On the Lapsed 1–24

See, dearest brothers, peace has been restored to the church, and what lately seemed difficult to the unbelieving and impossible to the faithless, our security has been restored by divine help and vengeance. Our minds return to gladness, and, the storm and cloud of oppression dispersed, calm and serenity have shone out again. Praises must be given to God, and his benefits and gifts celebrated with thanksgiving, although our voice did not cease giving thanks even in the persecution. For the enemy cannot be allowed so much power that we who love God with our whole heart and soul and strength should not proclaim his blessings and praises always and everywhere with glory. The day longed for by everyone's prayers has come, and after the dreadful and hideous darkness of a long night, the world has shone out, lit by the light of the Lord.

We gaze with joyful eyes on the confessors, illustrious with the renown of a good name and glorious with the praises of courage and faith; clinging to them with holy kisses, we embrace those we have longed for with a divine and insatiable desire. Here is the white-robed cohort of Christ's soldiers, who broke the turbulent ferocity of the pressing persecution by their steadfast encounter, ready to endure prison, armed to bear death. You have fought bravely against the world; you have presented a glorious spectacle to God; you have been an example to the brothers who will follow. Your devout voice has spoken Christ, in whom it has confessed that it believed once for all. Your illustrious hands, which had been accustomed only to divine works, have resisted the sacrilegious sacrifices. Your mouths, sanctified by heavenly food after the body and blood of the Lord, have spat out profane contagion and the leavings of idols. Your heads have remained free of the impious and wicked veil with which the captive heads of those who sacrificed were veiled there. Your brow, pure with the sign of God, could not wear the devil's crown; it has kept itself for the Lord's crown. How gladly mother church receives you in her bosom as you return from battle! How blessed, how joyful she opens her gates, that you may enter in united ranks, bringing back trophies from the defeated enemy! With the triumphant men come women too, who have conquered their sex along with the world. Virgins come too, with the doubled glory of their warfare, and boys surpassing their years in courage. And the rest of the multitude of those who stood firm follows your glory, and accompanies your footsteps with marks of praise close to yours and almost joined with them. In them too there is the same sincerity of heart, the same soundness of tenacious faith. Resting on the unshaken roots of the heavenly precepts and strengthened by the gospel traditions, they were not terrified by the exiles prescribed, the tortures appointed, the penalties against property and body. Days were fixed in advance for testing faith; but he who remembers that he has renounced the world knows no day of the world, and he who hopes for eternity from God no longer counts earthly times.

Let no one, brothers, let no one mutilate this glory; let no one weaken the incorrupt firmness of those who stood firm by malicious disparagement. When the day appointed for those who denied had passed, whoever had not come forward within the day confessed that he was a Christian. The first title of victory is to confess the Lord when seized by the hands of the Gentiles; the second step to glory is to be withdrawn by a prudent retreat and kept for God. The one is a public confession, the other private: the one conquers the judge of the world; the other, content with God as his judge, guards a pure conscience by integrity of heart. In the one there is readier courage; in the other, safer caution. The one, as his hour approached, was found already ripe; the other perhaps was put off, who left his property and withdrew precisely because 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 very great and excellent virtues of the brothers who stood firm, are saddened by one grief: that the violent enemy has torn away and cast down a part of our own inward parts in the slaughter of his devastation. What shall I do here, dearest brothers, tossed by the varied surge of my mind? What or how shall I speak? Tears rather than words are needed to express the grief with which the wound of our body must be wept over, with which the manifold loss of a people once numerous must be lamented. For who is so hard and iron-hearted, who so forgetful of brotherly love, that, standing amid the manifold ruins of his own and their mournful remains disfigured with much squalor, he could keep his eyes dry and not, with weeping bursting out at once, pour out his groans in tears rather than in voice? I grieve, brothers, I grieve with you; nor does my own integrity and private soundness beguile me into softening my griefs, since a shepherd is wounded more in the wound of his flock. I join my heart with each one; I share the mournful weights of sorrow and death. I lament with those who lament, I weep with those who weep, I think myself fallen with those who have fallen. My own limbs were struck at the same time by those darts of the rampaging enemy; his savage swords passed through my own inward parts. The mind cannot have been immune and free from the onset of persecution: in my fallen brothers my affection has laid me low too.

Yet account must be taken of the truth, dearest brothers, and the dark gloom of hostile persecution ought not so to have blinded mind and sense that no light or illumination remains by which the divine precepts can be seen. If the cause of the disaster is recognized, the remedy for the wound is also found. The Lord wished his household to be tested; and because long peace had corrupted the discipline handed down to us by God, the heavenly correction roused a faith that was lying prostrate and, I might almost say, asleep. And although we deserved more for our sins, the most merciful Lord so moderated everything that all that has happened seemed a testing rather than a persecution.

Each was intent on increasing his property; and, forgetting what believers had done before under the apostles or what they ought always to do, they brooded with an insatiable ardor of greed on enlarging their means. There was no devout religion in the priests, no sound faith in the ministers, no mercy in works, no discipline in morals. In men, beards defaced; in women, beauty painted; eyes adulterated after God's hands had made them; hair colored with a lie. Crafty frauds to deceive the hearts of the simple, deceitful designs to cheat brothers. Joining the bond of marriage with unbelievers, prostituting the members of Christ to Gentiles. Not only swearing rashly but even perjuring themselves; despising those set over them with proud arrogance; cursing one another with poisonous mouths; quarreling with one another in stubborn hatreds. Very many bishops, who ought to be an encouragement and example to the rest, despising their divine stewardship, became stewards of worldly kings; leaving their chair, deserting their people, wandering through other provinces, they hunted the markets for profitable trade. While brothers in the church went hungry, they wanted to have money in abundance, to seize estates by treacherous frauds, to increase their gains by multiplying interest. What should we not deserve to suffer for sins of this kind, when the divine censure had long ago warned us and said, “If they forsake my law and do not walk in my judgments, if they profane my statutes and do not keep my precepts, I will visit their crimes with the rod and their sins with scourges”?

These things were foretold to us and predicted beforehand. But we, forgetful of the law given and of its observance, brought it about through our sins that, while we despised the Lord's commands, we came to severer remedies for the correction of sin and the testing of faith; nor were we converted even late to the fear of the Lord, so as to undergo this correction and divine testing of ours patiently and bravely. At the very first words of the threatening enemy the greatest number of the brothers betrayed their faith; they were not cast down by the onslaught of persecution, but cast themselves down by a voluntary fall. What, I ask, so unheard-of, so new had come, that, as if things 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, foretell the oppressions of the righteous and the constant injuries from the Gentiles? Does not the divine Scripture, always arming our faith and strengthening the servants of God with a heavenly voice, say, “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone”? Does it not again, showing the anger of divine indignation and warning beforehand of the fear of punishment, say, “They worshiped what their fingers had made, and man was bowed down and man was humbled, and I will not forgive them”? And again God speaks, saying, “He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, except to the Lord alone.” In the gospel too, afterward, the Lord, a teacher in words and a fulfiller in deeds, teaching what should be done and doing whatever he had taught, did he not forewarn beforehand of whatever is now happening and will happen? Did he not establish beforehand both eternal punishments for those who deny and saving rewards for those who confess?

For some, alas, everything fell away and passed from memory. They did not even wait to be arrested before going up, to be questioned before denying. Many were conquered before the battle, laid low without an encounter, and did not even leave themselves the plea that they seemed to sacrifice to idols unwillingly. Of their own accord they ran to the forum; they hastened willingly to death, as though they had long desired it, as though they were embracing an opportunity they had gladly wished for. How many were put off there by the magistrates when evening pressed, how many even begged that their ruin should not be deferred! What compulsion can such a one plead to clear himself of his crime, when he rather used compulsion himself in order to perish? When he came willingly to the Capitol, when he freely approached to comply with the dreadful deed, did his step not falter, his sight grow dim, his inward parts tremble, his limbs give way? Were his senses not stunned, his tongue not stuck, his speech not failing? Could a 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 had gone to die, a funeral pyre to him? Ought he not to have shuddered at and fled the devil's altar, which he had seen smoking and reeking with a foul stench, as the funeral and tomb of his life? Why, wretch, do you bring an offering with you, why a victim to supplicate? You yourself have come to the altars as an offering, you yourself as a victim: there you have sacrificed your salvation; your hope, your faith you have burned up there in those deadly fires.

And for many their own ruin was not enough: by mutual exhortations the people were driven to destruction; death was pledged to one another in a lethal cup. And that nothing might be lacking to the heap of crime, infants too, carried in their parents' arms or dragged along, lost as little ones what they had obtained at the very first beginning of their birth. Will they not say, when the day of judgment comes: “We did nothing, nor did we leave the Lord's food and cup and hasten willingly to profane contagion. Another's faithlessness ruined us; we found our parents parricides. They denied for us the church as mother, God as Father, so that, while small and unforeseeing and ignorant of so great a crime, we were joined by others to partnership in their crimes, we were caught by another's deceit”?

Nor, alas, is there any just and serious reason that excuses so great a crime. One had to leave one's country and suffer the loss of one's property. Yet for whom, born and dying, must not one's country be left at some time and the loss of one's property suffered? Let not Christ be left; let the loss of salvation and of the eternal dwelling be feared. See, the Holy Spirit cries through the prophet: “Depart, depart, go out from there and touch no unclean thing; go out from her midst, be separated, you who bear the vessels of the Lord.” And do those who are the vessels of the Lord and the temple of God not go out from the midst and withdraw, lest they be forced to touch what is unclean and be polluted and violated by deadly foods? Elsewhere too a voice is heard from heaven, forewarning what the servants of God ought to do and saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins and be struck by her plagues.” He who goes out and withdraws does not become a sharer in the sin; but he who is found an accomplice in the crime is himself struck by the plagues. And therefore the Lord commanded us in persecution to withdraw and flee, and, that this might be done, both taught it and did it. For since the crown comes down by God's favor and cannot be received unless the hour for taking it has come, whoever, abiding in Christ, withdraws for a time does not deny his faith but waits for his time; but he who fell because he did not withdraw remained in order to deny.

The truth, brothers, must not be concealed, nor the matter and cause of our wound kept silent. A blind love of their property deceived many; and those whom their means bound like fetters could not be ready or free to withdraw. Those were the bonds of those who remained, those the chains by which courage was held back, faith pressed down, mind bound, and soul shut in, so that those 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 warning for the future, says, “If you wish to be perfect, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” If the rich did this, they would not perish through their riches; laying up treasure in heaven, they would not now have an enemy and assailant in their own house. Heart and mind and sense would be in heaven if their treasure were in heaven; nor could one be conquered by the world who had nothing in the world by which to be conquered. He would follow the Lord unbound and free, as the apostles did, and many under the apostles, and some often, who, leaving their possessions and their parents, clung to Christ with inseparable ties.

But how can those follow Christ who are held back by the bond of property? Or how can those seek heaven and climb to the high and lofty places who are weighed down by earthly desires? They think they possess who are rather possessed: slaves of their wealth, not masters of their money but rather bondmen of money. The apostle points to this time and these men, saying, “But those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and a snare and many hurtful desires which plunge a man into perdition and destruction. For covetousness is the root of all evils; by desiring it some have strayed from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” And with what rewards does the Lord invite us to contempt of property? With what wages does he repay these small and slight losses of this present time? “There is no one,” he says, “who leaves house or field or parents or brothers or wife or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive sevenfold in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.” Knowing this, and assured by the truth of God who promises it, one should not only not fear such a loss but should even desire it, as the Lord himself again proclaims and warns: “Blessed will you be when they persecute you and separate you and drive you out and curse your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and exult: for behold, your reward is great in heaven.”

“But tortures came afterward, and severe torments threatened those who resisted.” He can complain of tortures who was overcome by tortures; he can plead the excuse of pain who was conquered in pain. Such a one can ask and say: “I wanted indeed to fight bravely, and, mindful of my sacred oath, I took up the arms of devotion and faith; but as I fought in the encounter, various tortures and long punishments conquered me. My mind stood firm and my faith strong, and my soul long struggled unmoved with the torturing pains. But when, as the savagery of the most cruel judge broke out afresh, I was already exhausted, and now the scourges tore me, now clubs bruised me, now the rack stretched me, now the claw dug into me, now the flame roasted me, my flesh deserted me in the struggle, the weakness of my inward parts gave way; not my mind but my body failed in the pain.” Such a case can quickly advance to pardon; an excuse of that kind can be pitiable. Thus the Lord once pardoned Castus and Aemilius here; thus he made those conquered in the first encounter victors in the second battle, so that those who had before yielded to the fire became stronger than the fire, and conquered by the very thing by which they had been conquered. They pleaded not with the pity of tears but of wounds, not with a lamenting voice alone but with laceration and pain of the body; blood flowed instead of weeping, and instead of tears gore ran down from their half-burned inward parts.

But now what wounds can the conquered show, what gashes of gaping flesh, what tortures of limbs, where it was not faith that fell in the encounter, but faithlessness that forestalled the encounter? Nor does the necessity of the crime excuse one who was overpowered, where the crime is one of the will. I do not say this to burden the case of the brothers, but rather to spur the brothers on to the prayer of satisfaction. For since it is written, “Those who call you happy lead you into error and disturb the path of your feet,” he who strokes a sinner with flattering blandishments supplies the tinder of sin, and does not suppress offenses but feeds them. But he who with sterner counsels at once rebukes and instructs his brother advances him toward salvation. “Those whom I love,” says the Lord, “I rebuke and chastise.” So too the Lord's priest ought not to mislead with deceiving compliances but to provide with saving remedies. He is an unskilled physician who handles the swollen pockets of wounds with a sparing hand and, while he preserves the poison shut up in the deep recesses of the body, increases it. The wound must be opened and cut, and, when the putrid parts have been cut away, treated with a stronger remedy. Let the patient cry and shout and complain, impatient through pain; he will give thanks afterward when he feels himself healed.

For a new kind of disaster has emerged, dearest brothers, and, as if the storm of persecution had raged too little, there has been added to the heap, under the title of mercy, a deceiving evil and a flattering destruction. Against the vigor of the gospel, against the law of the Lord and God, by the rashness of certain people, communion is being relaxed for the unwary: a void and false peace, dangerous to those who give it and of no benefit to those who receive it. They do not seek the patience of healing nor the true medicine of satisfaction; penance is shut out of their hearts; the memory of the gravest and ultimate sin has been taken away. The wounds of the dying are covered over, and the deadly blow lodged in the deep inward parts is concealed, the pain disguised. Returning from the altars of the devil, they approach the holy thing of the Lord with hands filthy and tainted with the reek; still almost belching the deadly food of idols, with jaws even now exhaling their crime and smelling of the fatal contagion, they break in upon the body of the Lord, when the divine Scripture confronts them and cries out and says, “Everyone who is clean shall eat the flesh; and whatever soul eats of the flesh of the sacrifice of salvation, which is the Lord's, while his uncleanness is upon him, that soul shall perish from his people”; and when the apostle likewise testifies and says, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot share in the table of the Lord and the table of demons”; and when he threatens and warns the stubborn and obstinate, saying, “Whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”

All these things spurned and despised, before their sins are expiated, before confession of the crime has been made, before the conscience has been purged by the sacrifice and hand of the priest, before the offense of the indignant and threatening Lord has been appeased, violence is done to his body and blood; and they now sin against the Lord with hands and mouth more than when they denied the Lord. They think that to be peace which some peddle with deceiving 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 call impiety by the name of piety? Why do they pretend to give communion to those who ought to weep continually and entreat their Lord, cutting short the lament of penance? To such lapsed people they are what hail is to crops, a stormy star to trees, a pestilential devastation to herds, a savage tempest to ships. They take away the comfort of hope, they overturn from the root, with diseased speech they creep toward a deadly contagion, they dash the ship on the rocks so that it may not reach port. Such easiness does not grant peace but takes it away; it does not give communion but hinders it for salvation. This is another persecution and another temptation, by which the subtle enemy, still assailing the lapsed, rampages in a hidden devastation, so that lamentation may be quieted, grief silenced, the memory of sin vanish, the groaning of the heart be suppressed, the weeping of the eyes be stopped, and the Lord, gravely offended, not be entreated by long and full penance, although it is written, “Remember from where you have fallen, and do penance.” Let no one deceive himself, let no one be misled. The Lord alone can have mercy.

Pardon for sins committed against himself only he can grant who bore our sins, who grieved for us, whom God handed over for our sins. Man cannot be greater than God, nor can a servant remit or forgive by his indulgence what has been committed by a graver sin against the Lord, lest this too be added to the lapsed person's crime, if he does not know that it was foretold: “Cursed is the man who puts his hope in man.” The Lord must be prayed to; the Lord must be appeased by our satisfaction, who said that he would deny the one who denies him, who alone has received all judgment from the Father. We believe indeed that the merits of the martyrs and the works of the righteous can do a great deal with the Judge; but that will be when the day of judgment comes, when, after the end of this age and world, his people stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

But if anyone, rash in his headlong haste, thinks that he can give remission of sins to all, or dares to rescind the Lord's precepts, he not only does no good to the lapsed but even harms them. It is to have provoked his anger not to have kept his sentence, and not to think that the Lord's mercy must first be entreated, but, despising the Lord, to presume on one's own easiness. Beneath the altar of God the souls of the slain martyrs cry with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, do you not judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” And they are told to rest and still be patient. And does anyone suppose that someone can become good by remitting and forgiving sins at random against the Judge's will, or can defend others before he himself is avenged? The martyrs order something to be done: if it is just, if lawful, if not to be done by the priest of God against the Lord himself, let the obeying one's consent be easy and ready, provided the petitioner's request has been reverent and moderate. The martyrs order something to be done: if what they order is not written in the Lord's law, we must first know that they have obtained from the Lord what they ask, and then do what they order. For what has been promised by a human pledge cannot at once be seen to have been granted by the divine majesty.

For Moses too prayed for the sins of the people, and yet, though he had prayed, he did not receive pardon for the sinners. “I pray, O Lord,” he said, “this people has sinned a great sin; and now, if you forgive them their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of the book which you have written.” And the Lord said to Moses, “If anyone has sinned before me, him will I blot out of my book.” He, the friend of God, he who often spoke face to face with the Lord, could not obtain what he asked, nor appease by his entreaty the offense of the indignant God. God praises and commends Jeremiah, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you came out of the womb I sanctified you and appointed you a prophet to the nations”; and to the same man, when he often entreated and prayed for the sins of the people, he says, “Do not pray for this people, and do not ask for them in prayer and supplication, because I will not hear them in the time when they call upon me, in the time of their affliction.” Yet who was more righteous than Noah, who, when the earth was filled with sins, alone was found righteous on the earth? Who more glorious than Daniel? Who stronger in firmness of faith for undergoing martyrdom, happier in God's favor, who so many times both conquered when he fought and survived when he conquered? Who readier in works than Job, braver in temptations, more patient in pain, more submissive in fear, truer in faith? Yet God said that he would not grant it even if these asked. When the prophet Ezekiel entreated for the sin of the people, he says, “Whatever land sins against me to commit an offense, I will stretch out my hand upon it and crush its support of bread and send famine into it and take away from it man and beast. And if these three men were in its midst, Noah and Daniel and Job, they shall not deliver sons or daughters; they alone shall be saved.” So not everything that is asked depends on the prejudgment of the one asking, but on the will of the one giving; and a human sentence claims and assumes nothing to itself unless the divine censure also consents.

In the gospel the Lord speaks, saying, “Whoever confesses me before men, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me, I too will deny him.” If he does not deny the one who denies, neither does he confess the one who confesses. The gospel cannot stand in part and totter in part. Either both must hold good or both must lose their force. If those who deny will not be guilty of a crime, neither do those who confess receive the reward of virtue. Further, if faith that has conquered is crowned, it is necessary that faithlessness that has been conquered be punished too. So the martyrs can either do nothing, if the gospel can be dissolved; or, if the gospel cannot be dissolved, those who become martyrs from the gospel cannot act against the gospel. Let no one, dearest brothers, let no one defame the dignity of the martyrs, let no one destroy their glories and crowns. The strength of their uncorrupted faith remains unharmed; nor can one say or do anything against Christ whose hope and faith and virtue and whole glory is in Christ. That anything should be done by the bishops against God's command, those cannot be the authors who themselves have done God's commands. Or is anyone greater than God, or more merciful than the divine goodness, who would either wish undone what God has allowed to happen, or, as though God had less power to protect his church, would think that we can be saved by his own help?

Unless perhaps these things were done without God's knowledge, or all this came without his permission. Let the divine Scripture teach the unteachable and remind the forgetful, which speaks, saying, “Who gave Jacob to plundering and Israel to those who despoiled him? Was it not God, against whom they sinned, and they would not walk in his ways nor hear his law? And he brought upon them the anger of his wrath.” And elsewhere it testifies and says, “Is the hand of God not strong enough to save, or has he made his ear heavy so as not to hear? But your sins separate between you and God, and because of your sins he has turned his face from you so as not to have mercy.” Let us consider our offenses; turning over our actions and the secrets of our mind, let us weigh the deserts of our conscience. Let it come back to our heart that we have not walked in the Lord's ways, have cast away God's law, have never been willing to keep his precepts and saving warnings.

What good could you think of him, what fear could you believe there was in him, what faith, whom neither fear could correct nor persecution itself reform? His neck is high and straight, and has not bent because he has fallen; his mind is swollen and proud, and has not been broken because he has been conquered. Lying fallen, he threatens those who stand; wounded, he threatens the unwounded; and because he does not at once receive the Lord's body in defiled hands or drink the Lord's blood with polluted mouth, the sacrilegious man is angry with the priests. And (O your excessive madness, raving man!) you are angry with him who strives to turn God's anger away from you; you threaten him who entreats the Lord's mercy for you, who feels your wound which you yourself do not feel, who sheds tears for you which perhaps you yourself do not shed. You still load and heap up your crime; and while you yourself are implacable toward the bishops and priests of God, do you think the Lord can be appeased toward you?

Accept rather and admit what we say. Why do deaf ears not hear the saving precepts we urge? Why do blind eyes not see the road of penance which we point out? Why does a shut and estranged mind not perceive the life-giving remedies which we both learn and teach from the heavenly Scriptures? Or if some unbelievers have little faith in things to come, let them at least be terrified by things present. See what punishments we behold on those who have denied, what sad ends of theirs we weep over! Not even here can they be without punishment, although the day has not yet come. Some are punished meanwhile, so that the rest may be set right. The torments of a few are examples for all.

One of those who went up to the Capitol of his own accord to deny Christ was struck dumb after he had denied him. The punishment began where the crime began too, so that he could no longer even ask for mercy, having no words for prayers of mercy. Another woman, in the baths (for this was lacking to her crime and her evils, that she should go straight to the baths, having lost the grace of the life-giving washing), was seized there by an unclean spirit, unclean as she was, and tore with her teeth the tongue that had impiously either fed or spoken. After the wicked food had been taken, the madness of her mouth was armed for her own destruction. She became her own executioner, and could not survive long afterward: tormented by pain in her belly and bowels, she died.