not foreign — they being men who sold the very passage of heaven and earth and sea. But when he adjoins "sinners" to "publicans," he does not at once show Jews, though some could have been such. Rather, by setting them equally, he distinguished one race of heathens: some sinners by office, that is, publicans; others by nature, that is, not publicans. For the rest, he would not be marked as sharing food with Jews, but with heathens, whose table the Jewish discipline drives away. Now concerning the prodigal son, this is first to be considered, as more useful. For the equation of examples will not be admitted, however most congruous in setting, if it shall have been most hurtful to salvation. But we see the whole standing of salvation, established in the tenor of discipline, subverted by that interpretation which is affected from the other side. For if the Christian is he who, having received from God the Father a substance — surely of baptism, surely of the Holy Spirit, and thence of eternal hope — and having wandered far from the Father, squanders it by living after the heathen manner; if, stripped of the goods of the mind, he has even handed over his service to the prince of this world (to whom else but the devil?); and, set by him over the feeding of swine — that is, the tending of unclean spirits — has come to himself again to return to the Father: then now not adulterers and fornicators, but idolaters and blasphemers and deniers, and every kind of apostate, will satisfy the Father by this parable; and the whole substance of the sacrament is most truly thus shattered. For who will fear to squander what he will afterward recover? Who will care to keep for ever what he cannot for ever lose? Security in sin is also the lust for it. The apostate therefore will recover his former garment, the vesture of the Holy Spirit, and again the ring, the seal of the laver; and again will Christ be slain for him, and he will recline on that couch from which they who are clad unworthily are wont to be taken by the torturers and cast into the darkness — much more the stripped. It is more, therefore, if it is not even expedient that the order of the prodigal son suit the Christian. But if neither does the image of the son entirely concur with the Jew, the interpretation will be steered simply to the Lord's purpose. The Lord had come, surely, that he might save what had perished — a physician more necessary to the languishing than to the sound. This he both figured in parables, and preached in sentences. Who of men perishes, who totters from health, but he who knows not the Lord? Who is safe and sound, but he who knows the Lord? These two kinds of brethren of one race this parable too will mark. See whether the heathen has a substance in God the Father — of reckoning, and of wisdom, and of a natural recognition toward God — through which the Apostle too notes that, in the wisdom of God, the world by its wisdom did not know God, which surely it had received from God. This therefore he squandered, cast far from the Lord by his ways, among the errors and enticements and lusts of the world, where, compelled by hunger for truth, he handed himself over to the prince of this age. He set him over the swine — that he might feed that herd familiar to the demons — where neither was he possessed of vital food, and at the same time saw others abounding, in the divine work, with heavenly bread. He remembers his Father, God; having made satisfaction, he returns; he receives his former garment — namely that standing which Adam by transgression had lost. The ring too he received then for the first time, with which, being questioned, he seals the compact of faith; and so thereafter he feeds upon the richness of the Lord's body — namely the Eucharist. This will be the prodigal son, who was never before frugal, who was at once prodigal, because he was not at once a Christian. Him too the Pharisees grieved over, as he returned from the world to the Father's embrace, among publicans and sinners. And therefore the envy of the elder brother was accommodated to this alone — not because the Jews were innocent and obedient to God, but because they envied salvation to the nations — those, plainly, who ought always to have been with the Father. And surely the Jew groans at the first vocation of the Christian, not at his second restoration. For the former shines even upon the heathen; but the latter, which is transacted in the churches, is not even known to the Jews. I think I have rendered interpretations more accommodated both to the matter of the parables, and to the congruity of things, and to the safeguarding of disciplines. But for the rest, if the opposite party is eager to configure the sheep and the drachma and the riot of the son to the Christian sinner, that they may grant adultery and fornication by penitence, then either the other capital offences too must equally be conceded, or their equals, adultery and fornication, must be kept inconcessible. But it is more that it is not lawful to argue anything else beyond that of which the matter was. In short, if it were lawful to transfer the parables elsewhere, we should rather direct their hope toward martyrdom, which alone, the whole substance being squandered, will be able to restore the son; and the drachma found among all things, though in dung, it will proclaim with joy; and the sheep, fugitive through every rough and broken place, it will carry back into the flock upon the very shoulders of the Lord. But we prefer in the Scriptures to know too little, if it so happen, rather than the contrary. Accordingly we ought to keep the Lord's sense and precept. The transgression is no lighter in interpretation than in conduct.

The yoke being therefore shaken off, of discoursing these parables of the heathen, and the necessity being once for all discerned or accepted of not interpreting otherwise than the matter of the proposal admits, they now contend that the proclamation of penitence does not even befit the heathen, whose offences are not liable to it — being imputable, namely, to ignorance, which Nature alone makes guilty before God. Further, that neither do remedies savour to those to whom the very perils savour not; but that the principle of penitence holds there where one offends with consciousness and with will, where both the guilt savours and the grace; that he mourns, he rolls himself, who knows both what he has lost and what he shall recover, if he immolates penitence to God — God surely offering it rather to sons than to strangers. Did Jonah then for this reason think penitence not necessary for the heathen Ninevites, when he quibbled in the office of preaching? Or did he rather, foreseeing the mercy of God poured out even upon strangers, fear, as though it would destroy his proclamation? And to such a degree, on account of a profane city, not yet possessed of God, still offending through ignorance, did the prophet almost perish? Save that he suffered it as an example of the Lord's passion, which was to redeem the penitent heathen too. Well too that John, levelling the ways of the Lord, was a preacher of penitence no less to soldiers and publicans than to the sons of Abraham. The Lord himself presumed penitence for the Sidonians and Tyrians, had they seen the proofs of his mighty works. But I, for my part, will contend that it befits natural sinners rather than voluntary ones. For he will the more deserve its fruit who has not yet used it than he who has already abused it; and the first remedies will savour more than the worn-out ones. Doubtless the Lord is kind to the ungrateful rather than to the ignorant, and is merciful to the reprobate sooner than to the not-yet-proved — that he may not be more angry at the contumelies done to his clemency than caressed by them, and may not more freely impart it to strangers than where he has lost it among sons; since he has so adopted the nations, while the Jews make sport of his patience. But the Psychics will have it thus: that God, the just judge, should prefer the penitence of that sinner to his death — God, who preferred death to penitence! And if it is so, by sinning we earn merit. Come now, you rope-dancer of modesty and chastity and all sanctity about the sex, who tread the thinnest thread of such a discipline, hanging with foot upon the trackless heights of truth, balancing the flesh by the spirit, moderating the soul by faith, tempering the eye by fear — why are you wholly upon the rope? Go on, by all means, if you can, if you will, while you are so secure and as it were on solid ground. For if any wavering of the flesh, calling-away of the mind, straying of the eye, has dashed you from the tenor, "God is good." To his own, not to the heathen, does he hold out his bosom; a second penitence will receive you; you will again, from an adulterer, be a Christian. This you tell me, most kindly interpreter of God! But I would yield to you, if the Scripture of "the Shepherd," which alone loves adulterers, had deserved to be inserted in the divine instrument; if it were not judged by every council of the churches — even of your own — among the apocryphal and false, itself an adulteress, and thence the patroness of its associates; from which you take your other initiations too; for which, perchance, that Shepherd will play the patron whom you paint upon your chalice — himself a prostituter of the Christian sacrament, deservedly both an idol of drunkenness and a refuge for the adultery that is to follow after the cup, of which you libate nothing more gladly than the sheep of the second penitence. But I drink in the Scriptures of that Shepherd who cannot be broken. Him John at once offers me, with the laver and the office of penitence, saying, "Bring forth fruits worthy of penitence, and do not say, We have Abraham for our father" (lest, namely, they should again take up the blandishments of delinquency from the grace of the fathers): "for God is able from these stones to raise up sons to Abraham." So he too follows us, that those who hitherto offend 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 the ceasing of the offence. Thus the ceasing of the offence is the root of pardon, that pardon may be the fruit of penitence.

Thereafter, as far as pertains to the Gospel, the question of the parables has now been discussed. But if the Lord did by deeds too publish anything of the kind on behalf of sinners — as when he permitted even the touch of his own body to the sinful woman washing his feet with tears and wiping them with her hair and inaugurating his burial with ointment; as when to the Samaritan woman, now in her sixth marriage, not an adulteress but a prostitute, he showed even — what he does easily to no one — who he was — nothing is from this conferred upon our adversaries, even though he had already granted to Christians pardon of offences. 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, we define this to prejudge nothing against us, if pardon was conferred upon sinners, even Jewish ones. For the Christian discipline is reckoned from the renewing of the Testament, 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 found; no one a Christian before Christ was taken back to heaven; no one holy before the Holy Spirit was presented from heaven, the determiner of that very discipline.

Therefore let these men, who have received another Paraclete in the apostles and through the apostles — whom, not having acknowledged him even in their own prophets, they no longer possess even in the apostles — come now, let them teach even from the apostolic instrument that the stains of the flesh besprinkled after baptism can be washed away by penitence. Do we not even in the apostles salute the form of the old law as to a demonstration of how great adultery is, lest perchance it be esteemed gentler in the novelty of the disciplines than in their antiquity? When first the Gospel thundered and shook the old things, so that it was disputed concerning the standing of the law, whether or not it was to be retained, the apostles send forth this first rule, on the authority of the Holy Spirit, to those who had begun to be chosen out from the nations: "It has seemed good," they say, "to the Holy Spirit and to us, to lay no further weight upon you than of those things from which it is necessary to abstain — from sacrifices, and from fornications, and from blood; from which by observing you do rightly, the Holy Spirit conveying you." It suffices that here too the place of its honour has been preserved to adultery and fornication, between idolatry and homicide. For the prohibition of blood we shall understand much more of human blood. Now, of what kind do the apostles wish those crimes to seem, which alone they excerpt for observance from the old law, which alone they prescribe as necessarily to be abstained from? Not that they permit others, but that they set these alone before us, as surely not remissible, who for the heathen's sake made the other burdens of the law remissible. Why then do they excuse our neck from so great a yoke, unless that they may always impose upon us these abridgements of discipline? Why do they indulge us so many bonds, unless that they may perpetually bind us to the more necessary? They loosed us from many things, that we might be obligated to observe the more harmful. The matter was transacted by compensation. We have gained much, that we might render some things. But the compensation is not revocable, since it would be revoked by the repetition — surely of adultery and of blood and of idolatry. For now the whole law will be resumed, if the condition of pardon be loosed. But the Holy Spirit did not lightly covenant with us — nay, he covenanted even of his own accord, wherefore the more to be honoured. His engagement no one will dissolve but the ungrateful. Now neither will he receive again what he has remitted, nor remit what he has retained. The standing of the last Testament is ever unchangeable; and surely the recitation of the decree, and that counsel, will cease only with the world. He has sufficiently denied pardon to those whose custody he has chosen; he has claimed what he has not in like manner conceded. Hence it is that peace is rendered by the churches neither to idolatry nor to blood. That the apostles fell away from this their definition, I think, may not lawfully be believed; or, if certain men can believe it, they will have to prove it.

We know plainly here too their suspicions. For in truth they suspect that the Apostle Paul, in the second to the Corinthians, gave pardon to that same fornicator whom in the first he had pronounced should be handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh — the impious heir of his father's marriage-bed — as though he had even afterward turned his pen, writing: "But if anyone has caused grief, he has not grieved me, but in part, that I may not burden you all. Sufficient is such a rebuke as is given by many; so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, lest perchance such a one be devoured by overmuch grief. Wherefore I beseech you that you confirm your love toward him. For to this end also I wrote, that I might know your proof, whether in all things you are obedient to me. But to whomever you forgive anything, I also. For even I, if I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven it in the person of Christ, that we be not defrauded by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his devices." What here is understood of the fornicator, what of the defiler of the paternal couch, what of the Christian who has outstripped the impudence of the heathen — when surely he would have absolved by a special pardon him whom he had damned with a special anger? More obscurely does he show mercy than he is indignant. He is more open in austerity than in leniency. And yet anger is more easily oblique than indulgence. The sadder things rather hang back than the more joyful. It was, namely, concerning a moderate indulgence that the question was — which, if perchance it were now estimated, since not even the greatest things are wont to be granted without proclamation, so far is it from being granted without signification. And do you indeed, leading the penitence of the adulterer, to entreat the brotherhood, into the Church — clad in haircloth and besprinkled with ashes, composed with disgrace and horror — prostrate him in the midst, before the widows, before the presbyters, invading the tears of all, licking the footprints of all, clasping the knees of all? And, upon this exit of the man, do you, good shepherd and blessed pope, harangue with all the enticements of mercy you can, and in the parable of the sheep seek your goats? Lest your sheep again leap forth from the flock (as though it were now lawful, after that, which was not lawful even once), do you fill the rest too with fear, even while at this very moment you indulge? But shall the Apostle have so abjectly forgiven a wicked lust of fornication laden with incest, that he did not exact of him even at least this legal garb of penitence, which you ought to have learned from himself? — that he threatened nothing of the future, addressed nothing of the rest? Nay, rather, he even further beseeches that they confirm their love toward him — as one making satisfaction, not as one forgiving. And yet I hear "love," not "communion." Which also to the Thessalonians: "But if anyone obeys not our word by the epistle, note that man, and do not mix with him, that he may be ashamed; not counting him as an enemy, but reproving him as a brother." So far could he have said even to the fornicator that "love" alone was conceded, and not communion too; but to the incestuous man, not even love — him, namely, whom he had ordered to be taken away from the midst of them, much more surely from the heart. But he feared that they might be defrauded by Satan as to the loss of that person whom he himself had cast to Satan; or that he might be devoured by abundance of grief whom he had assigned to the destruction of the flesh. Here now they interpret the destruction of the flesh as a duty of penitence — that he might seem, by exterminating the flesh through fastings and filth and all neglect and the studied work of evil treatment, to make sufficient satisfaction to God; so that from this they argue that the fornicator — nay, that incestuous man — was handed over by the Apostle not to the perdition of Satan, but to amendment; as though he would afterward obtain pardon on account of the destruction — that is, the affliction — of the flesh, and therefore did obtain it. Plainly the same Apostle handed over Hymenaeus and Alexander to Satan, that they might be amended not to blaspheme, as he writes to his own Timothy. But he himself too says that there was given to him a stake, an angel of Satan, by whom he should be buffeted, lest he exalt himself. If they touch on this too, that we should understand them handed over to Satan by him for amendment, not for perdition — what likeness is there between blasphemy and incest and a soul untouched by these, nay, lifted up from no other source than from the highest sanctity and from all innocence, which in the Apostle was checked by buffetings, if so it was, through the pain (as they say) of the ear or of the head? But incest and blasphemy deserved to hand over whole men into the possession of Satan himself, not of his angel. For this too makes a difference — nay, to this it most refers — that we read those handed over by the Apostle to Satan, but to the Apostle an angel given of Satan. Finally, when Paul entreats the Lord, what does he hear? "My grace is sufficient for you, for strength is made perfect in weakness." This they who are delivered to Satan cannot hear. But if the crime of Hymenaeus and Alexander is irremissible both in this age and in the future — namely blasphemy — surely the Apostle would not, against the Lord's limit, under hope of pardon, have given to Satan men already plunged from faith into blasphemy. Whence too he pronounced them shipwrecked as to faith, no longer having the solace of the ship of the Church. For pardon is denied to those who have driven from faith into blasphemy. But the heathen and the heretics daily emerge from blasphemy. But even though he said, "I have handed them over to Satan that they might receive discipline not to blaspheme," he said it of the rest, who, those being handed over to Satan — that is, cast outside the Church — were to be taught that blasphemy was not to be committed. So therefore he handed over the incestuous fornicator to Satan, not for amendment but for perdition — to whom he had now passed over, by offending beyond the heathen — that they might learn that fornication was not to be committed. In short, "to the destruction," he says, "of the flesh," not to its torment — damning the very substance through which he had fallen, which thereafter had now perished, baptism being lost — "that the spirit," he says, "may be safe in the day of the Lord." For this too may be asked, whether the spirit of the man himself shall be safe. Shall the spirit then be safe, polluted by so great a wickedness, his flesh destroyed for this very thing, that it may be safe in punishment? Then the contrary interpretation will reckon a punishment without the flesh, if we lose the resurrection of the flesh. It remains, therefore, that he called "spirit" that which in the Church is reckoned safe — that is, to be kept entire in the day of the Lord from the contagion of uncleannesses, the incestuous fornicator being cast out. Since he subjoins, "Know you not that a little leaven makes the whole lump distasteful?" And yet the incestuous fornication was not a little, but a great, leaven.

And these things being thus discussed, which had intervened, I return to the second to the Corinthians, that I may prove that saying of the Apostle too — "Sufficient to such a man is this rebuke which is by many" — not to suit the person of the fornicator. For if he had pronounced him to be handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, surely he had damned him rather than rebuked him. There was therefore another to whom he wished a rebuke to suffice; since the fornicator had carried back from his sentence not a rebuke, but a damnation. For this very thing too I offer you to examine — whether in the first epistle there were also others who had grieved the Apostle by acting unseemly, and who were grieved by him, carrying back a rebuke according to the sense of the second epistle — from whom, in it, someone could have obtained pardon. But let us mark that the whole first epistle was written, so to speak, not with ink, but with gall — swelling, indignant, scornful, threatening, invidious — and figured throughout, in each cause, as against certain authors of them. For so had the schisms and emulations and dissensions and presumptions and elations and contentions demanded it, that they should both be loaded with invidious reproach, and beaten back with correction, and filed down from their pride, and deterred by austerity. And of what sort is the goad of humility's invidious reproach? "I thank God that I baptized none of you, except Crispus and Gaius, lest any should say that I baptized in my own name. For I judged not that I knew anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." And, "I think that God has chosen us apostles as the last, like men doomed to the beasts, since we have been made a spectacle to this world, both to angels and to men, and have been made the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all." And, "Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Christ Jesus our Lord?" From what loftiness, on the other hand, was he compelled to pronounce: "But to me it is a very small thing that I should be examined by you, or by man's day; for I am not conscious to myself of anything." And, "No one shall make my glory void." "Know you not that we shall judge angels?" For the rest, what liberty of open reproach, what bared edge of the spiritual sword! "Now you are enriched, now you are filled, now you reign." And, "If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know how he ought to know it." Did he not even then, dashing in someone's face, say, "For who distinguishes you? And what have you that you have not received? Why do you boast, as if you had not received?" Does he not strike even those too on the mouth? "But some, in conscience, even until now eat as of a thing sacrificed to idols. But thus offending, by smiting the weak consciences of the brethren, they offend against Christ." And now even by name: "Have we not power to eat and to drink and to lead about women, as also the rest of the apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?" And, "If others share in your power, do not we more?" Equally he pierces those too with a singular pen: "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall." And, "If anyone seems contentious, we have no such custom, neither the Church of the Lord." By such a clause, woven with a curse — "If anyone loves not the Lord Jesus, let him be anathema maranatha" — he surely struck someone. But I will stand rather there, where the Apostle is more fervent, where the fornicator himself made business for others too. "As though I were not coming to you, certain are puffed up. But I will come quickly, if the Lord permit, and I 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 was beneath? "There is heard among you fornication altogether, 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 committed such a deed should be taken away from the midst of you." For whom should they mourn? Surely for the dead. To whom should they mourn? Surely to the Lord — that he might in some way be taken away from the midst of them — surely not that he should be put outside the Church. For this would not be asked of God which lay in the office of the president; but that, through this death too — common, and proper to the very flesh, which was now a corpse, which was a bier, with an irrecoverable uncleanness rotten — he might the more fully be deserved to be taken away from the Church. And therefore, in what manner he could for the present be taken away, he judged that such a man should be handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. For a curse followed the flesh which was cast forth to the devil, that it might be discharged from the sacrament of blessing, never to return into the camp of the Church. We see therefore in this place the severity of the Apostle divided against a certain puffed-up man and against a certain incestuous one — armed against the one with the rod, against the other with the sentence: with the rod, which he was threatening; with the sentence, which he was executing; the former still flashing, the latter at once thundering — with which he rebuked, and with which he damned. And it is certain that thereafter the rebuked man trembled under the threat of the rod, but the damned man perished under the presentation of the punishment. At once the one, fearing the blow, departed; the other, paying the penalty. When the same Apostle's letters to the Corinthians are repeated, pardon is plainly made, but it is uncertain to whom, because neither the person nor the cause is proscribed. Let me confer the matter with its senses. If the incestuous man is set against, there too will be the puffed-up man. To be sure, the reckoning of the matter is sufficiently held, since the puffed-up man was rebuked, but the incestuous man damned. To the puffed-up man pardon is granted, but to one rebuked; to the incestuous man it does not appear to be forgiven, as to one damned. If pardon was being granted to him for whom devouring from too great grief was feared, then the rebuked man was still in peril of being devoured, fainting because of the threat and grieving because of the rebuke; but the damned man was already reckoned devoured both by guilt and by sentence — one who had not to grieve, but to suffer what before the suffering he could have grieved over. If for this reason pardon was being granted, lest we be defrauded by Satan, then surely the loss was being precautioned against in him who had not yet perished. Nothing is precautioned against concerning what is past, but concerning what is still safe. But the damned man, and that in the possession of Satan, had already then perished to the Church when he had committed such a deed — much more when he was even being abjured by her. How should he fear to suffer the loss of one whom he had already both lost as snatched away and could not have as damned? Finally, what will it befit the judge to indulge — that which he has cut off by his pronouncement, or that which he has suspended by an interlocution? And surely that judge who is not wont to rebuild what he has destroyed, lest he be held a transgressor. Come now, if the first epistle had not grieved so many persons, if he had rebuked no one, terrified no one — if he had cut off the incestuous man alone, if he had cast no one into fear in his cause, had confounded no puffed-up man — would you not the better suspect, and the more faithfully argue, that some other person, far different, was then among the Corinthians in the same cause, who, being rebuked and terrified and now wounded by grief, therefore afterward, the measure of the offence permitting, received pardon — rather than interpret it of the incestuous fornicator? For this you ought to have read, even if not in the epistle, yet in the very sect of the Apostle, imprinted more clearly by his modesty than by his pen: that you should not stain Paul, the Apostle of Christ, the teacher of the nations in faith and truth, the vessel of election, the founder of churches, the censor of disciplines, with so great a levity, as that he should either rashly have damned one whom he was soon to absolve, or rashly absolved one whom he had not rashly damned — for the sake of mere fornication of simple unchastity, let alone for incestuous marriage and impious riot and parricidal lust, which he had not even compared to the heathen, lest it should be reckoned as customary; which absent he judged, lest the guilty should gain a respite; which, the very power of the Lord being called upon, he had damned, lest it should seem a human sentence. He made sport therefore both of his own spirit and of the angel of the Church and of the power of the Lord, if he rescinded what, on their counsel, he had pronounced.

If you should extend the sequel too of that epistle to the threat of the Apostle, not even these things will be comparable to the obliteration of the incest, lest here too the Apostle be confounded by the incongruity of his later senses. For what kind of thing is it that, when at this very moment he had granted to the incestuous fornicator the right of return to ecclesiastical peace, he should at once have urged about the turning-away from uncleannesses, about the amputation of stains, about the exhortation to sanctities — as though he had decreed nothing contrary a little before? Compare then, whether it is his to say, "Therefore, having this ministry, according as we have obtained mercy, we faint not, but renounce the hidden things of shame" — who has condemned the manifest thing not only of shame but of wickedness; whether it is the same man's to excuse any unchastity, who among the titles of his labours — after straits and pressures, after fastings and watchings — has proclaimed chastity too; whether it is the same man's to receive into communion any reprobates, who writes, "For what fellowship has justice with iniquity? And what communion has light with darkness? What concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has the faithful with the unfaithful? Or what consent has the temple of God with idols?" Shall he not constantly have to hear, "And how do you distinguish what above, in the restoration of the incestuous man, you have joined? For, he being incorporated again into the Church, both justice is associated with iniquity, and darkness communicates with light, and Belial sounds in concord with Christ, and the unfaithful shares the sacraments with the faithful. And let the idols look to it: the very violator of the temple of God comes together into the temple of God." For here too, "You," he says, "are the temple of the living God. For God says, I will dwell in them, and walk about, and I will be their God, and they shall be to me a people. Wherefore depart from the midst of them, be separated, and touch not the unclean thing." This too you unfold, O Apostle — when at this very moment you yourself hand over a hand to so great a gulf of uncleannesses; nay, and still further you add, "Having therefore this promise, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting chastity in the fear of God." I beseech you, he who fastens such things upon our minds — had he recalled some fornicator into the Church? Or does he write thus, that he may not now seem to you to have recalled? These things, as they ought to prescribe to the foregoing, so also to prejudge the following. For at the end of the epistle, saying, "Lest, when I come again, God humble me, and I mourn many of those who before sinned and have not done penitence over the uncleanness which they admitted, fornication and vileness," he surely constituted them not to be received, even if they had entered upon penitence, whom he was about to find in the Church, but to be mourned and without doubt cast out, that they might lose their penitence. And, for the rest, it does not befit him to have shown anything here about communion, who above had denied it to light and darkness, to justice and iniquity. But all these men are ignorant of the Apostle, who understand anything against the nature and purpose of the man himself, against the form and rule of his doctrines, so as to presume that he, the teacher of all sanctity even out of his own self, the execrator and expiator of all impurity, and everywhere such, restored the incestuous man to the Church sooner than any more humane culprit.

It is necessary, therefore, that the Apostle be shown to those men such as I will defend him in the second to the Corinthians too — such as I know him in all his letters. He who in the first too, first of all, dedicated the temple of God: "Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Lord dwells in you?" Who, for the sanctioning and purifying of the temple, wrote the sacristan's law: "If anyone violate the temple of God, God will violate him; for the temple of God is holy, which you are." Come now, who at all restored to integrity a man violated by God — that is, handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh — when for this reason he subjoined, "Let no one deceive himself" — that is, let no one presume that one violated by God can again be restored to integrity? As again, among the rest — nay, even before the rest — denying that adulterers and fornicators and the effeminate and abusers of males shall obtain the kingdom of God, he premised, "Do not err" — namely if you have thought they shall obtain it. But to those from whom the kingdom is taken away, surely neither is the life permitted which is in the kingdom. Bringing in too, "But these things indeed you were, but you have been washed, but you have been sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God" — by how much he sets these offences to account before the laver, by so much after the laver he constitutes them irremissible, since to be washed again is not lawful. Recognize too in what follows Paul, the immovable column of disciplines: "Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; God will destroy both this and these; but the body is not for fornication, but for God." "Let us make man," says God, "after our image and likeness; and God made man, after the image and likeness of God he made him." "The Lord for the body": for "the Word too was made flesh." "But God both raised up the Lord, and will raise us up by his power" — namely on account of the body's bond with him. And therefore, "Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ?" — because Christ too is the temple of God: "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days." "Taking away the members of Christ, shall I make them members of a harlot? Know you not that he who is glued to a harlot becomes one body? For they shall be two in one flesh. But he who is glued to the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication." If pardon be revocable, how shall I flee, being about to be an adulterer again? I shall profit nothing, if I flee it; I shall be one body, to which by communicating I shall be glued. "Every sin which a man commits is outside the body; but he who fornicates" — invades you, as one about to sin against your own concern, not the Lord's; takes you away from yourself, and assigns you to Christ, as he had arranged — "And you are not your own," at once opposing, "for you have been bought with a price" — namely with the blood of the Lord — "glorify and bear about the Lord in your body." He who enjoins this, see whether he forgave one who had disgraced the Lord and who had cast him out of his own body, and that by incest. If you wish to drink in all the knowledge of the Apostle, that you may understand with how secure an axe of censure he cuts down and uproots and grubs up the whole wood of lusts, that he may permit nothing to sprout again from any sucker — behold him desiring that souls fast even from the just fruit of nature — from the apple, I mean, of marriage. "But concerning the things you wrote about, it is good for a man not to touch a woman; but on account of fornication let each have his own wife; let the husband render to the wife, and the wife to the husband, the debt that is due." Who would not know that he unwillingly relaxed the clasp of this good, that he might meet fornication? Which, if he has indulged or does indulge to anyone, surely he has broken the counsel of his own remedy, and he will now be bound to bridle marriages by continence, if fornication, on account of which they are permitted, shall not be feared. For that will not be feared which shall be forgiven. And yet he professes that he has forgiven the use of marriage, not commanded it. For he wishes all to be equal with himself. But when lawful things are forgiven, who hope for the unlawful? To the unmarried too and to widows he says it is good, after his example, to persevere; but if they should fail, to marry; "because it is better to marry than to burn." By what fires, I ask, is it worse to burn — those of concupiscence, or those of punishment? But if fornication has pardon, there will be no concupiscence of it. But it is rather the Apostle's part to provide against the fires of punishment. And if it is punishment which burns, then fornication has no pardon, which a punishment awaits. Meanwhile, forbidding divorce too, in place of it he procures, against adultery, either the perseverance of widowhood or the reconciliation of peace, by the Lord's precept; because "He who shall put away his wife, except for the cause of adultery, makes her commit adultery; and he who marries her that is put away by her husband, commits adultery." How great are the remedies which the Holy Spirit institutes, that this, namely, be not again admitted, which he is unwilling to forgive again! Now if everywhere he says it is best for a man to be thus: "Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek loosing" — that you give no place to adultery; "Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife" — that you keep the opportunity for yourself; "But if you have married a wife, and if a virgin has married, she has not sinned; yet such shall have tribulation of the flesh" — and here too by sparing he permits. For the rest, he sets the time in a gathered compass, that "even those who have wives may be as though not having them. For the fashion of this world passes away" — God no longer, namely, desiring, "Increase and multiply." So he wishes us to live apart from solicitude; because the unmarried take thought of the Lord, how they may please God, but the married consider of the world, how they may please their spouse. So he pronounces the preserver of his virginity to do better than the bestower of it. So he discerns her too the more blessed who, having lost her husband, entering upon fidelity, has loved the occasion of widowhood. So he commends all these counsels of continence as divine: "I think," he says, "that I too have the Spirit of God." Who is this most audacious asserter of all unchastity, the most faithful advocate, plainly, of adulterers and fornicators and incestuous men, for whose honouring he has taken up this cause against the Holy Spirit, that he should recite a false testimony concerning his Apostle? Paul indulged nothing of the kind, who endeavours to obliterate the whole necessity of the flesh even from honourable titles. He indulges, to be sure — not adulteries, but marriages. He spares, to be sure — wedlock, not defilement. He attempts not to forgive even nature, lest he should flatter guilt. He is zealous to repress the concubinage of blessing, lest that of cursing be excused. This remained for him: to cleanse the flesh even from filth; for from stains he cannot. But this is customary for perverse and unlearned heretics, and now for all the Psychics: by the occasion of some ambiguous chapter, to arm themselves against the whole army of the sentences of the entire instrument.

Summon to the apostolic battle-line; look at his epistles. All set forth for modesty, for chastity, for sanctity; all dart their javelins against the business of riot and wantonness and lust. What, in short, does he write even to the Thessalonians? "For our exhortation was not of seduction, nor of uncleanness." And, "This is the will of God, your sanctity, that you abstain from fornication, that each one know how to possess his own vessel in sanctity and honour, not in the passion of lust, like the nations which know not God." What do the Galatians read? "Manifest are the works of the flesh." What are these? In the first place he set fornication, uncleanness, wantonness, "which I foretell you, as I have foretold, that they who do such things shall not obtain by inheritance the kingdom of God." But what do the Romans learn more than not to forsake the Lord after the faith? "What then shall we say? Do we persevere in delinquency, that grace may abound? Far from it. We who are dead to delinquency, how shall we yet live in it? Or are you ignorant that we who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death? We are therefore buried with him through baptism into death, that, as Christ rose from the dead, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have been buried together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also of his resurrection — knowing this, that our old man is fastened to the cross with him. But if we are dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, raised from the dead, dies now no more; death shall no more have dominion over him. For in that he died to delinquency, he died once; but in that he lives, he lives to God. So you too reckon yourselves dead indeed to delinquency, but living to God through Christ Jesus." Therefore, Christ having died once, no one who has died to delinquency after Christ — and especially to so great a delinquency — can come to life again. Or, if fornication and adultery can again be admitted, Christ too will be able to die again. But the Apostle urges, forbidding delinquency to reign in our mortal body — whose weakness of the flesh he knew. "For as you presented your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity, so now present them servants to justice unto sanctity." For although he denied that any good dwells in his flesh, yet it was according to the law of the letter, in which he was; but according to the law of the spirit, to which he attaches us, he frees us from the weakness of the flesh. "For the law," he says, "of the spirit of life has set you free from the law of delinquency and death." For although he may seem in part to dispute out of Judaism, yet he directs toward us the integrity and fullness of the disciplines, on account of whom, labouring under the law, God sent his Son through flesh in the likeness of the flesh of delinquency, and for delinquency condemned delinquency in the flesh, "that the right of the law," he says, "might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. For they who walk according to the flesh savour the things of the flesh; and they who according to the spirit, the things of the spirit." But he affirmed the mind of the flesh to be death; thereafter, both enmity, and that against God; and that those who are in the flesh — that is, in the mind of the flesh — cannot please God; and, "If you live according to the flesh," he says, "it shall come to pass that you die." But what do we understand by the mind of the flesh and the life of the flesh, except whatever it is shameful to pronounce? For the other things of the flesh the Apostle too would have named. Accordingly, to the Ephesians too, reckoning up their former state, he warns of the future: "In which we too were conversant, doing the lusts and pleasures of the flesh." Marking, in short, those who had denied themselves — Christians, namely — in that they had handed themselves over to the working of all uncleanness, "But you," he says, "have not so learned Christ." And again he says thus: "Let him who stole steal no more." But also, "Let him who committed adultery hitherto commit adultery no more; and let him who fornicated hitherto fornicate no more." For he would have added these too, if he had been wont to hold out pardon to such, or had been at all willing that it should be held out — he who, unwilling to be polluted even by a word, says, "Let no foul speech proceed out of your mouth." Likewise, "But let fornication and all uncleanness not even be named among you, as becomes saints" — so far is it from being excused — "knowing this, that no fornicator or unclean person has the kingdom of God. Let no one seduce you with empty words; for on account of these things comes the wrath of God upon the sons of unbelief." Who seduces with empty words, but he who harangues that adultery is remissible — not regarding even its foundations dug out by the Apostle, when he checks drunkennesses and revellings, as also here: "And be not drunk with wine, in which is riot"? He shows to the Colossians too what members they should mortify upon earth: fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and foul talk. Now concede to so many and such sentences that one thing which you hold. Few things are overshadowed by many, doubtful by certain, obscure by manifest. Even if for certain the Apostle had forgiven that Corinthian his fornication, it would be another matter — something he once did against his own institution, by reason of the time. He circumcised Timothy alone, and yet abolished circumcision.

"But these things," he says, "will pertain to the interdiction of all unchastity and the addiction to all modesty, the place of pardon being nevertheless preserved — which is not at once denied if offences are condemned, since the time of pardon may concur with the condemnation which excludes it." It followed that the Psychics should savour this too; and therefore we have reserved for this place those things which have anciently been provided, openly, for the denying of ecclesiastical communion in causes of this kind. For in the Proverbs too of Solomon — which we call paroimiai — concerning the adulterer specifically, as nowhere expiable, he says, "But the adulterer, through want of senses, acquires the perdition of his own soul; he sustains pains and dishonours. And his ignominy shall not be abolished for ever. For the indignation, full of jealousy, will not spare the man in the day of judgement." If you have thought this said of the heathen, surely you have already heard concerning the faithful, through Isaiah, "Go out from the midst of them, and be separated, and touch not the unclean thing." You have at once in the Psalms, "Blessed is the man who has not gone away in the counsel of the impious, nor stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of pestilence." Whose voice too afterward: "I have not sat with the assembly of vanity, and with those who act unjustly I will not enter in" — this of the Church of evildoers — "and with the impious I will not sit"; and, "I will wash my hands with the innocent, and will compass your altar, O Lord" — that he may be alone rather than many — since indeed, "With the holy you shall be holy, and with the innocent man innocent, and with the elect elect, and with the perverse perverse." And elsewhere: "But to the sinner God says, Why do you set forth my justifications, and take my testament into your mouth? If you saw a thief, you ran with him, and with adulterers you set your portion." Hence therefore the Apostle too, being informed, says, "I wrote to you in the epistle, not to mix with fornicators" — surely not the fornicators of this world — and the rest, "for then you ought to go out of the world. But now I write to you, if anyone named a brother among you be a fornicator or an idolater" (for what so conjoined?) "or a defrauder" (for what so near?) and the rest, "with such not even to take food," much less the Eucharist; since, namely, a little leaven too makes the whole lump distasteful. Likewise to Timothy: "Lay hands hastily on no one, neither communicate with the sins of others." Likewise to the Ephesians: "Do not therefore be partakers with them; for you were once darkness." And yet more pressingly: "Do not communicate with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them. For the things that are done by them in secret it is shameful even to utter." What is more shameful than unchastities? But if he denounces to the Thessalonians that they should withdraw even from a brother walking idly, how much more from a fornicator? For these things have been resolved by Christ, who loves his Church, who gave himself for her, that he might sanctify her, cleansing her by the laver of water in the word, that he might present to himself a glorious Church, having no spot or wrinkle — surely after the laver — but that she should be holy and without reproach; thereafter, namely, without the wrinkle of age, as a virgin; without the spot of fornication, as a bride; without the reproach of vileness, as one cleansed. What, if here too you should conceive to answer, that communion is indeed taken away from sinners, especially from those polluted in the flesh, but for the present — to be restored, namely, from the suit of penitence, according to that clemency of God which prefers the penitence of the sinner to his death? For this foundation of your opinion must everywhere be battered. We say therefore that, if it had befitted the divine clemency to provide a demonstration of itself even to those fallen after the faith, the Apostle would so have said: "Do not communicate with the works of darkness, unless they shall have done penitence"; and, "With such not even to take food, unless after they shall have wiped off the boots of the brethren by rolling"; and, "He who violates the temple of God, God will violate him, unless he shall have shaken off the ashes of all hearths in the Church from his head." For he ought to have determined what he had condemned — to what point, and under what condition, he had condemned it — if he had condemned with a temporal and conditional and not a perpetual severity. Now since in all his epistles he both forbids such a one to be admitted after the faith, and thrusts the admitted from communion, without hope of any condition or time, he assists rather our view, showing that the Lord prefers that penitence which is before the faith, which is before baptism, to be held better than the death of the sinner — of one to be washed once for all by the grace of Christ, of one who once for all died for our sins. For the Apostle established this even in his own person. For affirming that Christ had come to this end, that he might save sinners, of whom he himself had been the first, what does he add? "And I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief." Thus that clemency of God, preferring the penitence of the sinner to his death, looks to the ignorant still and the as-yet unbelieving, for the freeing of whom Christ came — not to those who now know God and have learned the sacrament. But if the clemency of God befits the still ignorant and unfaithful, then surely penitence too invites that clemency to itself — that kind of penitence after the faith being preserved, which either for lighter offences will be able to obtain pardon from the bishop, or for greater and irremissible ones from God alone.

But to what point concerning Paul, when even John seems to applaud, I know not how, the other party? — as though in the Apocalypse he had plainly set forth the help of penitence for fornication, where to the angel of the Thyatirenes the Spirit charges that he has against him that he held the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and teaches, and seduces my servants to fornicate and to eat of things sacrificed to idols. "And I gave her space of time, that she might enter upon penitence, and she will not enter upon it" — in the matter of fornication. "Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and her adulterers with her into very great affliction, unless they shall have done penitence of her works." But it is well that it accords with the apostles and the rules both of faith and of discipline. "For whether I," he says, "or they, so we preach." It concerns therefore the whole sacrament to believe nothing conceded by John which has been denied by Paul. Whoever shall have observed this equality of the Holy Spirit will be led by him into his senses. For he was a heretical woman, who had undertaken to teach what she had learned from the Nicolaitans, and who was secretly introducing it into the Church, and was deservedly urged to penitence. For who doubts that a heretic, deceived by false teaching, his lapse afterward recognized and expiated by penitence, both obtains pardon and is brought back into the Church? Whence too with us, as on a par with the heathen — nay, even above the heathen — the heretic too is admitted, being purged by the baptism of truth in both man. Or if you are sure that that woman, after the faith, while still alive, afterward breathed her last in heresy, so that you claim pardon for her from penitence not as for a heretic but as for a faithful sinner — by all means let her do penitence; but to the end of adultery, yet not so as to obtain restoration. For this will be the penitence which we too acknowledge to be owed, much more so, but which as to pardon we reserve to God. In short, that Apocalypse, in its later parts, decreed for the shameless and fornicators, as for the timid and the unbelieving and homicides and sorcerers and idolaters — such as shall have been any such in the faith — the pool of fire, without any conditional damnation. For it will not seem to savour of heathens, since it has pronounced concerning the faithful, "They who overcome shall have this inheritance, and I will be to them God, and they to me for sons"; and so subjoined, "But for the timid and unbelieving and shameless and fornicators and homicides and sorcerers and idolaters, their portion is in the pool of fire and brimstone, which is the second death." So too again: "Blessed are they who act from the precepts, that they may have power over the tree of life, and over the gates for entering into the holy city. The dogs, the sorcerers, the fornicator, the homicide — outside" — surely those who act not from the precepts. For it belongs to those to be given outside who have been within. But, "What is it to me to judge those who are without?" — this had gone before. From the epistle of John too they pluck at once. It is said, "The blood of his Son cleanses us from all offence." Always therefore, and in every way, shall we offend, if he always and from every offence cleanses us; or, if not always, then not after the faith too; and if not from offence, then not from fornication too. But whence did he set out? He had foretold God to be light, and that there is no darkness in him; and that we lie if we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness. "But if," he says, "we walk in the light, we shall have fellowship with him, and the blood of Jesus Christ our Lord cleanses us from all offence." Do we then, walking in the light, offend; and, offending in the light, shall we be cleansed? By no means. For he who offends is not in the light, but in darkness. Whence too he shows in what way we shall be cleansed from offence — walking in the light, in which offence cannot be done. So thoroughly does he say we are thus cleansed, not in that we offend, but in that we offend not. For walking in the light, but not communicating with the darkness, we shall act as cleansed — not by laying aside, but by not committing, the offence. For this is the force of the Lord's blood: that those whom it has already cleansed from offence, and thereafter set in the light, it should thereafter render clean, if they shall have persevered in walking in the light. "But he subjoins," you say, "If we say we have no offence, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our offences, he is faithful and just, to forgive them to us, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Is it then from uncleanness? Or, if it is so, then also from idolatry. But something else is in the sense. For lo, again, "If we say," he says, "that we have not offended, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." Yet more: "Little children, these things I have written to you, that you may not offend; and if you shall have offended, we have an advocate with God the Father, Jesus Christ the just, and he is the propitiation for our offences." "According to these things," you say, "it is agreed both that we offend and that we have pardon." What then shall come of it, when, going on, I find something else? For he denies that we offend at all, and treats much of this, that he may concede nothing of the kind — setting forth that offences are once for all blotted out by Christ, not afterward to have pardon — in which the sense commits us to the admonition of chastity. "Everyone," he says, "who has this hope chastens himself, even as he is chaste. Everyone who commits offence commits also iniquity, and offence is iniquity. And you know that he was manifested to take away offences" — surely such as are hitherto being admitted. Since he subjoins, "Everyone who abides in him offends not. Everyone who offends has neither seen nor known him. Little children, let no one seduce you. Everyone who does justice is just, even as he too is just. He who commits offence is of the devil, since the devil offends from the beginning. For to this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might dissolve the works of the devil." For he dissolved them too, freeing man through the laver, the handwriting of death being remitted to him. And therefore, "everyone who is born of God commits not offence, because the seed of God abides in him; and he cannot offend, because he is born of God. In this are manifest the sons of God and the sons of the devil." In what, but in that the one offend not, by which they are born of God, but the others offend, because they are of the devil — just as if they had never been born of God? But if he says, "He who is not just is not of God," he who is not modest, how shall he again become of God, who has now ceased to be? It is near at hand, therefore, to say that John fell out with himself: in the earlier part of the epistle denying that we are without offence, but now prescribing that we offend not at all; and there indeed flattering somewhat about pardon, but here strictly denying that any are sons of God who shall have offended. But far from it. For neither did we ourselves fall away from the distinction of offences from which we set out. For here too John commended it — that there are certain offences of daily incursion, to which we are all subject. For to whom will it not happen either to be angry unjustly, and beyond sunset, or even to lay hand upon another, or easily to curse, or rashly to swear, or to break the faith of a compact, or to lie from shame or necessity? In affairs, in offices, in trade, in food, in seeing, in hearing, what temptation! — so that, if there were no pardon for these things, salvation would suit no one. Of these, therefore, there will be pardon through Christ, the entreater of the Father. But there are also, against these, as graver and deadly, such as do not admit pardon: homicide, idolatry, fraud, denial, blasphemy — surely also adultery and fornication, and whatever other violation of the temple of God. For these Christ will be no further an entreater; these will not at all be admitted by him who has been born of God, who will not be a son of God if he shall have admitted them. Thus John's reasoning of the diversity stands, disposing the distinction of offences, when he now grants, now denies, that sons of God offend. For he was looking out for the closing of his letter, and was building up these senses for himself, about to say in the end more manifestly: "If anyone knows his brother to be committing a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and the Lord, who offends not unto death, shall give him life. For there is a sin unto death; I do not say of that, that one should ask." He too remembered that Jeremiah was forbidden by God to entreat for a people committing mortal offences. "All unrighteousness is offence; and there is a sin unto death. But we know that everyone who is born of God offends not" — namely the offence which is unto death. So now nothing remains but either to deny that adultery and fornication are mortal offences, or to confess them irremissible, for which it is not permitted to entreat.

The discipline therefore of the apostles instructs and determines, properly and principally, the high-priesthood of all sanctity toward the temple of God — that everywhere from the Church should be uprooted all sacrilege of modesty, without any mention of restoration. Yet I wish, out of abundance, to add over and above the testimony of some companion of the apostles too, fit to confirm, from the nearest right, the discipline of the masters. For there is extant also the writing of Barnabas, entitled "to the Hebrews" — a man sufficiently authorized by God, as one whom Paul set beside himself in the tenor of abstinence: "Or have I alone, and Barnabas, not the power of working?" And surely the epistle of Barnabas is more received among the churches than that apocryphal "Shepherd" of the adulterers. Admonishing therefore his disciples, all beginnings being omitted, to tend rather to perfection, and not again to lay the foundations of penitence from the works of the dead, he says, "For it is impossible that those who were once illuminated, and tasted the heavenly gift, and partook of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the sweet word of God — when the age is now setting, when they have fallen away — should again be recalled to penitence, crucifying again to themselves and dishonouring the Son of God. For the earth which drinks in the moisture coming often upon it, and brings forth grass apt for those for whom it is also cultivated, obtains the blessing of God; but bringing forth thorns, it is reprobate and nigh to cursing, whose end is for burning." He who learned this from the apostles, and taught it with the apostles, never knew a second penitence promised by the apostles to the adulterer and fornicator. For he most excellently interpreted the law, and preserved its figures already in the very truth. To this aspect, in short, of discipline, it was provided concerning the leper: "But if the spotting break out in the skin, and cover the whole skin from the head even to the feet through the whole sight, and the priest, when he has seen it, shall cleanse him, since it has turned all white, he is clean. But on whatever day there shall be seen in him such a colour, living, he is defiled." For he willed it to be understood that a man converted from his former habit of the flesh into the whiteness of faith — which is esteemed a vice and a spot in the world — and wholly renewed, is clean, who is now not spotted, not besprinkled from the old and the new. But if after the abolition, in the old way, anything of that has come to life again, then again in his flesh that which was held dead by offence is to be judged unclean, nor any more expiated by the priest. Thus adultery, relapsing from the old way and bespotting the unity of the new colour, from which it had been excluded, is an uncleansable vice. Likewise of the house: if any spots and hollownesses had been announced to the priest in the walls, before he should enter to inspect it, he orders all things to be taken out of the house, so that the things which should be the house's may not become unclean. Then, the priest having entered, if he had found hollownesses greening or reddening, and their aspect lower below the wall's surface, he should go out to the door and separate that house for seven days. Then, returning on the seventh day, if he had observed that touch spread through the walls, he should command those stones to be drawn out in which the touch of the leprosy had been, and cast outside the city into an unclean place, and other stones, polished and solid, to be taken and set in the place of the former, and the house to be smeared with other plaster. For it is fitting that, when one comes to the high priest, Christ the Father's — within the space of the week — there should first be taken away from the house of our man all impediments, that the house which remains may be clean — the flesh and soul; and where the word of God enters it and finds the spots of redness and greenness, that there be at once drawn out and cast forth the deadly and bloody senses (for the Apocalypse too set death upon a green horse, but a warrior upon a red one), and in place of these be laid stones polished and fitted into a framework and firm — such as are made in Abraham's — that so the man may be fit for God. But if after the recovery and reformation the priest shall again observe in the same house anything of the former causes and spots, he pronounces it unclean, and orders the materials and stones and all its structure to be laid aside and cast into an unclean place. This will be the man — flesh and soul — who after baptism and the entering of the priests, reformed, again resumes the scabbiness and spots of the flesh, and is cast outside the city into an unclean place — handed over, namely, to Satan for the destruction of the flesh — nor any more rebuilt in the Church after his ruin. So too of the concubinage of a handmaid who had been reserved for a man, not yet redeemed, not yet freed. "Provision shall be made," he says, "for her, and she shall not die, because she had not yet been freed for whom she was kept." For the flesh, not yet freed by Christ, for whom it was kept, was being defiled with impunity; but now, being freed, it has no pardon.

If the apostles knew these things better, surely they cared the more. But I will now descend to this stage too, sifting between the doctrine of the apostles and their power. Discipline governs man; power sets its seal — apart, that the power is the Spirit's, but the Spirit is God. What did he teach? That there should be no communicating with the works of darkness. Observe what he commands. But who could grant offences? This is his alone. For who remits offences but God alone? — and surely the mortal ones, which shall have been admitted against him, and against his temple. For as to the things which against you have a charge upon you, you are bidden, in the person of Peter, to forgive even seventy times seven. Therefore, even if it were agreed that the blessed apostles themselves had indulged some such thing, the pardon of which would befit them from God, not from man, they had done it not from discipline, but from power. For they both raised the dead, which God alone does, and restored the feeble to integrity, which none but Christ does; nay, they even inflicted plagues, which Christ would not. For it did not become him to rage who had come to suffer. Ananias was struck, and Elymas — Ananias by death, Elymas by blindness — that by this very thing it might be proved that Christ had been able to do these things too. So too the prophets had forgiven the slaughter, and adultery along with it, to the penitent, because they had also wrought proofs of severity. Show me therefore now too, O apostolic man, the prophetic examples, that I may acknowledge the divinity, and claim to yourself the power of remitting offences of this kind. But if you have obtained the offices of discipline alone, and to preside not by command but by ministry — who or how great are you, to indulge, who, exhibiting neither prophet nor apostle, lack that power whose it is to indulge? "But the Church," you say, "has the power of forgiving offences." This I rather both acknowledge and dispose of — I who have the Paraclete himself saying, in the new prophets, "The Church can forgive an offence, but I will not do it, lest they offend in other things too." What if a pseudo-prophetic spirit pronounced it? But it would rather have been the part of a subverter both to commend himself by clemency and to dispose the rest to delinquency. Or if even this he was eager to affect according to the spirit of truth — then the spirit of truth can indeed indulge pardon to fornicators, but, with the harm of the many, he will not. Now I ask of your view: whence do you usurp this right for the Church? If it is because the Lord said to Peter, "Upon this rock I will build my Church; to you I have given the keys of the heavenly kingdom"; or, "Whatsoever you shall bind or loose on earth shall be bound or loosed in the heavens" — do you therefore presume that the power of binding and loosing has been derived to you too — that is, to every Church akin to Peter? Of what sort are you, subverting and changing the manifest intention of the Lord, conferring this on Peter personally? "Upon you," he says, "I will build my Church"; and, "I will give you the keys" — not to the Church; and, "Whatsoever you shall loose or bind" — not what they shall loose or bind. For so too the outcome teaches. In him the Church was built up — that is, through him; he himself first handselled the key. You see what key: "Men of Israel, give ear to what I say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man destined to you by God," and the rest. He himself, in short, first unlocked, in the baptism of Christ, the entrance of the heavenly kingdom, by which are loosed the offences formerly bound, and bound those which had not been loosed, according to true salvation; and he bound Ananias with the bond of death, and loosed the man feeble in his feet from the vice of his infirmity. But also in that disputation, whether or not the law was to be kept, Peter first of all, moved by the Spirit, and speaking beforehand concerning the calling of the nations, says, "And now why do you tempt the Lord concerning the imposing of a yoke upon the brethren, which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? But through the grace of Jesus we believe that we shall obtain salvation, as also they." This sentence both loosed those things of the law which were omitted, and bound those which were reserved. So little has the power of loosing and binding, made over to Peter, anything to do with the capital offences of the faithful. For if the Lord had enjoined upon him to indulge even a brother offending against him seventy times seven, surely he would have commanded nothing afterward to be bound — that is, retained — except perhaps such things as one may admit against the Lord, not against a brother. For it is prejudged that offences against God are not to be remitted, when those committed against a man are forgiven. What now even to the Church, and indeed to yours, O Psychic? For according to the person of Peter, this power will befit spiritual men — an apostle or a prophet. For the Church itself, properly and principally, is the Spirit himself, in whom is the Trinity of the one divinity — Father and Son and Holy Spirit. He gathers that Church which the Lord set in three. And so thereafter every number whatever that shall have conspired into this faith is reckoned a Church by its Author and Consecrator. And therefore the Church indeed will forgive offences, but the Church of the Spirit, through a spiritual man, not the Church which is a number of bishops. For the right and the decision is the Lord's, not the servant's; God's own, not the priest's.

But you now even pour out this power upon your martyrs. As soon as anyone, by agreement, has put on bonds — still soft — in the new style of imprisonment, at once the adulterers court him, at once the fornicators approach him; now prayers resound around, now tears stream around — those of every defiled person; nor do any redeem the entrance of the prison more than those who have lost the Church. Men and women are violated in the darkness, plainly known by the habit of their lusts, and they seek peace from those who are in peril concerning their own. Others flee to the mines, and thence return as communicants — where now another martyrdom is necessary for the new offences after the martyrdom. For who on earth and in the flesh is without fault? What martyr, an inhabitant of the world, is not a suppliant to coin, beholden to the physician and the moneylender? Suppose now, the head being already poised beneath the sword; suppose the body already stretched upon the cross; suppose the lion already granted at the stake; suppose the fire already heaped upon the wheel — in that very security, I say, and possession of martyrdom, who permits a man to grant what must be reserved to God — by whom these things have been damned without excuse, which not even the apostles, so far as I know, themselves martyrs, judged to be grantable? In short, Paul had already fought with the beasts at Ephesus, when he decreed destruction for the incestuous man. Let it suffice the martyr to have purged his own offences. It is the part of the ungrateful or the proud to scatter upon others too what one has obtained as a great thing. Who has loosed another's death by his own, but the Son of God alone? For even in his very passion he freed the robber. For to this end he had come, that, himself pure from offence and wholly holy, he might die for sinners. Accordingly you who emulate him by forgiving offences — if you yourself have offended in nothing, plainly suffer for me. But if you are a sinner, how shall the oil of your little torch be able to suffice both for you and for me? I have even now wherewith to prove Christ. If for this reason Christ is in the martyr, that the martyr may absolve adulterers and fornicators, let him publish the hidden things of the heart, that so he may grant offences — and he is Christ. For thus did the Lord Jesus Christ show his power: "Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier — to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven you, or, Rise and walk? Therefore, that you may know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, paralytic, Rise and walk." If the Lord cared so much about the proof of his power, that he should expose men's thoughts and so command health, lest it should not be believed that he could forgive offences — it is not lawful for me to believe the same power in anyone without the same proofs. But when you exact pardon for adulterers and fornicators from a martyr, you yourself confess that crimes of this kind are not to be washed away save by one's own martyrdom — you who presume to do it by another's. And if that is so, then martyrdom too will be another baptism. "For I have," he says, "another baptism." Whence too, from the wound of the Lord's side, water and blood flowed, the matter of either laver. I ought therefore, by the first laver too, to free another, if I can by the second; and we must of necessity drive home into the bosom: Whatever authority, whatever reason, restores ecclesiastical peace to the adulterer and fornicator, the same ought to come to the aid of the homicide and idolater too when penitent — surely of the denier; and surely of that man whom, struggling with torments in the battle of confession, savagery cast down. But it is unworthy of God and of his mercy, which prefers the penitence of the sinner to his death, that those should return more easily into the Church who fell by yielding than those who fell by fighting. Indignity urges us to say it. You will rather recall bodies that are defiled than bloodstained. What penitence is the more pitiable — that which prostrates flesh tickled, or rather torn? Which is the more just pardon, in all causes — that which the voluntary, or that which the unwilling, sinner implores? No one willing is compelled to deny; no one unwilling fornicates. There is no force toward lust but its own; it knows not how to be compelled to anything. But denial — how many devices of the executioner and kinds of punishment compel it? Who has denied the more — he who lost Christ being tormented, or he who lost him being delighted? He who grieved while he lost, or he who made sport while he lost? And yet those scars graven in the Christian battle — even invidious before Christ, because they longed to conquer, and even thus glorious, because they yielded not by conquering, but in not conquering gave way, scars at which even the devil himself still sighs — to those men, with their unhappiness, yet chaste; with their penitence, mourning but not blushing toward the Lord for pardon — to them shall pardon again be remitted, because they denied in a way that calls for expiation. To those alone is the flesh weak. And yet no flesh is so strong as that which dashes out the spirit.