Chapter IV.--Repentance Applicable to All the Kinds of Sin. To Be Practised Not Only, Nor Chiefly, for the Good It Brings, But Because God Commands It.
To all sins, then, committed whether by flesh or spirit, whether by deed or will, the same God who has destined penalty by means of judgment, has withal engaged to grant pardon by means of repentance, saying to the people, "Repent thee, and I will save thee;" [8440] and again, "I live, saith the Lord, and I will (have) repentance rather than death." [8441] Repentance, then, is "life," since it is preferred to "death." That repentance, O sinner, like myself (nay, rather, less than myself, for pre-eminence in sins I acknowledge to be mine [8442] ), do you so hasten to, so embrace, as a shipwrecked man the protection [8443] of some plank. This will draw you forth when sunk in the waves of sins, and will bear you forward into the port of the divine clemency. Seize the opportunity of unexpected felicity: that you, who sometime were in God's sight nothing but "a drop of a bucket," [8444] and "dust of the threshing-floor," [8445] and "a potter's vessel," [8446] may thenceforward become that "tree which is sown beside [8447] the waters, is perennial in leaves, bears fruit at its own time," [8448] and shall not see "fire," [8449] nor "axe." [8450] Having found "the truth," [8451] repent of errors; repent of having loved what God loves not: even we ourselves do not permit our slave-lads not to hate the things which are offensive to us; for the principle of voluntary obedience [8452] consists in similarity of minds.
To reckon up the good, of repentance, the subject-matter is copious, and therefore should be committed to great eloquence. Let us, however, in proportion to our narrow abilities, inculcate one point,--that what God enjoins is good and best. I hold it audacity to dispute about the "good" of a divine precept; for, indeed, it is not the fact that it is good which binds us to obey, but the fact that God has enjoined it. To exact the rendering of obedience the majesty of divine power has the prior [8453] right; the authority of Him who commands is prior to the utility of him who serves. "Is it good to repent, or no?" Why do you ponder? God enjoins; nay, He not merely enjoins, but likewise exhorts. He invites by (offering) reward--salvation, to wit; even by an oath, saying "I live," [8454] He desires that credence may be given Him. Oh blessed we, for whose sake God swears! Oh most miserable, if we believe not the Lord even when He swears! What, therefore, God so highly commends, what He even (after human fashion) attests on oath, we are bound of course to approach, and to guard with the utmost seriousness; that, abiding permanently in (the faith of) the solemn pledge [8455] of divine grace, we may be able also to persevere in like manner in its fruit [8456] and its benefit.
[8440] Comp. Ezek. xviii. 30, 32.
[8441] The substance of this is found in Ezek. xxxiii. 11.
[8442] Compare 1 Tim. i. 16.
[8443] Comp. c. xii. sub fin. [Ut naufragus alicuius tabulæ fidem; this expression soon passed into Theological technology, and as "the plank after shipwreck" is universally known.]
[8444] Isa. xl. 15.
[8445] Dan. ii. 35; Matt. iii. 12.
[8446] Ps. ii. 9; Rev. ii. 27.
[8447] Penes.
[8448] Ps. i. 3; Jer. xvii. 8. Compare Luke xxiii. 31.
[8449] Jer. xvii. 8; Matt. iii. 10.
[8450] Matt. iii. 10.
[8451] John xiv. 6.
[8452] Obsequii.
[8453] Or, "paramount."
[8454] See ref. 1 on the preceding page. The phrase is "as I live" in the English version.
[8455] "Asseveratione:" apparently a play on the word, as compared with "perseverare," which follows.
[8456] Or, "enjoyment."
Chapter V.--Sin Never to Be Returned to After Repentance. [8457]
For what I say is this, that the repentance which, being shown us and commanded us through God's grace, recalls us to grace [8458] with the Lord, when once learned and undertaken by us ought never afterward to be cancelled by repetition of sin. No pretext of ignorance now remains to plead on your behalf; in that, after acknowledging the Lord, and accepting His precepts [8459] --in short, after engaging in repentance of (past) sins--you again betake yourself to sins. Thus, in as far as you are removed from ignorance, in so far are you cemented [8460] to contumacy. For if the ground on which you had repented of having sinned was that you had begun to fear the Lord, why have you preferred to rescind what you did for fear's sake, except because you have ceased to fear? For there is no other thing but contumacy which subverts fear. Since there is no exception which defends from liability to penalty even such as are ignorant of the Lord--because ignorance of God, openly as He is set before men, and comprehensible as He is even on the score of His heavenly benefits, is not possible [8461] --how perilous is it for Him to be despised when known? Now, that man does despise Him, who, after attaining by His help to an understanding of things good and evil, often an affront to his own understanding--that is, to God's gift--by resuming what he understands ought to be shunned, and what he has already shunned: he rejects the Giver in abandoning the gift; he denies the Benefactor in not honouring the benefit. How can he be pleasing to Him, whose gift is displeasing to himself? Thus he is shown to be not only contumacious toward the Lord, but likewise ungrateful. Besides, that man commits no light sin against the Lord, who, after he had by repentance renounced His rival the devil, and had under this appellation subjected him to the Lord, again upraises him by his own return (to the enemy), and makes himself a ground of exultation to him; so that the Evil One, with his prey recovered, rejoices anew against the Lord. Does he not--what is perilous even to say, but must be put forward with a view to edification--place the devil before the Lord? For he seems to have made the comparison who has known each; and to have judicially pronounced him to be the better whose (servant) he has preferred again to be. Thus he who, through repentance for sins, had begun to make satisfaction to the Lord, will, through another repentance of his repentance, make satisfaction to the devil, and will be the more hateful to God in proportion as he will be the more acceptable to His rival. But some say that "God is satisfied if He be looked up to with the heart and the mind, even if this be not done in outward act, and that thus they sin without damage to their fear and their faith:" that is, that they violate wedlock without damage to their chastity; they mingle poison for their parent without damage to their filial duty! Thus, then, they will themselves withal be thrust down into hell without damage to their pardon, while they sin without damage to their fear! Here is a primary example of perversity: they sin, because they fear! [8462] I suppose, if they feared not, they would not sin! Let him, therefore, who would not have God offended not revere Him at all, if fear [8463] is the plea for offending. But these dispositions have been wont to sprout from the seed of hypocrites, whose friendship with the devil is indivisible, whose repentance never faithful.
[8457] [The formidable doctrine of 1 John iii. 9; v. 18, etc. must excuse our author for his severe adherence to this principle of purifying the heart from habitual sin. But, the church refused to press it against St. Matt. xviii. 22. In our own self-indulgent day, we are more prone, I fear, to presumption than to over strictness. The Roman casuists make attrition suffice, and so turn absolution into a mere sponge, and an encouragement to perpetual sinning and formal confession.]
[8458] i.e., favour.
[8459] Which is solemnly done in baptism.
[8460] Adglutinaris.
[8461] Acts xiv. 15-17: "licet" here may ="lawful," "permissible," "excusable."
[8462] "Timent," not "metuunt." "Metus" is the word Tertullian has been using above for religious, reverential fear.
[8463] Timor.