Chapter X.—Repentance More Competent to Heathens Than to Christians.

When, therefore, the yoke which forbade the discussion of these parables with a view to the heathens has been shaken off, and the necessity once for all discerned or admitted of not interpreting otherwise than is (suitable to) the subject-matter of the proposition; they contend in the next place, that the official proclamation of repentance is not even applicable to heathens, since their sins are not amenable to it, imputable as they are to ignorance, which nature alone renders culpable before God.  Hence the remedies are unintelligible to such to whom the perils themselves are unintelligible:  whereas the principle of repentance finds there its corresponding place where sin is committed with conscience and will, where both the fault and the favour are intelligible; that he who mourns, he who prostrates himself, is he who knows both what he has lost and what he will recover if he makes to God the offering of his repentance—to God who, of course, offers that repentance rather to sons than to strangers.

Was that, then, the reason why Jonah thought not repentance necessary to the heathen Ninevites, when he tergiversated in the duty of preaching? or did he rather, foreseeing the mercy of God poured forth even upon strangers, fear that that mercy would, as it were, destroy (the credit of) his proclamation? and accordingly, for the sake of a profane city, not yet possessed of a knowledge of God, still sinning in ignorance, did the prophet well-nigh perish?112    Comp. Jonah i. iv. except that he suffered a typical example of the Lord’s passion, which was to redeem heathens as well (as others) on their repentance.  It is enough for me that even John, when “strewing the Lord’s ways,”113    See Luke i. 76. was the herald of repentance no less to such as were on military service and to publicans, than to the sons of Abraham.114    See Luke iii. 8, 12, 14.  The Lord Himself presumed repentance on the part of the Sidonians and Tyrians if they had seen the evidences of His “miracles.”115    Matt. xi. 21; Luke x. 13.

Nay, but I will even contend that repentance is more competent to natural sinners than to voluntary.  For he will merit its fruit who has not yet used more than he who has already withal abused it; and remedies will be more effective on their first application than when outworn.  No doubt the Lord is “kind” to “the unthankful,”116    Comp. Luke vi. 35. rather than to the ignorant! and “merciful” to the “reprobates” sooner than to such as have yet had no probation! so that insults offered to His clemency do not rather incur His anger than His caresses! and He does not more willingly impart to strangers that (clemency) which, in the case of His own sons, He has lost, seeing that He has thus adopted the Gentiles while the Jews make sport of His patience!  But what the Psychics mean is this—that God, the Judge of righteousness, prefers the repentance to the death of that sinner who has preferred death to repentance!  If this is so, it is by sinning that we merit favour.

Come, you rope-walker upon modesty, and chastity, and every kind of sexual sanctity, who, by the instrumentality of a discipline of this nature remote from the path of truth, mount with uncertain footstep upon a most slender thread, balancing flesh with spirit, moderating your animal principle by faith, tempering your eye by fear; why are you thus wholly engaged in a single step?  Go on, if you succeed in finding power and will, while you are so secure, and as it were upon solid ground.  For if any wavering of the flesh, any distraction of the mind, any wandering of the eye, shall chance to shake you down from your equipoise, “God is good.”  To His own (children), not to heathens, He opens His bosom:  a second repentance will await you; you will again, from being an adulterer, be a Christian!  These (pleas) you (will urge) to me, most benignant interpreter of God.  But I would yield my ground to you, if the scripture of “the Shepherd,”117    i.e., the “Shepherd” of Hermas.  See de Or., c. xvi. which is the only one which favours adulterers, had deserved to find a place in the Divine canon; if it had not been habitually judged by every council of Churches (even of your own) among apocryphal and false (writings); itself adulterous, and hence a patroness of its comrades; from which in other respects, too, you derive initiation; to which, perchance, that “Shepherd,” will play the patron whom you depict upon your (sacramental) chalice, (depict, I say, as) himself withal a prostitutor of the Christian sacrament, (and hence) worthily both the idol of drunkenness, and the brize of adultery by which the chalice will quickly be followed, (a chalice) from which you sip nothing more readily than (the flavour of) the “ewe” of (your) second repentance!  I, however, imbibe the Scriptures of that Shepherd who cannot be broken.  Him John forthwith offers me, together with the laver and duty of repentance; (and offers Him as) saying, “Bear worthy fruits of repentance:  and say not, We have Abraham (as our) father”—for fear, to wit, lest they should again take flattering unctions for delinquency from the grace shown to the fathers—“for God is able from these stones to raise sons to Abraham.”  Thus it follows that we too (must judge) such as “sin no more” (as) “bearing worthy fruits of repentance.”  For what more ripens as the fruit of repentance than the achievement of emendation?  But even if pardon is rather the” fruit of repentance,” even pardon cannot co-exist without the cessation from sin.  So is the cessation from sin the root of pardon, that pardon may be the fruit of repentance.

CAPUT X.

0999B Excusso igitur jugo in ethnicum disserendi parabolas istas, et semel dispecta vel recepta necessitate non aliter interpretandi quam materia propositi est, contendunt jam nec competere ethnicis poenitentiae denuntiationem, quorum delicta obnoxia ei non sint, ignorantiae scilicet imputanda, quam sola natura ream Deo faciat. Porro, nec remedia sapere, quibus pericula ipsa non sapiunt, illic autem poenitentiae constare rationem, ubi conscientia et voluntate delinquitur, ubi et culpa sapiat et gratia, illum lugere, illum volutari qui sciat et quid amiserit et quid sit recuperaturus, si poenitentiam Deo immolarit, utique eam magis filiis offerenti, quam extraneis. Num ergo et Jonas (Jon. III, 4) idcirco ethnicis Ninivitis non putabat poenitentiam necessariam, cum cavillaretur in 0999C praedicationis officio? an potius misericordiam Dei providens etiam in extraneos profusam, quasi destructuram praeconium, verebatur? atque adeo propter civitatem profanam nondum Dei compotem, adhuc ignorantia delinquentem, pene periit prophetes? nisi quod exemplum passus est Dominicae passionis, ethnicos quoque poenitentes redempturae (Luc. XIII, 29, 30). Bene quod et Joannes Domini vias sternens, non minus militantibus et publicanis, quam filiis Abraham, poenitentiae erat praeco (Luc. III, 13 seqq.). 1000A Ipse Dominus Sidoniis et Tyriis praesumpsit poenitentiam, si virtutum documenta vidissent (Matth. XI, 21). Atquin ego illam naturalibus magis peccatoribus competere contendam, quam voluntariis. Magis enim merebitur fructum ejus qui nondum eo usus est, quam qui jam et abusus est; magisque sapient remedia prima, quam exoleta. Nimirum Dominus ingratis benignus magis quam ignaris, et citius reprobatis misericors, quam nondum probatis; ut non magis irascatur contumeliis clementiae suae, quam blandiatur; et non libentius extraneis eam impertiat, quam in filiis perdidit, cum gentes sic adoptaverit, dum Judaei de patientia ludunt . Sed hoc volunt Psychici, ut Deus justus judex ejus peccatoris poenitentiam malit quam mortem, qui mortem poenitentia maluit. 1000B Quod si ita est, peccando promeremur. Age tu, funambule pudicitiae et castitatis, et omnis circa sexum sanctitatis, qui tenuissimum filium disciplina ejusmodi veri avia pendente vestigio ingrederis, carnem spiritu librans, animam fide moderans, oculum metu temperans. Quid itaque in gradu totus es? Perge sane, si potueris, si volueris, dum tam securus et quasi in solido es. Nam, si qua te carnis vacillatio, animi avocatio, oculi evagatio de tenore decusserit, Deus bonus est: suis, non ethnicis, sinum subjicit; secunda te poenitentia excipiet; eris iterum de moecho Christianus. Haec tu mihi, benignissime Dei interpres. Sed cederem tibi, si scriptura Pastoris, quae sola moechos amat, divino instrumento meruisset incidi, si non ab omni concilio Ecclesiarum etiam 1000C vestrarum inter apocrypha et falsa judicaretur, adultera et ipsa, et inde patrona sociorum; a qua et alias initiaris; cui ille si forte patrocinabitur pastor, quem in calice depingis, prostitutorem et ipsum Christiani sacramenti, merito et ebrietatis idolum, et moechiae asilum post calicem subsecuturae , de quo nihil libentius bibas, quam ovem poenitentiae secundae . At ego ejus pastoris scripturas haurio qui non potest frangi: hunc mihi statim Joannes offert cum poenitentiae lavacro et officio dicentem: Facite dignos 1001A poenitentiae fructus, et ne dixeritis: patrem habemus Abraham: et ne scilicet rursus blandimenta delinquentiae de patrum resumerent gratia: Potest enim Deus de lapidibus istis filios suscitare Abrahae (Matt. III, 8, 9). Sic et nos sequitur, ut eos qui hactenus delinquant, facientes dignum poenitentiae fructum. Quid enim ex poenitentia maturescit, quam emendationis effectus? Sed etsi venia potius est poenitentiae fructus, hanc quoque consistere non licet sine cessatione delicti. Ita cessatio delicti radix est veniae, ut venia sit poenitentiae fructus.