antly exclaim, “We will sin, for all things are freely pardoned through Christ,” have never felt the pain of sin. For if they had ever felt it, they would take care with all their might not to fall into it again. I have made this preamble in order to be able to speak more clearly, as I promised to do, about repentance.
[8]. Repentance
We have till now regarded repentance as a forced and feigned pain for sins committed, and as the paying of the penalty set upon the sin by the judge, i. e., the father confessor. We repented of our evil doing only when the Pope ordered, or when the celebration of Easter was approaching, or when our health demanded it. What was this but hypoerisy? Or whenee came it except from ignorance of ourselves? For he who has attained to knowledge of himself sees such a vast slough of wickedness that he is driven not only to grieve, but to shudder, to despair, to die. For what lust is so filthy, what greed so bold, what self-esteem so high, that every man does not see it in his own heart, scheming or working or hiding something? And as no one can deny this, how has it happened that we have not felt the pain that is born thereof? It has happened from the fact that, as was said above, no one tries to go down into himself, no one. When, therefore, we do so go down, real pain and shame immediately follow. But this was by no means the case before in the repentance of the Popes. For how should any one be disgusted with himself when no one knew himself, but thought rather that he was righteous either through his own works or through hired efforts? The second part of the gospel, then, is repentance: not that which takes place for a time, but that which makes a man who knows himself blush and be ashamed of his old life, for one reason because he is greatly dissatisfied and pained at himself, and for another because he sees it ought to be altogether foreign to a Christian to waste away in those sins from which he rejoiced to believe that he had been delivered. When, therefore, Christ and John and the Apostles preached, saying, “Repent,” they certainly did not speak of that feigned and counterfeit repentance which I mentioned in the first place;
nor of that which is felt once for all and straightway thinks license to sin given it, for this kind, as has been sufficiently set forth, is just as much a counterfeit as that performed by order of the Popes. But they spoke of the repentance in which a man goes into himself and diligently investigates the reason of all his acts, his concealments, pretences, and dissimulations. When he has done this honestly, he is driven by the vast extent of his disease to despair of his own righteousness and salvation, just as a man who has received a mortal wound keeps expecting black and everlasting night. Then, if some Machaon should bid him be of good cheer, that the wound could be sewed up and all made good again, I think nothing more acceptable and cheering could happen to him. So our sinner, too, having thus probed his wound and despaired of safety, betakes himself to begging for mercy, and presently after seeing Christ understands that all things are to be hoped for (for “if God is for us, who is against us?” [Rom. 8:31.]) He rises up who had lain prostrate. He lives who had learned and felt to his horror that he was dead. But neither Christ, nor John, “nor the Apostles spoke of this side of repentance in such a way as to imply that it is to last a certain time and then can be put aside. It is to last permanently, as long as we carry about this pitiful burden of the body. For this is so given over to vanities that it never stops teeming with evil growths, which, as soon as they spring up, must be crushed, cut off, stifled, as things highly unbecoming a Christian. And this labor, this struggle, this watchfulness—what is it if not repentance? Therefore when Christ and John and the Apostles preach saying, “Repent,” they are simply calling us to a new life quite unlike our life before; and those who had undertaken to enter upon this were marked by an initiatory sacrament, baptism to wit, by which they gave public testimony that they were going to enter upon a new life.
Now I will come to the testimony of the word, lest I seem to anyone to have brought forward my own rather than heavenly testimony.
Christ called a certain man to the service of the gospel, Luke 9:59-62: “But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and
[Son of ZEsculapius and physician of the Greeks at Troy.]
bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Leave the dead to bury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. And another also said, I will follow thee, Lord; but first suffer me to bid farewell to them that are at my house. But Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” These words of Christ are perfectly clear in themselves, for they plainly require that we shall neglect everything else and follow God at onee, and not look back. And though they might seem to apply to those only to whom the ministry of the word is entrusted, they do apply to all; as do also those two parables in Luke 14: 28-32, in which He teaches that they who determine to follow Him must examine their strength—the one that of the man who wished to build a tower, the other that of the king who was going to make war against a foe; each of whom before starting upon his undertaking counted the cost and his resources, lest he might be forced to leave everything unfinished. Finally, Christ makes this application: “So likewise, whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” But what does it amount to to have renounced riches unless you have renounced those sins on account of which we are taught that riches should be scorned? The same thing is taught by the parable in Matthew 22: 11-13 of the man who had been cordially invited to a marriage feast, but had not on a wedding garment, and therefore was cast into outer darkness. Thus those who are called to the marriage feast of the heavenly bridegroom should look to this only, that they so clothe themselves and so walk as not to disgrace themselves and insult the bridegroom.