On Repentance

Repentance is known by this class of men, which we too once were, blind, without the Lord's light, only so far as nature teaches: as a certain emotion of the mind that comes from displeasure at a worse opinion. But they are as far from its reason as they are from the author of reason himself. For reason is a thing of God; since God, the maker of all things, has provided, arranged, and ordered nothing without reason, and has willed nothing to be handled and understood without reason. So all who are ignorant of God must be ignorant of what is his, since no treasure at all lies open to strangers. And so, crossing the whole sea of life's conduct without the helm of reason, they do not know how to avoid the storm that hangs over the world. How irrationally they go astray in the practice of repentance it will be enough to show by this one point: that they apply it even to their good deeds. They repent of faith, love, simplicity, patience, mercy, whenever something has met with ingratitude. They curse themselves for having done good, and that kind of repentance above all which is applied to the best works they fix in their hearts, taking care to remember not to do any good again; while they lie more lightly under repentance for evil deeds. In short, by that same repentance they sin more easily than they do right.

But if they acted as men possessed of God, and therefore of reason too, they would first weigh the merits of repentance and would never apply it to prove a perverse correction; in short, they would regulate the measure of repenting because they would also keep a measure in sinning, fearing the Lord, of course. But where there is no fear, there is likewise no correction; where there is no correction, repentance is necessarily vain, since it lacks its fruit, for which God sowed it, that is, the salvation of man. For God, after so many and so great offenses of human rashness, begun by Adam, the head of the race; after man was condemned together with the world, his dowry; after he was cast out of paradise and made subject to death: when he had hastened again to his own mercy, from that time he consecrated repentance in himself, rescinding the sentence of his former wrath and covenanting to pardon his work and his image. And so he gathered a people for himself, cherished them with many bounties of his goodness, and, though he had found them most ungrateful so many times, always exhorted them to repentance, and sent forth the mouths of all the prophets to prophesy. Soon, having promised the grace which in the last times he would shed as light on the whole world through his Spirit, he commanded that the baptism of repentance should go before, so that those whom he would call by grace to the promise appointed for the seed of Abraham he might first prepare by the seal of repentance. John does not keep silent, saying: “Enter upon repentance, for salvation will now draw near to the nations,” that is, the Lord, bringing salvation according to God's promise. As his forerunner, John appointed repentance, set over the cleansing of minds, so that whatever the old error had defiled, whatever ignorance had polluted in the heart of man, repentance, sweeping and scraping it and throwing it out of doors, might prepare the house of the heart clean for the Holy Spirit who was to come upon it, so that he might gladly bring himself in with his heavenly goods. Of these goods there is one title: the salvation of man, the abolition of former crimes having gone first. This is the reason for repentance; this is its work, taking in hand the business of divine mercy. What profits man serves God. But its rule, which we learn once the Lord is known, keeps a definite form: that no violent hand, as it were, is ever to be laid on good deeds or thoughts. For God does not ratify the rejection of good things, since they are his own; being their author, he must also be their defender, and so also their accepter, and if their accepter, also their rewarder. Let human ingratitude look to it, then, if it forces repentance even for good deeds. And let gratitude look to it, if the pursuit of it is an incentive to doing good; both are earthly and mortal. For how little is the gain if you have done good to a grateful man, or the loss if to an ungrateful one? A good deed has God as its debtor, just as an evil one does, since every judge rewards the case. But since God as judge presides over the exacting and guarding of justice, which is most dear to him, and sanctions in it the whole sum of his discipline, can there be any doubt that, as in all our actions, so also in the matter of repentance, justice must be rendered to God? And this can be fulfilled only if repentance is applied to sins alone. Now nothing deserves to be called sin except an evil deed; and no one sins by doing good. And if he does not sin, why does he seize on repentance, the private property of sinners? Why does he impose on his goodness a duty belonging to wickedness? So it comes about that when something is applied where it ought not to be, it is neglected where it ought to be.

For which sins, then, repentance may seem just and due, that is, which things must be reckoned as offenses, the context does call for me to point out; but it may seem superfluous. For once the Lord is known, the spirit, regarded by its author, rises of its own accord to the knowledge of the truth, and, admitted to the Lord's commandments, is at once taught by them that what God forbids must be reckoned sin. For since it is agreed that God is some great good, nothing but evil could displease the good, because there is no friendship between contraries. Still, it will not be irksome to touch briefly on this: that some offenses are carnal, that is, bodily, and some spiritual. For since man is made up of this combination of a twofold substance, he sins from no other source than that of which he consists. But they do not differ from each other in that body and spirit are two (otherwise they are all the more equal, because the two make one), so that no one should distinguish their sins by the difference of their materials, as to think one lighter or heavier than the other. For both flesh and spirit are things of God, the one formed by his hand, the other completed by his breath. Since, then, they belong equally to the Lord, whichever of them sins offends the Lord equally. Or would you distinguish the acts of flesh and spirit, which in life, in death, and in resurrection have such communion and partnership that they are then raised together either to life or to judgment, because, of course, they have either sinned or acted innocently together? We have said this first so that we may understand that the need of repentance weighs no less on one part than on both, if it has sinned. The guilt of both is common; common, too, is the judge, God; common, therefore, is also the remedy of repentance. They are called spiritual and bodily because every offense is either done or thought, so that what lies in deed is bodily, since a deed, like a body, can be seen and touched, while what lies in the mind is spiritual, since spirit is neither seen nor held. By this it is shown that offenses not only of deed but also of will must be avoided and cleansed by repentance. For if human limitation judges only the deed, because it is not equal to the hiding places of the will, we must not therefore neglect the crimes of the will in the sight of God. God is sufficient for all things. Nothing from which any sin at all proceeds is removed from his sight, for he does not fail to know it, nor omit to bring it to judgment. He is no dissembler or betrayer of his own clear sight. What of the fact that the will is the origin of the deed? Let those cases look to themselves that are put down to chance or necessity or ignorance; apart from these, there is no sin except by the will. Since, then, the will is the origin of the deed, is it not as much the more liable to punishment as it is the first cause of guilt, since it is not freed even when some difficulty prevents its carrying out? For it is itself charged to its own account, and cannot be excused by that bad luck in completing the act, since it has done what was its own part. In short, how does the Lord show that he is building an addition onto the law, if not by forbidding offenses of the will too, when he defines as an adulterer not only the man who has actually fallen upon another's marriage, but also the one who has defiled himself by the lust of his gaze? So it is quite dangerous for the mind to picture to itself what it is forbidden to carry out, and rashly by the will to complete the effect. And since the force of this will is so great that, even without sating itself with gratification, it stands for the deed, it will therefore be punished as the deed. It is utterly idle to say, “I willed, but I did not do it.” On the contrary, you ought to carry it out, since you will it, or not will it either, since you do not carry it out. But you pronounce sentence yourself by the confession of your conscience. For if you desired a good thing, you would have longed to carry it out; and just as you do not carry out the evil, so you ought not to have desired it either. Wherever you place yourself, you are bound by guilt, because either you have willed evil or you have not fulfilled good.

So for all offenses, whether committed by flesh or spirit, by deed or by will, he who appointed punishment through judgment has also promised pardon through repentance, saying to the people: “Repent, and I will save you.” And again: “As I live,” says the Lord, “I prefer repentance to death.” Repentance, therefore, is life, since it is preferred to death. Sinner like me (or rather less than me, for I acknowledge my pre-eminence in sins), seize it, embrace it, as a shipwrecked man clings to the trustworthiness of some plank. It will lift you up when you are sunk in the waves of sins and carry you into the harbor of divine clemency. Seize the opportunity of unexpected happiness, so that you, who once were nothing with God but “a drop from a bucket,” “the dust of the threshing floor,” and “a potter's vessel,” may from then on become that “tree which is planted by the waters,” which is evergreen in its leaves and yields its fruit in its season, which will see neither fire nor axe. Having found the truth, repent of your errors; repent of having loved what God does not love, since not even we ourselves allow our little slaves not to hate the things by which we are offended. For the principle of obedience is set in likeness of minds. To enumerate the good of repentance is a broad subject, one to be entrusted to great eloquence. But we, in our narrowness, press one point: that what God commands is good and best. I think it audacity to dispute about the goodness of a divine command. For we ought to obey, not because it is good, but because God has commanded. In rendering obedience, the majesty of the divine power comes first; the authority of the one who commands comes before the advantage of the one who serves. Is it good to repent, or not? Why do you turn it over? God commands it. But he does not only command; he also exhorts. He invites with a reward, salvation; even swearing, saying, “As I live,” he desires to be believed. O blessed are we, for whose sake God swears! O most wretched, if we do not believe the Lord even when he swears! What God so earnestly commends, then, what he even attests under oath in human fashion, we ought certainly to undertake and guard with the greatest seriousness, so that, remaining in the assurance of divine grace, we may likewise persevere in its fruit and benefit.

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.

Whatever, then, our poor ability has tried to suggest for taking up repentance once for all and holding to it forever concerns indeed all who are given to the Lord, as all are seekers of salvation in winning God's favor; but it presses especially on those novices who are just now beginning to have their ears watered with divine words, and who, like puppies of still recent birth whose eyes are not yet fully open, crawl about uncertainly, and say indeed that they renounce their former things and take up repentance, but neglect to complete it. For the very end of desiring tempts them to desire something of their former things, as fruits, when they are already beginning to grow old into sourness or bitterness, still in some part flatter their own charm. Besides, the presumption of baptism brings in every fault of delay and evasion regarding repentance. For, sure of an undoubted pardon of their sins, they meanwhile steal the time in between and make it for themselves a furlough for sinning rather than a training in not sinning. And how foolish to expect pardon of sins for a repentance one has not completed! That is to reach out a hand for the goods without paying the price. For the Lord has determined to make over pardon at this price; he offers impunity to be purchased by this payment of repentance. If, then, sellers first test the coin with which they strike the bargain, to see that it is not clipped or shaved or counterfeit, we believe that the Lord too first makes trial of our repentance, since he is to grant us so great a reward, namely eternal life. “But let us put off for a while the reality of repentance; it will be clear then, I suppose, that we are amended, when we are absolved.” By no means. It is while the pardon is still pending, while punishment is in prospect, while one does not yet deserve to be freed, so that we may be able to deserve it; while God threatens, not when he forgives. For what slave, once changed by freedom, charges himself with his thefts and runaways? What soldier, once discharged from his camp, troubles himself about his black marks? The sinner must weep for himself before pardon, because the time of repentance is the same as the time of danger and fear. Nor do I deny that the divine benefit, that is, the abolition of sins, is by all means secure for those who are to enter the water; but one must work to succeed in reaching it. For who will grant to you, a man of so faithless a repentance, a single sprinkling of any water whatever? It is easy, indeed, to approach it by stealth and to get round the one in charge of this matter by your assurances; but God takes care of his treasure and does not allow the unworthy to creep in. What, in short, does he say? “Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed.” However much darkness you build over your deeds, God is light. Some think, however, as if God were bound to grant even to the unworthy what he has promised, and they make his generosity a servitude. But if he grants us the symbol of death by necessity, then he does it unwillingly. And who allows what he has granted unwillingly to remain permanent? For do not many fall away afterwards? Is not that gift taken away from many? These, of course, are the ones who creep in, who, having undertaken the faith of repentance, set a house that will fall on sand. So let no one flatter himself because he is counted among the recruits of the hearers, as if on that account he were still permitted to sin. As soon as you have come to know the Lord, you should fear him; as soon as you have looked on him, you should revere him. Otherwise what difference does it make that you have come to know him, when you cling to the same things as when you were ignorant? And what separates you from the perfected servant of God? Is there one Christ for the baptized and another for the hearers? Is there another hope or reward, another dread of judgment, another necessity of repentance? That washing is the sealing of faith, and that faith is begun and commended by the faith of repentance. We are not washed in order to stop sinning, but because we have stopped, since we have already been washed in heart. For this is the first baptism of the hearer: fear made whole. From then on, as long as you have perceived the Lord, sound faith and a conscience that has embraced repentance once for all. Otherwise, if we stop sinning only from the waters, we put on innocence by necessity, not of our own will. Who then excels in goodness? He who is not allowed to be evil, or he to whom it is displeasing? He who is ordered, or he who delights, to be free of crime? Then let us not keep our hands from theft unless the hardness of bolts resists us, nor restrain our eyes from lusts for debauchery unless we are dragged off by the guardians of bodies, if no one given to the Lord will stop sinning unless bound by baptism. If anyone thinks this, I do not know whether, once baptized, he will be more saddened that he has stopped sinning than glad that he has escaped. So hearers should desire baptism, not presume on it. For he who desires honors it; he who presumes is proud. In the one appears modesty, in the other insolence. The one is diligent, the other neglectful. The one longs to deserve it, the other promises it to himself as a debt. The one takes it, the other seizes it. Whom would you judge more worthy, if not the one more amended? Whom more amended, if not the more fearful, and so the one who has performed true repentance? For he was afraid to go on sinning, lest he should not deserve to receive. But the presumptuous man, promising it to himself, being, of course, secure, could not fear; so neither did he fulfill repentance, since he lacked the instrument of repentance, that is, fear. Presumption is a part of shamelessness: it puffs up the petitioner and despises the giver. And so it sometimes deceives. For it promises to itself before it is due, and by this the one who is to grant it is always offended.

So far, Christ our Lord, may your servants learn or hear about the discipline of repentance: so far as it is fitting for the hearers too not to sin; that is, let them know nothing more of repentance, and seek nothing more of it. I am reluctant to add a mention of the second, or rather the last, hope, lest by treating of the remaining help of repentance we seem to point out a further space for sinning. God forbid that anyone should so interpret it, as if the way still lay open to him for sinning because it lies open for repenting, and the overflow of heavenly clemency should create license for human rashness. Let no one be the worse because God is the better, sinning as often as he is forgiven. Otherwise he will certainly find an end of escaping when he finds no end of offending. We have escaped once; thus far and no further let us expose ourselves to dangers, even if we seem likely to escape again. Many who have been rescued from shipwreck from then on divorce both ship and sea, and honor God's benefit, their deliverance, by remembering the danger. I praise their fear; I love their modesty: they do not want to be a burden on divine mercy again; they dread seeming to trample on what they have obtained; with a good anxiety they avoid experiencing a second time what they have once learned to fear. So restraint in rashness is a witness to fear; and the fear of man is the honor of God. But that most stubborn enemy never gives his malice any rest. Indeed he rages most when he feels that a man has been fully freed; he is most inflamed when he is being extinguished. He must grieve and groan that, by the granting of pardon for sins, so many works of death in man have been destroyed, so many titles of his former condemnation erased. He grieves that that sinner, the servant of Christ, is to judge him and his angels. So he watches, attacks, besieges, to see whether he can strike the eyes with carnal lust, or entangle the mind in worldly allurements, or overturn faith by fear of earthly power, or twist it from the sure way by perverse traditions; he does not run short of stumbling blocks or temptations. Foreseeing these poisons of his, God, although the door of forgiveness has been shut and barred with the bolt of baptism, has allowed something still to stand open. He has placed in the vestibule a second repentance, to open to those who knock; but only once, because it is already the second time; but never again, because the last time was in vain. For is not even this once enough? You have what you no longer deserved; for you had lost what you had received. If the Lord's indulgence grants you the means of restoring what you had lost, be grateful for a benefit repeated, not to say enlarged. 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 at once be cut down and undermined by despair if someone has become a debtor to the 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 endangered again, but not to be freed again. Let no one be ashamed. Repeated sickness calls for repeated medicine. You will show 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 willing.

If you doubt this, unroll what the Spirit says to the churches. He charges the Ephesians with forsaken love; he reproaches the Thyatirans with fornication and eating things sacrificed to idols; he accuses Sardis of works not full; he rebukes Pergamum for teaching perverse things; he chides Laodicea for trusting in riches; and yet he calls all of them to repentance, under threats, indeed. But he would not threaten the one who does not repent if he did not forgive the one who does. It would be doubtful, had he not shown this outpouring of his clemency elsewhere too. Does he not say, “He who has fallen will rise again, and he who has turned away will turn back”? He it is, surely, he it is, who “prefers mercy to sacrifices.” The heavens rejoice, and the angels there, at the repentance of a man. Ho, sinner, take heart! You see where there is rejoicing over your return. What do those arguments of the Lord's parables mean for us? That a woman loses a drachma and searches for 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 goes astray, but the flock was not dearer than that one: that one is sought out, that one is longed for in place of all, and at last it is found and carried back on the shepherd's own shoulders; for it had suffered much by its wandering. Nor shall I pass over that most gentle father, who calls back his prodigal son, gladly receives him repentant after his want, kills the fatted calf, and adorns his joy with a feast. Why not? He had found the son he had lost; he had felt him dearer because he had gained him back. Whom are we to understand by that father? God, of course. No one is so truly a father, no one so loving. He, then, will receive you, his son, even if you have squandered what you received from him, even if you come back naked, because you have come back; and he will rejoice more over your return than over the soberness of the other. But only if you repent from the heart, if you compare your hunger with the plenty of your father's hired servants, if you leave the swine, that unclean herd, if you seek your father again, offended though he is, saying, “I have sinned, father, and I am no longer worthy to be called yours.” Confession of sins lightens them as much as concealment aggravates them. For confession is the counsel of satisfaction; concealment, of contumacy.

The narrower the scope of this second and only repentance, then, the more laborious is its testing, so that it is not displayed in the conscience alone but also carried out by some act. This act, which is more commonly expressed and spoken of by a Greek word, is exomologesis, by which we confess our sin to the Lord, not indeed as if he did not know it, but inasmuch as satisfaction is arranged by confession, repentance is born of confession, and God is appeased by repentance. So exomologesis is a discipline for prostrating and humbling a man, enjoining a way of life that draws down mercy. Regarding dress and food, too, it commands him to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to cover his body with filth, to cast down his spirit with mourning, to exchange the things in which he sinned for harsh treatment; for the rest, to know only plain food and drink, for the soul's sake, of course, not the belly's; often, too, to feed prayers with fasting, to groan, to weep, and to cry out day and night to the Lord your God; to fall down before the presbyters, to kneel before God's dear ones, to enjoin on all the brothers to be ambassadors of his prayer for mercy. All this exomologesis does, to commend repentance, to honor the Lord by fear of the danger, so 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 discharge eternal punishments. So when it casts a man down, it raises him the more; when it makes him squalid, it renders him the more cleansed; when it accuses, it excuses; when it condemns, it absolves. The less you spare yourself, the more, believe me, God will spare you.

Yet many either shun this work, as a public exposure of themselves, or put it off from day to day. I presume they are more mindful of shame than of salvation, like those who, having contracted some affliction in the more private parts of the body, avoid letting the physicians know, and so perish with their own bashfulness. It is unbearable to modesty, of course, to make satisfaction to the offended Lord, to be restored to a salvation that has been squandered! Truly, you are a fine one for modesty, putting on a bold face for sinning but withdrawing it for praying for mercy! I make no room for blushing when I gain more from its loss, when shame itself, in a way, exhorts a man, saying, “Do not look at me; it is better for me that I perish for your sake.” Its danger is burdensome, certainly, if at all, when it stands among people who will mock with jeering talk, where one man is raised up by another's ruin, where the fallen man is trampled on. But among brothers and fellow servants, where there is a common hope, fear, joy, grief, suffering, because there is a common Spirit from a common Lord and Father, why do you think these are anything other than yourself? Why do you flee those who share your misfortunes as if they would applaud them? The body cannot rejoice in the affliction of one member; the whole body must grieve with it and work together for its cure. In one and another is the church, and the church is Christ. So when you stretch yourself out at the knees of the brothers, you are touching Christ, you are entreating Christ. Likewise, when they shed tears over you, it is Christ who suffers, Christ who implores the Father. What the Son asks is always easily obtained. Concealment of sin promises, to be sure, a great advantage to modesty! Of course, if we withdraw something from human knowledge, shall we likewise hide it from God? Is the opinion of men to be compared with God's knowledge? Is it better to be damned in secret than to be absolved in public? It is wretched to come to exomologesis like this! Yes, for one comes to wretchedness through evil; but where one must repent, the wretchedness ceases, because it has become saving. It is wretched to be cut, and burned with the cautery, and tormented by the sting of some powder; yet treatments that heal by unpleasantness excuse the offense they give by the benefit of the cure, and commend the present hurt for the sake of the benefit to come.

What if, besides shame, which they think the weightier, they also dread the bodily discomforts: that they must go about unwashed, dirty, deprived of cheer, in the roughness of sackcloth, the unsightliness of ashes, and a face hollow from fasting? Is it fitting, then, for us to make supplication for our sins in scarlet and Tyrian purple? Here, bring the pin for parting the hair, the powder for polishing the teeth, some two-pronged tool of iron or bronze for trimming the nails! If any false gloss, if any forced blush is available, let it be pressed on lips or cheeks! Seek out besides more cheerful baths in garden or seaside retreats; add to the expense; procure an enormous fattening of poultry; refine old wine; and when anyone asks you for whom you are lavishing all this, say: “I have sinned against God, and I am in danger of perishing forever; so now I am in suspense, and I waste away and am tormented, so that I may reconcile to myself God, whom I have wounded by sinning.” But those who go canvassing to obtain a magistracy are neither ashamed nor sorry to struggle for the sake of their wishes through discomforts of soul and body, and not only discomforts but every kind of insult. What meanness of dress do they not affect? What halls do they not besiege with greetings late at night and early in the morning? They shrink before every meeting with any greater personage; they are seen at no banquets, they gather at no revels; they are exiles from the happiness of freedom and joy; and all this for the fleeting joy of a single year. Shall we hesitate to bear, when eternity is at stake, what the pursuit of the axes and rods endures? And shall we fail to offer to an offended Lord the chastisement of food and dress that the heathen impose on themselves when they have offended no one at all? These are those of whom Scripture speaks: “Woe to those who bind their sins together as with a long rope.”

If you draw back from exomologesis, consider in your heart Gehenna, which exomologesis will extinguish for you; and first picture to yourself the greatness of the punishment, so that you may not hesitate about adopting the remedy. What do we think of that storehouse of eternal fire, when certain little vents of it stir up such blasts of flame that the nearest cities either no longer exist or expect the same fate for themselves any day? The proudest mountains burst apart with the brood of fire within; and, what proves to us the perpetuity of the judgment, though they burst apart, though they are devoured, yet they are never brought to an end. Who will not reckon these present punishments of mountains as samples of the judgment that threatens? Who will not agree that such sparks are some missiles and practice darts from some great and immeasurable furnace? So, since you know that against Gehenna, after that first defense of the Lord's baptism, there is still a second aid in exomologesis, why do you abandon your salvation? Why do you delay to undertake what you know will heal you? Even dumb and irrational creatures recognize in time the remedies divinely assigned to them. The stag pierced by an arrow knows that it must heal itself with dittany, to force the iron and its lingering barb out of the wound. The swallow, if it has blinded its chicks, knows how to give them eyes again with its own swallowwort. Shall the sinner, knowing that exomologesis has been instituted by the Lord for his restoration, pass over that which restored the Babylonian king to his kingdom? For he had long offered repentance as a sacrifice to the Lord, performing exomologesis in seven years of squalor, his nails grown wild like an eagle's, his neglected hair showing the shagginess of a lion. What harsh treatment! Yet him whom men shuddered at, God received. On the other hand, the Egyptian king, who pursued God's people, long afflicted and long refused to their Lord, rushed into battle and, after so many lessons from the plagues, perished in the parting of the sea, which was permitted to be passable to the people alone, when the waves rolled back. For he had rejected repentance and its ministry, exomologesis. Why should I say more of these two planks, as it were, of human salvation, caring more for the business of my pen than for the duty of my conscience? For since I am a sinner of every mark, and born for nothing but repentance, I cannot easily keep silent about it, when even Adam, the head of both the human race and of offense against the Lord, restored to his paradise by exomologesis, does not keep silent about it.