On Repentance 5

This, then, is what I say: that repentance, which, shown and enjoined upon us by God's grace, recalls us into the Lord's favor, once it has been known and taken up must never afterwards be cancelled by a repetition of sin. Now no plea of ignorance protects you, since, having come to know the Lord and accepted his commandments, and having then performed repentance for your sins, you put yourself back into sins. So the more you are separated from ignorance, the more closely you are glued to contumacy. For if you had repented of having sinned because you had begun to fear the Lord, why have you preferred to undo what you did for fear's sake, unless because you have ceased to fear? For nothing overthrows fear but contumacy. Since no plea protects from punishment even those who are ignorant of the Lord, because it is not permitted to be ignorant of God, who is set in the open and is comprehensible even from his heavenly benefits, how dangerous is it to despise him once known? And he despises him who, having received from him the understanding of good and evil, takes up again what he understands must be shunned and what he has already shunned, and so insults his understanding, that is, God's gift. He rejects the giver when he abandons the gift; he denies the benefactor when he does not honor the benefit. How can he please one whose gift displeases himself? So he appears not only contumacious toward the Lord but also ungrateful. Besides, he sins not lightly against the Lord who, after renouncing by repentance the Lord's rival, the devil, and on this account subjecting him to the Lord, raises him up again by his own return and makes himself the devil's triumph, so that the evil one, having recovered his prey, rejoices anew against the Lord. Does he not (it is dangerous even to say it, but it must be put forward for edification) set the devil above the Lord? For he seems to have made a comparison, having known both, and to have pronounced judgment that he is the better whose he has preferred to be again. So he who had begun to make satisfaction to the Lord through repentance for his sins will make satisfaction to the devil through another repentance, a repentance of his repentance, and will be as much the more hateful to God as he is acceptable to his rival. But some say that God is satisfied if he is looked up to in heart and mind, even if this is less done in act; and so they sin while keeping their fear and faith intact, that is, they violate marriages while keeping their chastity intact, they mix poison for a parent while keeping their piety intact. So, then, they too will be thrust down into Gehenna with their pardon intact, while they sin with their fear intact! A prime example of perversity: they sin because they fear! I suppose they would not sin if they did not fear. So let him who would not have God offended not revere him at all, if fear of offending is a license. But such minds usually sprout from the seed of the hypocrites, whose friendship with the devil is inseparable, whose repentance is never faithful.