On the Lapsed

The confessors, renowned by the proclamation of a good name and glorious in the praises of virtue and faith, we behold with joyful eyes, clinging to them with holy gaze, embracing those long desired with insatiable longing. Here is the white cohort of Christ's soldiers, who with steadfast engagement broke the turbulent ferocity of the pressing persecution, prepared for the patience of prison, armed for the endurance of death. You fought bravely against the world, you offered a glorious spectacle to God, you were an example to the brethren who would follow. The devout voice spoke of Christ, confessing that it had once believed in Him. Illustrious hands, which had been accustomed only to divine works, resisted the sacrilegious sacrifices. Mouths sanctified by heavenly food, after the body and blood of the Lord, spurned the profane contaminations and remnants of idols. From the impious and wicked veil with which the heads of those sacrificing were there covered in captivity, your head remained free.

The brow, pure with the sign of God, could not bear the crown of the devil; it reserved itself for the crown of the Lord. How joyfully does mother Church receive you into her bosom as you return from battle! How blessed, how rejoicing, does she open her gates, that you may enter with united ranks, bearing back trophies from the prostrated enemy! With the triumphant men come women who, contending against the world, have also overcome their sex. There come also virgins with the doubled glory of their warfare, and boys surpassing their years in virtues. Moreover, the rest of the multitude of those who stood firm follows your glory, accompanying your footsteps with marks of praise close and nearly equal to yours. The same sincerity of heart is in them, the same integrity of tenacious faith. Resting on the unshaken roots of the heavenly commandments and strengthened by the evangelical traditions, neither prescribed exiles, nor appointed torments, nor losses of family property, nor bodily punishments terrified them.

Days were appointed for the testing of faith: but he who remembers that he has renounced the world knows no day of the world; nor does he who hopes for eternity from God any longer reckon earthly times.

Let no one, most beloved brethren, let no one diminish this glory, let no one weaken by malicious detraction the uncorrupted steadfastness of those who stood firm. When the day appointed for those who denied has passed, whoever did not make profession within that day has confessed that he is a Christian. The first title of victory is to confess the Lord when seized by the hands of the nations; the second step to glory is to have been kept for the Lord, withdrawn by cautious retirement. The former is a public, the latter a private confession. He overcomes the judge of the world; this one, content with God as his judge, guards a pure conscience with integrity of heart. There, a readier fortitude; here, a more careful security. He, when his hour drew near, was found already ripe; the other was perhaps delayed, who, having left his patrimony, withdrew for this reason—that he was not going to deny: he would certainly have confessed if he too had been detained.

These heavenly crowns of the martyrs, these spiritual glories of the confessors, these greatest and extraordinary virtues of the brethren who stood firm—one sorrow saddens them: that the violent enemy has cast down a part torn from our own bowels by the slaughter of his devastation. What shall I do in this place, most beloved brethren? Tossed by the varied surge of my mind, what or how shall I speak? Tears are needed more than words to express the grief with which the wound of our body must be lamented; with which the manifold loss of a people once numerous must be bewailed. For who is so hard or iron-hearted, who so forgetful of brotherly charity, that, placed amid the manifold ruins of his own people and their mournful remains, disfigured by much squalor, he could keep his eyes dry, and not, with weeping breaking forth at once, pour out his groans in tears before words?

I grieve, brethren, I grieve with you, nor does my own integrity and private soundness soothe my griefs, since the shepherd is wounded the more by the wound of his flock. I join my heart with each one, I share the sorrowful burdens of mourning and bereavement. I weep with those who weep, I lament with those who lament, I believe myself to lie prostrate with those who lie prostrate. By those darts of the raging enemy my own members have been struck at the same time; the raging swords have passed through my own bowels. The soul that was free and exempt from the assault of persecution could not be: in the prostrated brethren, affection prostrated me as well.

Nevertheless, most beloved brethren, account must be taken of the truth, nor ought the dark shadow of the hostile persecution so to have blinded the mind and understanding that nothing of the light and brightness remained whereby the divine precepts could be discerned. If the cause of the calamity is recognized, the remedy for the wound is also found. The Lord willed that His household should be tested; and because long peace had corrupted the discipline divinely handed down to us, the heavenly censure raised up a faith that was lying prostrate and, so to speak, sleeping; and since we deserved more by our sins, the most merciful Lord so moderated all things that this whole event might appear to be a testing rather than a persecution.

Each one was intent on increasing his patrimony, and, forgetful of what believers had done before under the Apostles or ought always to do, they were bent with insatiable ardor of greed on enlarging their wealth. There was no devout religion in the priests, no sound faith in the ministers, no mercy in works, no discipline in conduct. The beard was disfigured in men, the face painted in women, the eyes adulterated after God's handiwork, the hair falsely colored. Crafty deceits to beguile the hearts of the simple, treacherous designs to circumvent the brethren. To join the bond of marriage with unbelievers, to prostitute to the gentiles the members of Christ. Not only to swear rashly, but even to perjure: to despise those set over them with proud arrogance; to revile one another with poisoned tongue, to quarrel with one another with persistent hatreds.

Very many bishops, who ought to be both an exhortation and an example to the rest, despising the divine administration, became administrators of secular affairs; deserting their chair, abandoning their people, wandering through foreign provinces, they sought the markets of profitable trade; they wished to have money in abundance while brethren were starving in the Church; they seized estates by crafty frauds; they increased usury by multiplying interest. What did such men not deserve to suffer for sins of this kind, since the divine censure had long before warned and said: If they forsake my law and walk not in my judgments, if they profane my statutes and keep not my commandments, I will visit their iniquities with a rod and their sins with stripes.

These things were foretold and proclaimed to us beforehand. But we, unmindful of the law given and of its observance, acted through our sins in such a way that, while we despised the commandments of the Lord, we came by more severe remedies to the correction of our fault and the testing of our faith. Nor did we even turn late to the fear of the Lord, so as to undergo this correction and divine testing patiently and bravely. At the very first words of the threatening enemy, the greatest number of the brethren betrayed their faith; nor were they prostrated by the onset of persecution, but prostrated themselves by a voluntary fall. What unheard-of, what new thing had come, that, as if matters unknown and unexpected had arisen, the sacrament of Christ should be dissolved with headlong rashness? Did not the Prophets before and the Apostles afterward announce these things? Did they not, filled with the Holy Spirit, always foretell the pressures of the righteous and the injuries of the nations?

Does not the divine Scripture, always arming our faith and strengthening the servant of God with a heavenly voice, say: Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. Does it not, showing the wrath of divine indignation and forewarning the fear of punishment, say again: They worshipped what the fingers of their hands have made; and man is bowed down and man is humbled, and I will not forgive them. And again God speaks, saying: He that sacrificeth unto gods shall be destroyed, save only unto the Lord. In the Gospel also afterward the Lord, a teacher in words and a fulfiller in deeds, teaching what was lawful and doing whatsoever He had taught—did He not forewarn of all that is now done and shall be done? Did He not beforehand appoint eternal punishments for those who deny and saving rewards for those who confess?

All these things have slipped from the memory of some—O wickedness!—and have passed from their minds. They did not even wait to be seized and go up, to deny when questioned. Many were overcome before the battle, prostrated without an engagement; nor did they leave themselves even this—that they might seem to sacrifice to idols unwillingly. They ran of their own accord to the forum, hastened of their own will to death, as if they had long desired this, as if they were embracing an opportunity given which they had always wished for. How many there were delayed by the magistrates as evening pressed on? How many even begged that their destruction might not be deferred? What force can such a one plead to purge his crime, when he himself used force rather to perish?

Was it not the case that, when the Capitol was approached of one's own will, when one drew near of one's own accord to the compliance with that dreadful deed, the step faltered, the sight grew dim, the bowels trembled, the arms fell? Did not the sense grow numb, the tongue cleave, speech fail? Could the servant of God stand there and speak and renounce Christ, who had already renounced the devil and the world? Was not that altar, to which he drew near as one about to die, a funeral pyre to him? Ought he not to have shuddered at and fled from the altar of the devil, which he had seen smoking and reeking with foul stench, as from the funeral and burial of his own life? Why do you lay upon it a victim, wretch, why a sacrifice as one about to offer? You yourself came to the altar as a victim, you yourself came as a sacrifice; you immolated there your salvation, your hope, your faith—you burned them in those accursed flames.

And for many their own destruction was not enough. The people were driven by mutual exhortations into ruin, death was pledged to one another in a deadly cup; and, lest anything should be wanting to the heap of crime, even infants, either placed in the hands of their parents or dragged along by them, lost as little ones what they had obtained at the very beginning of their birth. Will not those, when the day of judgment comes, say: We did nothing evil, nor did we of our own accord, forsaking the food and drink of the Lord, hasten to profane contaminations. Another's faithlessness destroyed us; we found our parents to be parricides. They denied us the Church as mother, they denied us God as father; so that, while we, small and heedless and ignorant of so great a crime, are joined through others to the fellowship of crimes, we were taken captive by another's deceit.

Nor is there, alas for grief, any just and weighty cause to excuse so great a crime. One ought to have left one's country and suffered the loss of one's patrimony. For to whom, being born and dying, must not one's country sometime be left and the loss of one's patrimony be suffered? Let not Christ be forsaken; let the loss of eternal salvation and an eternal home be feared. Behold, the Holy Spirit cries through the prophet: Depart, depart, go out from thence, and touch not the unclean thing. Go out from the midst of her, be ye separate, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord. And those who are the vessels of the Lord and the temple of God—lest they be compelled to touch the unclean and be polluted and defiled by deadly foods—do they not go out from the midst nor withdraw!

Elsewhere also a voice is heard from heaven, forewarning what it befits the servants of God to do, saying: Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye be not smitten with her plagues. He who goes out and withdraws becomes not a partaker of the crime; but he too is smitten with the plagues who is found a partner in the crime. And therefore the Lord commanded to withdraw and flee in persecution, and both taught and did this. For, since the crown descends by God's favor and cannot be received unless the hour of receiving it has come, whoever, remaining in Christ, withdraws in the meantime does not deny the faith, but awaits the time: but he who fell because he did not withdraw remained as one who was going to deny.

The truth must not be concealed, most beloved brethren, nor must the matter and cause of our wound be passed over in silence. A blind love of their patrimony deceived many, and those whom their possessions bound as with fetters could not be ready or prepared to withdraw. Those were the chains remaining for those who stayed behind, those were the shackles by which virtue was slowed, faith pressed down, the mind bound, and the soul shut fast, so that they who clung to earthly things became prey and food for the serpent who, according to God's sentence, devours the earth. And therefore the Lord, the teacher of good things and one who forewarns of the future, says: If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. If the rich were to do this, they would not perish through their riches; laying up treasure in heaven, they would not now have an enemy and domestic assailant.

The heart and mind and thought would be in heaven, if the treasure were in heaven; nor could one be conquered by the world who had nothing in the world by which he might be conquered. He would follow the Lord, loosed and free, as the Apostles did, and after the Apostles many, and some often, who, having forsaken both their possessions and their parents, clung to Christ with bonds that could not be severed.

But how can those who are held fast by the chain of their patrimony follow Christ? Or how do they seek heaven and ascend to things sublime and lofty, who are weighed down by earthly desires? They believe they possess, who are rather possessed; servants of their estate, not masters of their money, but rather enslaved to their wealth. The Apostle marks out this age and these men, saying: But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many unprofitable and hurtful desires, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evils, which some coveting have erred from the faith and have entangled themselves in many sorrows. But with what rewards does the Lord invite us to contempt of worldly goods? With what recompenses does he weigh these small and slight losses of the present time?

There is no man, he says, who leaveth house or field, or parents or brethren, or wife or children, for the kingdom of God, and doth not receive seven times as much in this time, and in the world to come life everlasting. These things being known and ascertained from the truth of the Lord who promises, such loss is not only not to be feared but even to be desired, the Lord himself again declaring and warning: Blessed shall you be when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day and be glad; for behold, your reward is great in heaven.

But torments came afterward; and grievous tortures threatened those who resisted. Can one who was overcome by torments complain of torments? Can one who was conquered in pain put forward the excuse of pain? Can such a one plead and say: "I wished indeed to fight bravely, and, mindful of my oath, I took up the arms of devotion and of faith; but in the struggle as I fought, varied tortures and prolonged punishments overcame me. My mind stood firm and my faith strong, and my soul long wrestled unmoved against the pains that racked it; but when, as the savagery of the most cruel judge grew fiercer, the scourges now tore my already wearied body, now clubs bruised it, now the rack stretched it, now the claw dug into it, now fire scorched it, my flesh forsook me in the contest, the weakness of my body gave way, and it was not my spirit but my body that failed under the pain." Such a plea can quickly advance toward pardon. Such an excuse can be a pitiable one.

It was thus that the Lord once forgave Castus and Aemilius; thus he made those who were overcome in the first encounter victors in the second battle, so that they who had previously yielded to the flames became stronger against the flames, and overcame by that very means by which they had been overcome. They pleaded not with the compassion of tears but of wounds, not with lamentation of voice alone, but with the laceration of their body and their pain. Blood flowed in place of weeping, and gore streamed from their half-burned flesh in place of tears.

But now what wounds can the conquered show, what gaping gashes of torn flesh, what torments of their members, where faith did not fall after engaging in combat, but treachery forestalled the engagement? Nor does the necessity of the crime excuse one who is oppressed, where the crime is one of the will. Nor do I say this in order to burden the cases of the brethren, but rather to urge the brethren more strongly to the prayer of satisfaction: for, since it is written, They that call you blessed lead you into error and disturb the paths of your feet, he who soothes a sinner with flattering blandishments supplies fuel for sinning; nor does he suppress offenses, but nourishes them. But he who with stronger counsel at once rebukes and instructs his brother promotes him toward salvation. Those whom I love, says the Lord, I rebuke and chastise. So too must God's priest not deceive with beguiling compliance, but provide with healing remedies.

That physician is unskilled who handles the swollen cavities of wounds with a sparing hand, and, while he preserves the poison shut up in the deep recesses of the flesh, aggravates it. The wound must be opened and cut, and, the putrid matter being removed, healed with a stronger remedy. Though the impatient sick man may cry out and complain through pain, he will give thanks afterward when he feels his health restored.

For there has arisen, most beloved brethren, a new kind of calamity; and, as if the storm of persecution had not raged enough, there has been added to the heap, under the title of mercy, a deceitful evil and a beguiling destruction. Against the vigor of the Gospel, against the law of the Lord and God, communion is rashly granted by certain persons to the unwary—a void and false peace, dangerous to those who give it and of no profit to those who receive it. They do not seek the patience of healing, nor the true medicine of satisfaction. Penitence is driven from their hearts, the memory of a most grave and extreme offense is removed. The wounds of the dying are covered over; and the deadly blow fixed deep in the inward parts, the pain being dissembled, is concealed. Returning from the altars of the devil, they approach the holy place of the Lord with defiled and infected hands, still reeking with the stench of idols.

Even now breathing forth their crime from their jaws and exhaling the deadly contagion, they invade the body of the Lord—when the divine Scripture meets them and cries out and says: Every clean person shall eat of the flesh; but the soul that eateth of the flesh of the sacrifice of peace-offerings that pertain unto the Lord, having his uncleanness upon him, even that soul shall be cut off from his people. The Apostle likewise testifies and says: You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; you cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord and of the table of devils. The same threatens and warns the stubborn and obstinate, saying: Whosoever shall eat this bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord.

All these things being despised and disregarded, before offenses are expiated, before confession of the crime is made, before the conscience is purged by sacrifice and the hand of the priest, before the offense against the Lord who is angered and threatening is appeased, violence is done to his body and blood, and they now sin against the Lord more with hands and mouth than when they denied the Lord. They think that to be peace which certain persons sell with deceitful words. That is not peace, but war; nor is he joined to the Church who is separated from the Gospel. Why do they call an injury a benefit? Why do they designate impiety by the name of piety? Why do those who ought to weep continually and entreat their Lord, with the lamentation of penitence cut short, pretend to communicate? Such persons are to the lapsed what hail is to crops, what a baleful star is to trees, what a pestilent devastation is to herds, what a fierce tempest is to ships.

They take away the consolation of eternal hope, they overturn the tree from its root, they creep with diseased speech to a deadly contagion, they dash the ship upon the rocks so that it may not reach port. This facility does not grant peace but takes it away, nor does it bestow communion, but hinders salvation. This is another persecution and another temptation, through which the subtle enemy advances with hidden ravaging still to assail the lapsed, so that lamentation may cease, that grief may be silent, that the memory of the offense may fade away, that the groaning of hearts may be suppressed, that the weeping of eyes may be stayed, and that the Lord, gravely offended, may not be entreated with long and full penitence—since it is written: Remember whence thou art fallen, and do penance.

Let no man deceive himself, let no man delude himself. The Lord alone can show mercy. He alone can grant pardon for sins committed against himself, who bore our sins, who grieved for us, whom God delivered up for our sins. Man cannot be greater than God; nor can a servant by his own indulgence remit or forgive what has been committed against the Lord in a graver offense, lest this also be added to the crime of one still lapsed, if he knows not that it has been foretold: Cursed is the man that trusteth in man. The Lord must be prayed to, the Lord must be appeased by our satisfaction—he who said that he would deny the denier, who alone received all judgment from the Father. We believe indeed that the merits of martyrs and the works of the just can avail much with the judge, but when the day of judgment shall come, when, after the end of this age and world, his people shall stand before the tribunal of Christ.

But if anyone, rash with precipitate haste, thinks he can grant remission of sins to all, or dares to rescind the precepts of the Lord, he not only profits nothing but even harms the lapsed. It is to have provoked wrath, not to have observed the sentence, and not to think that God's mercy must first be entreated, but, with contempt of the Lord, to presume upon one's own power. Under the altar of God the souls of the slain martyrs cry with a loud voice, saying: How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and revenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And they are bidden to rest and to keep patience yet a while. And does anyone suppose that a man can become a benefactor by remitting and granting pardon for sins on all sides, wishing to act against the judge, or that he can defend others before he himself is avenged?

The martyrs enjoin that something be done; but only if it is just, if it is lawful, if it is not to be done by God's priest against the Lord himself, if the compliance of the one who obeys is easy and ready, if the moderation of the one who petitions is devout. The martyrs enjoin that something be done; but if what they enjoin is not written in the law of the Lord, we must first know that they have obtained from God what they request, and then do what they enjoin. For that cannot straightway appear to have been granted by the divine majesty which has been promised by a human pledge.

For Moses also made petition for the sins of the people, yet when he had petitioned he did not obtain pardon for those who sinned: I beseech thee, he said, O Lord, this people hath sinned a great sin, and they have made to themselves gods of gold; and now either forgive them this trespass, or if thou do not, strike me out of the book that thou hast written. And the Lord said to Moses: He that hath sinned against me, him will I strike out of my book. That friend of God, he who spoke face to face with the Lord many times, could not obtain what he asked, nor did his intercession appease the offense of the indignant God. God praises and commends Jeremiah, saying: Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I made thee a prophet unto the nations.

And to the same man interceding and praying more frequently for the sins of the people, he says: Pray not thou for this people, neither lift up prayer nor entreaty for them, for I will not hear them in the time wherein they shall call upon me, in the time of their affliction. What man was more just than Noah, who, when the earth was filled with sins, was found alone just upon the earth? What more glorious than Daniel? What more robust than he in firmness of faith for enduring martyrdoms, more blessed in God's favor, who as often as he contended conquered, and as often as he conquered survived? What more prompt than Job in works, more strong in temptations, more patient in pain, more humble in fear, more true in faith? Yet God said that he would not grant pardon even to these, if they should intercede.

When the prophet Ezekiel was interceding for the sin of the people, he said: The land that sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, I will stretch out mine hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it. Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver neither sons nor daughters; they only shall be delivered themselves. So entirely is it the case that not everything that is asked is in the judgment of the one who asks, but in the discretion of the one who gives; nor does human sentence claim and arrogate anything to itself, unless the divine authority also assents.

In the Gospel the Lord speaks, saying: Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me, him will I also deny. If he does not deny the one who denies, neither does he confess the one who confesses. The Gospel cannot stand in one part and waver in another: either both must hold good, or both must lose the force of truth. If those who deny shall not be guilty of the crime, neither shall those who confess receive the reward of virtue. Furthermore, if the faith that has conquered is crowned, it is necessary that the faithlessness that has been conquered be punished. Thus the martyrs either can do nothing, if the Gospel can be dissolved, or if the Gospel cannot be dissolved, those who become martyrs by reason of the Gospel cannot act against the Gospel. Let no one, dearest brethren, let no one dishonour the dignity of the martyrs, let no one destroy their glories and their crowns.

The strength of their uncorrupted faith remains unimpaired; nor can one speak or do anything against Christ, whose every hope and faith and virtue and glory is in Christ. That bishops should act against the commandment of God, those cannot be the authors of it who themselves have fulfilled the commandments of God. Or is anyone greater than God, or more merciful than divine goodness, who would either wish that what God has suffered to be done should be undone, or thinks that we can be saved by his help, as though God had less power to protect His Church?

Unless perhaps these things were done without God's knowledge, or all these things came to pass without His permission, since the divine Scripture teaches the unteachable and admonishes the forgetful, speaking and saying: Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to those who plundered him? Was it not God, against whom they sinned? And they would not walk in his ways, nor hear his law: and he poured upon them the fury of his anger. And elsewhere He testifies and says: Is the hand of God too short to save, or has he made his ear heavy that he cannot hear? But your sins have separated between you and God, and because of your transgressions has he turned his face from you, that he will not have mercy. Let us rather reckon our own sins, turning over our deeds and the secrets of our mind, let us weigh the merits of our conscience.

Let it return to our heart that we have not walked in the ways of the Lord and have cast aside the law of God, and have never been willing to keep His precepts and saving admonitions.

What good opinion can you have of one in whom there was no fear, what faith can you believe him to have had whom not even dread could correct, whom the persecution itself did not reform? The neck, held high and erect, was not bowed even because it had fallen. The swelling and proud spirit was not broken even because it was vanquished. Lying wounded, he marvels at those who stand firm and whole; and the sacrilegious man rages against the priests because he does not immediately receive the body of the Lord with defiled hands, or drink the blood of the Lord with a polluted mouth. And, O your exceeding madness, O frenzied one! You rage against him who strives to turn away the wrath of God from you; you threaten him who entreats the mercy of the Lord on your behalf, who feels your wound which you yourself do not feel, who pours out tears for you which perhaps you yourself do not pour out.

You heap up and accumulate your guilt yet further; and while you yourself are implacable toward the bishops and priests of God, do you think the Lord can be appeased toward you?

Rather receive and admit what we say. Why do deaf ears not hear the saving precepts which we urge? Why do blind eyes not see the path of penitence which we point out? Why does a stricken and alienated mind not perceive the vital remedies which we both learn and teach from the heavenly Scriptures? Or if some unbelievers have less faith in things to come, let them at least be terrified by things present. Behold, what punishments we see upon those who have denied, whose sad ends we mourn! Nor can they be without punishment even here, although the day of punishment has not yet come. Some are chastised in the meantime, so that the rest may be corrected. The torments of the few are examples for all.

One of those who of his own will went up to the Capitol to deny, after he had denied Christ became dumb. The punishment began where the crime also began; so that he could no longer pray who had no words for the mercy of prayer. Another woman, while in the baths (for this was lacking to her guilt and her evils, that she who had lost the grace of the life-giving washing should straightway go to the baths), was there seized by an unclean spirit and began to bite and tear with her teeth the tongue with which she had either impiously eaten or spoken. After the wicked food was consumed, the madness of her mouth was armed for her own destruction. She herself became her own executioner, nor could she survive long thereafter: tormented by pains of the belly and bowels, she perished.

Hear, with me present as witness, what happened. Parents who were fleeing, in their frightened haste taking less thought, left their little daughter in the care of a nurse; the nurse carried the abandoned child to the magistrates. They gave her, at the idol where the people were gathering, since she was too young in age to eat flesh, bread mixed with wine, which itself had been left over from the sacrifice. The mother afterwards received her daughter back. But the girl could no more speak and tell of the deed that had been committed than she had previously been able to understand or prevent it. Thus it came about through ignorance that when we were offering sacrifice the mother brought her in with her.

But the girl, mingled among the holy ones, unable to bear our prayer and supplication, began now to be shaken with weeping, now to be tossed about in a wavering tumult of mental agitation, and as though compelled by a torturer, by such signs as she could make, the young soul, still simple in her early years, was confessing the consciousness of what had been done. But when, the solemnities being completed, the deacon began to offer the cup to those present, and when her turn came among those receiving, the little girl, by the instinct of the divine majesty, turned away her face, pressed her mouth shut with closed lips, and refused the cup. Nevertheless the deacon persisted, and though she resisted poured into her mouth from the sacrament of the cup. Then followed sobbing and vomiting. The Eucharist could not remain in a body and mouth that had been violated. The drink sanctified in the blood of the Lord burst forth from the polluted bowels. So great is the power of the Lord, so great His majesty!

The secrets of darkness were detected in His light; the hidden crimes did not escape the priest of God.

This happened in the case of an infant who had not yet reached the age to speak of another's crime against herself. But she who, of mature age and in her more adult years, crept in secretly while we were offering sacrifice, taking not food but a sword to herself, and admitting as it were certain deadly poisons within her throat and breast, began thereafter to be choked and to be shut in with her soul seething within her. And suffering the pressure not now of persecution but of her own sin, she fell palpitating and trembling. The crime of a dissembled conscience was not long unpunished or hidden. She who had deceived men found God as her avenger. And when she attempted to open with unworthy hands a certain box of hers in which was the holy thing of the Lord, fire rising from it frightened her away from daring to touch it.

And indeed another person, because he too, defiled by sacrifice, dared to take secretly a portion along with the rest when the sacrifice was being celebrated by the priest, found that he was carrying ashes when he opened his hands.

It has been shown by this evidence that the Lord departs when He is denied, and that what is received profits the unworthy nothing toward salvation, since the saving grace is changed into ashes when holiness has fled. How many every day, not doing penance, not confessing the consciousness of their sin, are filled with unclean spirits; how many are shaken with the fury of madness, out of their minds with raving! Nor is it necessary to go through the ends of each individual, since through the manifold ruin of the world the punishment of sins is as varied as the number of sinners is great. Let each one consider, not what another has suffered, but what he himself deserves to suffer. And let him not think he has escaped, if the punishment has been deferred for a time, since he ought to fear the more what the wrath of the Judge God has reserved for him.

Nor let those flatter themselves so as not to do penance who, though they have not defiled their hands with the abominable sacrifices, have nevertheless polluted their conscience with certificates. That profession of one who denies is the testimony of a Christian renouncing what he had been. He declared himself to have done whatever another committed by doing. And since it is written, You cannot serve two masters, he served the worldly master who obeyed his edict; he obeyed human authority more than God. Let him consider whether with less shame or less guilt he has made public before men what he admitted. Yet he will not be able to flee and avoid God as judge, since the Holy Spirit says in the Psalms: Your eyes have seen my imperfect being, and in your book all shall be written. And again: Man looks on the face, but God looks on the heart. The Lord Himself also forewarns and forearms, saying: And all the churches shall know that I am he who searches reins and hearts.

He sees hidden things, and considers secret and concealed matters. Nor can anyone escape the eyes of God who says: I am a God at hand, and not a God afar off. If a man be hidden in secret places, shall I not therefore see him? Do not I fill heaven and earth? He sees the hearts and breasts of each one, and being about to judge not only deeds but also words and thoughts, He beholds the minds and purposes conceived by all, still in the hiding places of the closed breast.

Finally, how much greater in faith and better in fear are those who, though bound by no crime of sacrifice or certificate, yet because they even thought of this, confessing this very thing to the priests of God with grief and simplicity, make exomologesis of their conscience, lay bare the burden of their soul, seek the saving remedy for wounds however small and slight, knowing that it is written: God is not mocked. God cannot be mocked and circumvented, nor deluded by any deceiving cunning. He sins the more who, thinking of God after the manner of men, believes he will escape the punishment of his crime if he has not committed the crime openly. Christ says in His precepts: Whosoever shall be ashamed of me, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed. And does he think himself a Christian who is either ashamed or afraid to be a Christian? How can he be with Christ who is either ashamed or afraid to belong to Christ?

He has plainly sinned less by not looking upon idols, and by not profaning the holiness of his faith before the eyes of the surrounding and mocking people, and by not defiling his hands with deadly sacrifices, nor staining his mouth with wicked foods. This avails him to the extent that his guilt is lesser, not that his conscience is innocent. He can more easily attain to pardon for his crime. Yet he is not free from crime. Nor let him cease in doing penance and in entreating the mercy of the Lord, lest what seems to be less in the quality of the sin be increased by neglected satisfaction.

Let each one confess his sin, I beseech you, dearest brethren, while he who has sinned is still in this world, while his confession can be admitted, while the satisfaction and remission made through the priests is pleasing to the Lord. Let us turn to the Lord with our whole heart; and, expressing penitence for our crime with true grief, let us entreat the mercy of God. Let the soul prostrate itself before Him, let sorrow make satisfaction to Him, let all hope rest upon Him. He Himself tells us how we ought to pray: Return, He says, to me with all your heart, and likewise with fasting and weeping and mourning; and rend your hearts, and not your garments. Let us return to the Lord with our whole heart. Let us appease His wrath and offence with fasting, tears, and mourning, as He Himself admonishes.

Do we think we are lamenting with our whole heart, entreating the Lord with fasts, tears, and wailing, when from the first day of the crime one celebrates daily baths with women, when one, fed with abundant feasts and distended with more generous stuffing, belches forth his indigestion the next day, and does not share his food and drink with the need of the poor? How does one who walks about cheerful and glad mourn his own death? And when it is written, Ye shall not corrupt the form of your beard, he plucks his beard and adorns his face? And does he now strive to please anyone who displeases God? Or does she groan and lament, she who has leisure to put on the adornment of costly dress and not to think of the garment of Christ which she has lost, to receive precious ornaments and elaborately wrought necklaces, and not to weep over the loss of the divine and heavenly adornment? You, though you put on foreign garments and silken robes, are naked.

Though you deck yourself with gold and pearls and gems, without the beauty of Christ you are deformed. And you who dye your hair, cease now at least in your sorrows; and you who with the tracing of black powder paint the outlines of your eyes, wash your eyes now at least with tears. If you had lost some dear one of yours by the departure of death, you would groan sorrowfully and weep, with face unkempt, garment changed, hair neglected, countenance clouded, mouth downcast, you would show signs of grief. Your soul, wretched one, you have lost; spiritually dead, you have begun to survive here and yourself walking to carry your own funeral; and you do not weep bitterly, you do not groan continually, you do not hide yourself either by shame for your crime or by unbroken lamentation! Behold still worse wounds of sinning, behold greater offences: to have sinned and not to make satisfaction, to have transgressed and not to weep over transgressions.

Ananias, Azarias, Misahel, illustrious and noble youths, did not cease from making confession to God even amid the flames and the burning of the blazing furnace. Though well conscious of their own merit and having often deserved well of the Lord by the service of faith and fear, they nevertheless held fast to humility and did not cease to make satisfaction to the Lord even amid the very glorious martyrdoms of their virtues. The divine Scripture speaks: Standing, it says, Azarias prayed, and opened his mouth, and made confession to God together with his companions in the midst of the fire.

Daniel also, after the manifold grace of his faith and innocence, after the favour of the Lord toward his virtues and praises so often repeated, still strives to deserve well of God by fasts, rolls himself in sackcloth and ashes, making confession sorrowfully and saying: The Lord God is great and mighty and to be feared, who keepest thy covenant and mercies toward them that love thee and keep thy commandments; we have sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have been impious, we have transgressed, and have forsaken thy precepts and thy judgments; we have not hearkened to the words of thy servants the Prophets who spoke in thy name to our kings and all peoples and to all the land. To thee, O Lord, justice, but to us confusion.

These things the meek, the simple, the innocent did in deserving well of the majesty of God; and now those who denied the Lord refuse to make satisfaction and to entreat the Lord! I beseech you, brethren, yield to wholesome remedies, obey better counsels; join your tears with our tears, unite your groans with our groaning. We ask you, that we may be able to ask God on your behalf. We turn those very prayers to you first, with which we pray God to have mercy on you. Perform full penance, prove the sadness of a grieving and lamenting soul.

Let not the improvident error or the vain stupor of certain persons move you, who, though held in so grave a crime, have been struck with blindness of mind, so that they neither understand their offences nor weep over them. This is the greater plague of God in his indignation, as it is written: And God gave them a spirit of compunction. And again: They received not the love of truth that they might be saved; and therefore God shall send them the operation of error, that they should believe a lie, that all may be judged who believed not the truth, but took pleasure in iniquity. Those who take pleasure in themselves unjustly and, struck with the alienation of a compunction-stricken mind, are maddened, despise the commandments of the Lord, neglect the healing of their wound, are unwilling to perform penance. Improvident before the commission of the deed, obstinate after the deed; neither steadfast before, nor suppliant afterward.

When they ought to have stood, they fell; when they ought to lie prostrate and cast themselves down before God, they think themselves to be standing. They took peace for themselves of their own accord, with no one giving it. Seduced by a false promise and joined to apostates and traitors, they receive error in place of truth. They count the communion of those not in communion as valid; they believe men against God, who did not believe God against men.

Flee from persons of this kind as much as you can; clinging to their pernicious contacts, avoid them with wholesome caution. Their word creeps like a cancer, their conversation leaps across like contagion, their harmful and poisoned persuasion kills worse than persecution itself. There, penance remains which may make satisfaction; but those who take away penance for a crime close the way of satisfaction. Thus it comes about that, while by the rashness of certain persons either a false salvation is permitted or believed, the hope of true salvation is taken away.

But you, most beloved brethren, whose fear is inclined toward God, and whose mind, though set in ruin, is mindful of its evil: repenting and grieving, look upon your sins, acknowledge the most grievous crime of your conscience, open the eyes of your heart to the understanding of your transgression, neither despairing of the mercy of the Lord, nor yet already claiming pardon. God, as much as with a father's tenderness he is always indulgent and good, so much with the majesty of a judge is he to be feared. As greatly as we have sinned, so greatly let us weep. Let not diligent and prolonged medicine be wanting for a deep wound. Let penance not be less than the crime. Do you think the Lord can quickly be appeased, whom you denied with faithless words, to whom you preferred your patrimony, whose temple you violated with sacrilegious pollution? Do you think he will easily have mercy on you, whom you said was not yours?

It is necessary to pray more earnestly and to entreat, to pass the day in mourning, to spend the nights in vigils and tears, to occupy all time with tearful lamentations, to lie prostrate clinging to the ground, to roll in ashes and sackcloth and filth, after losing the garment of Christ to wish no longer for any clothing, after the food of the devil to prefer fasting, to apply oneself to just works by which sins are cleansed, to press frequently upon almsgiving by which souls are freed from death. Let Christ receive what the adversary was taking away.

Nor ought patrimony now to be held or loved, by which one has been both deceived and conquered. It is a thing to be avoided as an enemy, to be fled as a robber, to be feared as a sword by those who possess it, and as poison: it will have profited thus far only that what remains may redeem the crime and the fault. Let the work be done without delay and generously, let all one's wealth be spent on the healing of the wound, let the Lord who is to judge us be lent to from our riches and resources. Thus faith flourished under the Apostles: thus the first people of believers kept the commandments of Christ. They were prompt, they were generous, they gave everything to be distributed through the Apostles, and they were not redeeming such offences as these.

If anyone makes prayer with his whole heart, if he groans with true lamentations and tears of penance, if he bends the Lord to pardon his transgression by just and continual works, he who has set forth his mercy can have mercy on such persons, saying: When thou shalt have turned and groaned, then shalt thou be saved, and thou shalt know where thou hast been. And again: I desire not the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord, but rather that he should be converted and live. And the prophet Joel declares the piety of the Lord, the Lord himself admonishing: Return, he says, to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and gracious and patient and of great compassion, and who turneth his sentence against the evils inflicted. He is able to grant pardon, he is able to turn aside his sentence.

To one who repents, who works, who prays, he can mercifully forgive; he can count as accepted whatever the martyrs have both asked and done on behalf of such persons, and whatever the priests have done. Or if anyone shall have moved him more by his own satisfactions, if by just supplication he shall have appeased his wrath, the offence of his indignation, he gives arms again by which the one who was conquered may be armed, he repairs and strengthens the powers by which renewed faith may be invigorated. The soldier will resume his combat, will renew the battle line, will challenge the enemy, and indeed made stronger for the fight through his sorrow.

He who shall have thus made satisfaction to God, who through penance for his deed, through shame for his transgression, shall have conceived more both of virtue and of faith from the very sorrow of his lapse, heard and aided by the Lord, will make the Church glad, which he had lately saddened; nor will he merely deserve the pardon of God, but also the crown.