On Repentance

But if they acted as those possessed of God and therefore of reason as well, they would first weigh the merits of repentance, and would never apply it as an instrument of perverse amendment; they would also moderate the measure of repenting, because they would also hold the measure of sinning; fearing the Lord, that is. But where there is no fear, there is likewise no amendment. Where there is no amendment, repentance is of necessity vain: because it lacks its own fruit, for which God sowed it, that is, the salvation of man. For God, after so many and so great sins of human recklessness, begun from Adam, the first of the race, after man was condemned along with the endowment of the age, after he was cast out of paradise and made subject to death, when He had again ripened toward His own mercy, even then dedicated repentance within Himself, having rescinded the sentence of former wrath, having covenanted to pardon His own work and image.

And so He gathered a people to Himself, nourished them with many gifts of His goodness, and, though He had found them most ungrateful so many times, always urged them to repentance. He also sent forth the mouths of all the prophets in prophecy, and, having soon promised the grace which He was to illumine for the whole world in the last times through His Spirit, commanded that the washing of repentance go before, so that those whom He called through grace to the promise destined for the seed of Abraham He might first prepare through the seal of repentance.

John is not silent, saying, Enter into repentance: for salvation was now drawing near to the nations—the Lord, that is, bringing it according to God's promise; and, ministering before Him, John appointed repentance for the cleansing of minds, so that whatever the old error had defiled, whatever ignorance had contaminated in the heart of man, repentance might sweep, scrape, and cast it out, and prepare a clean dwelling of the breast for the coming Holy Spirit, into which He might gladly bring Himself with heavenly goods.

Of these goods there is one title: the salvation of man, with the prior abolition of former sins. This is the cause of repentance; this is the work attending to the business of divine mercy: what profits man serves God. Moreover, its principle, which we learn upon knowing the Lord, holds a fixed form, so that no violent hand, as it were, is ever laid upon good deeds or good thoughts; for God does not hold the rejection of good things as valid, inasmuch as they are His own, of which, since He is both author and defender, He must likewise be the acceptor; if the acceptor, also the rewarder. Let the ingratitude of men see to it, then, if it compels repentance even for good deeds. Let gratitude also see to it, if the pursuit of it is an incentive to doing good—both earthly, both mortal. For how small the gain, if you have done good to a grateful person? Or the loss, if to an ungrateful one?

A good deed has God as its debtor, just as an evil deed does: because every judge is a rewarder of the cause. But since God as judge presides over justice, which He holds most dear, to exact and defend it, and sanctions in it the whole sum of His discipline: is it to be doubted that, just as in all our other acts, so also in the matter of repentance, justice must be rendered to God? Which indeed can be fulfilled only if repentance is applied to sins alone. Now sin deserves to be called nothing other than an evil deed; nor does anyone sin by doing good. But if he does not sin, why does he rush into repentance—the private property of sinners—why does he impose upon his goodness the office of malice? Thus it comes about that when something is applied where it ought not to be, it is neglected where it ought to be.

As for those things, then, whose repentance seems just and due—that is, what ought to be reckoned as transgression—the context demands that they be noted, though it may seem superfluous. For upon knowing the Lord, the spirit, looked upon by its own author, spontaneously rises to the knowledge of truth, and being admitted to the Lord's precepts, is straightway instructed by them that what God forbids is to be reckoned as sin. Since it is established that God is something great, surely nothing but evil would displease One who is good, for between contraries there is no friendship. Yet it will not be irksome to touch briefly upon the point that some sins are carnal, that is, bodily, while others are spiritual. For since man is made up of this gathering of a twofold substance, he sins from no other source than that from which he is constituted.

But they do not differ from each other in the sense that body and spirit are two things: on the contrary, they are all the more equal in that the two make one—lest anyone, on account of the diversity of their materials, distinguish their sins, so as to judge one lighter or graver than the other. For both flesh and spirit are God's property: the one expressed by His hand; the other completed by His breath. Since, therefore, they belong equally to the Lord: whatever of them has sinned offends the Lord equally. Would you distinguish the acts of flesh and spirit? Between which, both in life and in death and in resurrection, there is such great communion and fellowship, that they are then raised together either unto life or unto judgment: because, that is, they have either sinned or acted innocently together. We have set this forth beforehand, so that we may understand that no less a necessity of repentance hangs over one part than over both parts, if either has sinned.

The guilt of both is common, and the judge is common—God, that is: therefore the remedy of repentance is common as well. Thence they are called spiritual and bodily, because every sin is either committed or thought, so that it is bodily when it consists in a deed: because a deed, like a body, can be seen and touched. But that which is in the mind is spiritual, because a spirit is neither seen nor held; by which it is shown that not only the sins of deed but also those of the will must be avoided and purged by repentance. For even if human mediocrity judges only deeds, because it is not equal to the hidden recesses of the will, we should not on that account neglect its offenses even under God, since God suffices for all things. Nothing is removed from His sight, from which any sin at all is committed. Because He neither ignores nor overlooks, He does not fail to decide in judgment. He is not a dissembler or a betrayer of His own perspicacity.

What of the fact that the will is the origin of the deed? For let those cases be considered where something is imputed to chance, or necessity, or ignorance: with these exceptions, sin is committed only by the will. Since, therefore, it is the origin of the deed, is it not all the more liable to punishment in proportion as it is primary in guilt?—which is not even then freed when some difficulty intercepts its execution. For it is imputed to itself, nor can it be excused through that unhappy failure of completion, having done what was its own part. Finally, how does the Lord show that He is building an addition upon the law, unless by also forbidding the sins of the will? When He defines as an adulterer not only him who has fallen directly into another's marriage, but also him who has defiled himself with the lust of his gaze: so much so that the mind dangerously represents to itself what is forbidden to be carried out, and rashly through the will accomplishes the effect.

Since the force of this will is so great, that its self-satisfying consolation passes for a deed, it shall therefore be punished. It is most vain to say: I willed it, yet did not do it. But indeed you ought to carry it out because you will it: or else not even will it, because you do not carry it out. But you yourself pronounce judgment by the confession of your own conscience. For if you had desired something good, you would have been eager to carry it out; and further, just as you do not carry out the evil, so you ought not to have desired it. Wherever you place yourself, you are bound by guilt, because you have either willed evil, or have not fulfilled good.

For all sins then, whether committed in flesh or in spirit, whether in deed or in will, He who has destined punishment through judgment has likewise pledged pardon through repentance, saying to the people: Repent, and I will save you. And again, I live, says the Lord, and I prefer repentance to death. Therefore repentance is life, since it is set before death. You, sinner, like me (indeed less than me, for I acknowledge my own preeminence in sins), seize upon it, embrace it thus, as a shipwrecked man trusts to some plank. This will lift you up as you are submerged in the waves of sins, and will carry you forward into the harbor of divine clemency.

Seize the occasion of unexpected happiness, so that you, who once were nothing before God—save a drop of a bucket, and dust of a threshing-floor, and a potter's vessel—may thenceforth become that tree which is planted by the waters, and is ever green in its leaves, and bears fruit in its season, which shall see neither fire nor axe. Let there be repentance for errors, now that truth has been found; repentance for having loved what God does not love, since we ourselves do not even permit our own little servants to fail to hate those things by which we are offended. For the principle of obedience is established in the likeness of minds. On the subject of enumerating the good of repentance, the material is wide-ranging and therefore to be entrusted to great eloquence. But we, within our own narrow limits, press home one point: that what God has commanded is good and most good. I consider it presumptuous to dispute about the goodness of a divine precept.

For it is not because it is good that we ought to obey; but because God has commanded it. For the rendering of obedience, the majesty of divine power comes first: the authority of the one commanding comes before the utility of the one serving. Is repentance good, or is it not? Why do you turn it over? God commands it. Moreover, He does not merely command; He also exhorts. He invites with the reward of salvation, swearing—even saying "I live"—He desires to be believed. O how blessed are we, for whose sake God swears! O how most wretched, if we do not believe even the Lord when He swears! What God therefore so greatly commends, what He also attests after the human manner under an oath, we ought to undertake and to keep with the utmost seriousness, so that, persevering in the assurance of divine grace, we may likewise be able to persevere in its fruit and benefit.

For I say this: that repentance, which has been shown and enjoined upon us through God's grace and calls us back into the Lord's favor, once it has been known and embraced, ought never thereafter to be annulled by the repetition of sin. Now indeed no pretext of ignorance pleads in your defense, in that after knowing the Lord and accepting His precepts, and having at last discharged repentance for your sins, you restore yourself to sins again. Thus in proportion as you are separated from ignorance, in that same measure you are glued to contumacy.

For if you had repented of having sinned because you had begun to fear the Lord, why did you prefer to undo what you had done out of regard for fear, unless because you ceased to fear? For nothing subverts fear except contumacy. Since even those who are ignorant of the Lord are shielded by no exception from punishment—because God, set forth in the open and comprehensible even from the heavenly blessings themselves, may not be ignored—how dangerous it is to despise Him once known! Moreover, he despises who, having obtained from Him the understanding of good and evil, takes up again what he understands must be fled and what he has already fled, and thereby does insult to his own understanding, that is, to God's gift: he rejects the giver when he abandons the gift, he denies the benefit when he does not honor the benefit. How can he please one whose gift displeases him? Thus he appears toward the Lord not only contumacious but also ungrateful.

Furthermore, he sins against the Lord not lightly, who, having by repentance renounced His adversary the devil, and on that account subjected him to the Lord, again raises up that same one by his return, and makes himself the occasion of his exultation, so that, being evil once more, having recovered his prey, he rejoices against the Lord. Does he not—what is dangerous even to say, yet must be brought forward for edification—set the devil before the Lord? For he seems to have made a comparison, who has known both, and to have pronounced by his judgment that one to be better whose he preferred again to be. Thus he who through repentance for sins had set out to make satisfaction to the Lord, by another repentance of repentance he will make satisfaction: and he will be so much the more hateful to God, as he is acceptable to His rival.

But some say that it is enough for God to be regarded with heart and mind, even if less is done in act. And so they sin with fear and faith preserved: that is, with chastity preserved they violate marriages, with piety preserved they prepare poison for a parent. So therefore they too, with pardon preserved, will be thrust into gehenna, while they sin with fear preserved. The first example of perversity is that because they fear, they transgress: I think they would not transgress if they did not fear. Therefore, let him who does not wish God to be offended not fear at all, if fear of offending is a defence. But these dispositions are wont to spring from the seed of hypocrites, whose friendship with the devil is inseparable, whose repentance is never sincere.

Whatever therefore our humble capacity has attempted to suggest concerning repentance—to be embraced once and maintained perpetually—regards indeed all who are devoted to the Lord, as seekers of all salvation in meriting God's favour, but it bears especially upon these novices. Who, just as they begin to irrigate their ears with the divine words, and who, like whelps of still recent infancy, with eyes not yet fully open, creep uncertainly; and they say indeed that they renounce their former ways, and they take up repentance, but they neglect to enclose it. For the very end of desire interrupts them, drawing them to long for something from their former life: just as fruits, when they begin to grow sour or bitter with age, still in some part flatter their own former pleasantness. Moreover, every fault of delay and evasion toward repentance is brought in by the presumption of baptism.

For being certain of undoubted pardon of sins, they steal the intervening time for themselves, and make for themselves a license for sinning, rather than an instruction in not sinning. How foolish, moreover, how unjust, not to fulfil repentance and yet to await pardon of sins—that is, not to offer the price, yet to reach out the hand for the merchandise! For the Lord has established to grant pardon at this price; by this compensation of repentance He sets forth impunity to be redeemed. If therefore those who sell first examine the coin by which they bargain, lest it be clipped, or filed, or even counterfeit: do we believe the Lord will first enter upon the testing of repentance before granting us so great a reward—namely, eternal life? But let us defer for a moment the truth of repentance. Then, I suppose, it will be clear that we are reformed, when we are absolved? By no means.

But when, with pardon still pending, punishment is kept in view, when we do not yet deserve to be freed so that we may deserve—when God threatens, not when He pardons. For what slave, after he has been changed by freedom, reckons up his thefts and flights against himself? What soldier, after he has been discharged from his unit, busies himself about his marks of disgrace? The sinner must weep for himself before pardon; because the time of repentance is that of danger and fear. Nor do I deny that the divine benefit—that is, the abolition of sins—is in every way preserved safe for those about to enter the water; but it must be laboured for, that one may attain to it. For who will grant to you, a man of such faithless repentance, even a single sprinkling of any water? To approach by stealth, and to lead astray the one set over this matter by your assurances, is easy enough. But God provides for His treasure, and does not allow the unworthy to creep in.

What does He say at last? Nothing is hidden that shall not be revealed. However great the darkness you have heaped over your deeds, God is light. But some think as though God were obliged to grant even to the unworthy what He has promised: and they make His liberality into servitude. But if by necessity He grants us the pledge of death—He does it therefore unwillingly: for who allows to remain what he has given unwillingly? Do not many afterwards fall away? Is not that gift taken away from many? These are they, of course, who creep in, who, having undertaken the pledge of repentance, build their house to fall upon sand. Let no one therefore flatter himself because he is counted among the novices of the hearers, as though it were still permissible for him to sin on that account. As soon as you have come to know the Lord, fear Him; as soon as you have looked upon Him, reverence Him.

Otherwise, what does it profit you to have known Him, when you lie upon the same things upon which you lay before in ignorance? But what separates you from the perfect servant of God? Is Christ one thing to the baptized, another to the hearers? Is the hope different, or the reward, or the dread of judgment, or the necessity of repentance? That washing is the seal of faith: which faith is begun and commended by the faith of repentance. We are not washed in order that we may cease from sinning, since we are already cleansed in heart. For this is the first baptism of the hearer: fear intact; thereafter, as long as you have perceived the Lord, faith sound, conscience having once embraced repentance. Otherwise, if we cease from sinning after the waters, we put on innocence by necessity, not by free will. Who then excels in goodness? He to whom it is not permitted, or he to whom it is displeasing to be evil? He who is commanded, or he who delights in being free from crime?

Let us therefore not turn our hands from theft, unless the hardness of locks resist us; nor restrain our eyes from the lusts of fornication, unless blocked by the guards of bodies—if no one devoted to the Lord will cease from sinning unless bound by baptism. But if anyone thinks thus, I know not whether, once baptized, he will be more grieved that he has ceased to sin, than he will rejoice that he has escaped. And so the hearers ought to desire baptism, not to presume upon it. For he who desires, honours; he who presumes, is proud. In the one modesty appears, in the other insolence. The one is diligent, the other negligent. The one desires to merit it, but the other promises it to himself as a debt; the one receives, the other seizes. Whom would you judge more worthy, if not the more reformed? Whom more reformed, if not the more fearful, and therefore one who has performed true repentance? For he feared still to sin, lest he should not deserve to receive.

But that presumptuous one, since he promised it to himself, being of course secure, could not fear: and so he did not fulfil repentance either, because he lacked the instrument of repentance, that is, fear. Presumption is a portion of shamelessness; it presses upon the petitioner, it despises the giver. And so it sometimes deceives. For it promises before it is owed, by which he who is to bestow is always offended.

Thus far, O Christ the Lord, may it fall to Thy servants to speak or hear concerning the discipline of repentance, only so far as it is also not fitting for the hearers to sin: or let them know nothing more of repentance, let them seek none of it. I am reluctant to append mention of the fruitful—nay, now the last—hope, lest by treating of the remaining aid of repentance, we seem to be pointing out yet further space for sinning. Far be it that anyone should so interpret it, as though the way to sinning still lay open to him because the way to repenting lies open; and that the abundance of heavenly clemency should make license for human rashness. Let no one be the worse for this, because God is better, sinning as often as he is forgiven. Otherwise he will certainly have an end of escaping, when he will have no end of offending. We have escaped once; thus far let us not thrust ourselves into dangers, even if we seem likely to escape again.

Very many who have been freed from shipwreck thereafter bid farewell both to ship and sea, and honour God's benefit—their own safety, that is—by the memory of the danger. I praise the fear, I love the modesty: they are unwilling to be a burden again to the divine mercy; they dread to seem to trample upon what they have obtained; with a good anxiety they avoid experiencing again what they once learned to fear. Thus the measure of rashness is a testimony of fear. But fear of man is honour of God. Yet that most persistent enemy never allows his malice to rest. Nay, he rages most especially when he perceives a man fully set free; he is most inflamed at the very moment he is being extinguished. He must needs grieve and groan when pardon of sins has been granted, when so many works of death in man have been demolished, when so many titles of his former condemnation have been erased.

He grieves that the very sinner, Christ's servant, is to judge him and his angels. And so he watches, attacks, besieges, to see if he can in any way strike the eyes with carnal concupiscence, or ensnare the mind with worldly enticements, or overthrow faith by dread of earthly power, or turn one aside from the sure path by perverse traditions: he does not fail in scandals, nor in temptations. God therefore, foreseeing these poisons of his, although the door of ignorance has been closed and the bolt of baptism fastened, has permitted something still to stand open. He has placed in the vestibule a second repentance, which may open to those who knock: but now once only, because now for the second time. But never more, because the next time it will be in vain. For is not even this once enough? You have what you no longer deserved; for you lost what you had received.

If the Lord's indulgence provides you the means to restore what you had lost, be grateful for the repeated benefit, let alone for the enlarged one: for it is greater to restore than to give; since it is more wretched to have lost than never to have received at all. But the mind must not straightway be cut down and undermined by despair, if anyone has become a debtor to a second repentance: let him indeed be sorry to sin again, but let him not be sorry to repent again; let him be sorry to be in danger again, but not to be delivered again. Let no one be ashamed; for a repeated illness requires a repeated remedy: you will have shown yourself grateful to the Lord if you do not refuse what the Lord offers you. You have offended, but you can still be reconciled. You have one to whom you may make satisfaction, and one who is indeed willing.

If you doubt this, unroll what the Spirit says to the Churches. He charges the Ephesians with having forsaken their first love; He reproaches the Thyatirans with fornication and eating of things sacrificed to idols; He accuses the Sardians of works not complete; He rebukes the Pergamenes for teaching perverse things; He chides the Laodiceans for trusting in riches: and yet He admonishes all to repentance, under threats indeed. But He would not threaten one who does not repent, if He did not pardon one who does repent. It is doubtful whether He has not also elsewhere shown this outpouring of His clemency. He says: shall not he who has fallen rise again, and he who has turned away be converted? He it is, He it is who desires mercy rather than sacrifices. The heavens rejoice, and the Angels who are there, at the repentance of a man. Come now, O sinner, be of good cheer; you see where joy is felt at your return. What do those arguments of the Lord's parables mean for us?

That a woman lost a coin and seeks it, and finds it, and invites her friends to rejoice—is this not an example of the restored sinner? One little sheep of the shepherd strays, but the flock was not dearer by one: that one is sought out, that one is desired above all, and at last is found, and is carried back on the shoulders of the shepherd himself: for it had laboured much in straying. I will not pass over in silence that most gentle father, who calls back his prodigal son, and willingly receives him repentant after his poverty, slaughters the fattest calf, adorns his joy with a feast. Why not? For he had found the son whom he had lost; he had found him dearer, whom he had gained back. Who is this father to be understood as by us? God, of course: no one so much a father, no one so merciful.

He therefore will receive you as His son—even if you have squandered what you received from Him, even if you return naked—because you have returned; and He will rejoice more over your return than over the sobriety of another. But only if you repent from the heart, if you compare your hunger with the fullness of your father's hired servants, if you leave the swine as an unclean herd, if you seek your father again even though offended, saying: I have sinned, father, and I am no longer worthy to be called yours. So greatly does confession of sins relieve, as dissimulation aggravates. For confession is the counsel of satisfaction, dissimulation is the counsel of contumacy.

Of this second and single repentance, therefore, the more confined the matter is, the more laborious the proof, so that it may not be brought forth by conscience alone, but may also be administered by some outward act. This act, which is more fully expressed and practised by its Greek name, is Exomologesis, by which we confess our sin to the Lord—not indeed as to one who is ignorant of it, but inasmuch as satisfaction is arranged by confession, by confession repentance is born, by repentance God is appeased.

Exomologesis is therefore a discipline of prostrating and humbling a man, enjoining a manner of life that draws forth mercy; with regard to dress and food alike it commands: to lie upon sackcloth and ashes, to cover the body with squalor, to cast down the soul with sorrows, to exchange by sad treatment those things in which one has sinned; moreover, to know food and drink as plain—for the sake of the soul, not of the belly, of course; for the most part indeed to nourish prayers with fasts, to groan, to weep, and to moan day and night to the Lord your God, to prostrate oneself before the presbyters, and to kneel before the dear ones of God, to enjoin upon all the brethren the embassies of their supplication.

All these things Exomologesis does, that it may commend repentance, that it may honour the Lord through fear of danger, that by itself pronouncing against the sinner it may act in place of God's indignation, and by temporal affliction may—I will not say frustrate, but—blot out eternal punishments. Therefore when it prostrates a man, it the more raises him up; when it makes him squalid, it renders him the more cleansed; when it accuses, when it condemns, it absolves. In proportion as you have not spared yourself, in that proportion God will spare you, believe me.

Yet I presume that many flee from this work, as from a publication of themselves, or put it off from day to day; more mindful of shame than of salvation: like those who, having contracted an affliction in the more private parts of the body, shun the knowledge of physicians. They hesitate, and so they perish together with their shame. Intolerable, forsooth, to modesty, to make satisfaction to an offended Lord, to be reformed unto an extended salvation. Well done, thou good modesty, spreading thy brow for sinning, yet withdrawing it for entreating. I make no room for shame, when I gain more from its loss, when shame itself in a manner exhorts the man, saying, Do not regard me; it is better for me that thou perish through thyself. Certainly its peril is then burdensome, if at all, when it consists among those who will mock in scornful talk, where one is exalted upon another's ruin, where one mounts over the prostrate.

But among brethren and fellow-servants, where there is a common hope, fear, joy, sorrow, suffering (because there is a common spirit from a common Lord and Father), what dost thou think these to be other than thyself? Why dost thou flee from the sharers of thy misfortunes as though they were applauders? The body cannot act cheerfully over the affliction of one member: the whole must suffer together, and labour together toward the remedy, of necessity. In one and another the Church is, and the Church is indeed Christ. Therefore when thou stretchest thyself at the knees of the brethren, thou touchest Christ, thou entreatest Christ. Likewise when they shed tears over thee, Christ suffers, Christ supplicates the Father. That which a son asks is always easily obtained. The concealment of sin plainly promises a great advantage to modesty. Forsooth, if we have withdrawn anything from human knowledge, shall we likewise hide it from God? Are the opinion of men and the conscience of God thus compared?

Or is it better to lie hidden under condemnation than to be openly absolved? It is a wretched thing to come to Exomologesis in such a manner. For one comes to wretchedness by a worse path, but where there is need of repentance it forsakes the wretched man: because it has become salutary. It is a wretched thing to be cut and burned with the cautery, and to be tormented by the biting of some powder: yet those things which heal through unpleasantness both excuse their offensiveness by the benefit of the cure, and commend the present injury by reason of the utility to come.

What if, besides the shame which they count of greater weight, they also shrink from the discomforts of the body, because one must dwell unwashed, squalid, and apart from joy, in the roughness of sackcloth, and the horror of ashes, and the emptiness of the mouth from fasting? Does it then befit us to supplicate for our sins in scarlet and Tyrian purple? Come, bring a pin for arranging the hair, and powder for polishing the teeth, and something two-pronged of iron or bronze for trimming the nails. If any artificial brightness, if any forced redness, press upon the lips or cheeks. Moreover seek out the more pleasant baths of a garden or seaside retreat: add to the expense; seek out the enormous fattening of fowls; clarify the old age of wine. And when someone asks to whom thou art lavishing these things: I have sinned, say thou, against God, and I am in danger of perishing eternally.

And so now I hang in suspense, and am worn down, and am tormented, that I may reconcile God to me, whom by sinning I have offended. But indeed those who go about canvassing for magistracies are neither ashamed nor reluctant to strive with discomforts of soul and body, and not with discomforts only, but with every kind of indignity, in the cause of their desires. What meannesses of dress do they not affect? What halls do they not occupy with nocturnal and early-morning salutations? At every encounter of any greater personage diminishing themselves, present at no banquets, gathered at no revels, but exiles from the happiness of liberty and joy. And all this for the fleeting joy of a single year. We, for what the petition of axes and rods sustains, do we hesitate to endure in the peril of eternity? And shall we cease to render to an offended Lord the chastisement of food and dress, which the gentiles impose upon themselves with no one at all offended?

These are they of whom Scripture makes mention: Woe to those who bind their sins as with a long rope.

If thou art drawing back from exomologesis, consider in thy heart the gehenna which exomologesis extinguishes for thee: and first imagine the greatness of the punishment, so that thou mayest not doubt about obtaining the remedy. How great do we reckon that treasury of eternal fire, when certain smoky vents of it stir up such blasts of flames that the nearest cities either no longer exist, or expect the same for themselves from day to day. The most proud mountains burst asunder from the fire breeding within: and what proves to us the perpetuity of the judgment, though they burst asunder, though they are devoured, they are yet never ended. Who will not reckon these torments of the mountains meanwhile as examples of a threatening judgment? Who will not agree that such sparks are certain missiles and practising javelins of some great and inestimable furnace? Therefore since thou knowest that against gehenna, after those first defences of the Lord's baptism, there are yet in exomologesis second aids, why dost thou abandon thy salvation?

Why dost thou delay to approach that which thou knowest heals thee? Dumb and irrational creatures recognise in due time the remedies divinely assigned to them. The stag, pierced by an arrow, knows that it must heal itself with dittany, in order to expel the iron and its irrevocable delays from the wound. The swallow, if it has blinded its chicks, knows how to restore their sight again with its own celandine. Shall a sinner, knowing the exomologesis instituted by the Lord for his own restoration, pass it by—that which restored the Babylonian king to his kingdoms? For he had long offered repentance to the Lord, performing exomologesis with seven years of squalor, with the savageness of his nails grown like a lion's, and the neglect of his hair presenting an eagle-like horror. O wretched treatment! Whom men shuddered at, God received.

On the other hand, the Egyptian ruler, who had long persecuted the people of God, once afflicted, long denied to their Lord, rushed into battle, and after so many proofs of the plagues, perished in the parting of the sea, which was passable for that people alone, when the waves rolled back. For he had cast away repentance and its ministry exomologesis. Why then further concerning these two planks, as it were, of human salvation, should I make it rather a matter of the pen than a duty of my own conscience? For since I am a sinner of every mark, and born for nothing but repentance, I cannot easily be silent about that which even Adam himself, the first both of the human race and of offence against the Lord, restored by exomologesis to his paradise, does not keep silent about.