8. If you doubt this, consider what the Spirit has said to the churches. He accuses the Ephesians of forgetting their former love, accuses the Thyatirans of fornication and eating things sacrificed to idols, complains of the Sardians that their work is not finished, Pergamos rebukes the believers for false teaching, and accuses the Laodiceans of trusting in riches. And yet the Spirit calls them all to repentance, even though He threatens them [126]. He would not have threatened the non-repentant if He had not had mercy on the penitent. One could doubt this, if He did not show His inexhaustible mercy in other places. He says: "Does not he who has fallen rise up, and he who has gone astray is not converted? (Jeremiah 8:4). God is the One Who desires mercy rather than sacrifice (Hos. 6:6). The heavens and the angels who dwell there rejoice in the repentance of man. Rejoice, sinner, and be of good cheer, for you see where they rejoice at your return! And what else do the testimonies of the Lord's parables try to explain to us? For example, a woman lost a coin, searched for it, and found it, and called her friends to rejoice with it—does this not resemble a converted sinner? [127] The shepherd also lost his way, but the whole flock was not dearer to him than it: he seeks it alone, desiring it more than anyone else, and finally finds it and carries it on his own shoulders, because it is weakened in its wandering. Nor will I keep silent about that meek father who again summons his profligate son and willingly receives him, who has repented after the need he has endured, kills a well-fed calf and makes a feast in joy [129]. Why not? For he had found his lost son, and he considered him dearer to him whom he had regained. Who should we understand by this father? God, of course, for there is no other Father so full of love. Therefore He accepts you, His son, although you have squandered what you have received from Him and are returning naked, because you have returned, and will rejoice more in your return than in the prudence of another son. But only if you repent from the bottom of your heart, you will compare your hunger with the satiety of your father's hired men, if you leave behind the swine, the unclean animals, if you turn again to the Father whom you have rejected, saying: "I have sinned, Father, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son" (Luke 15:21). Confession of sins diminishes them as much as pretense increases them. For confession testifies to the desire to reform, and pretense speaks of stubbornness.

9. As difficult as it is to repent a second and last time, it is just as difficult to make repentance leave no doubt. It is necessary that repentance be brought not only in conscience, but also through some action. This action, more often expressed and denoted by the Greek word, is public confession (exomologesis), in which we confess our sins to God, not because He does not know them, but because confession prepares forgiveness, repentance is born from confession, and God is propitiated by repentance. Thus, public confession teaches a person humility and humility, obliging him to behave in a way that is attractive to charity. As for the appropriate clothing and way of life, at this time one should be dressed in rags and lie in ashes, polluting the body with impurities, and immersing the spirit in lamentation, and with bitterness reflect on one's sin. You should eat only simple food and drink, and then not for the pleasure of the belly, but for the maintenance of life, fast and pray more often, wail, weep and cry out to the Lord your God day and night. We should bow down before the elders, bow our knees before the beloved of God,[130] and try to obtain intercession before all the brethren for the fulfillment of our forgiveness. All this constitutes a public confession, intended to make repentance pleasing, to induce worship of God for fear of destruction, so that, by condemning the sinner himself, it may fulfill the part of God's indignation, and eternal punishment may become, if not superfluous, at least changed. Thus, by overthrowing a person, public confession elevates him all the more; when it soils it, it restores its purity; accusing – justifies; by condemning, it liberates. As much as you do not spare yourself, so much, believe me, God will spare you.

10. However, many avoid public repentance, not wishing to reveal it in public, or postpone it from day to day. I suppose here they are more anxious for shame than for salvation, like those who avoid physicians when they feel pains in the parts of the body which are supposed to be forbidden, and thus perish with their bashful blush. It is unbearably shameful, you see, to apologize to the offended Lord, thereby preparing oneself for the salvation that was lost. You are very modest when you open your face to sin, and hide it to ask for mercy! I leave no room for the color of shame where its loss gives me much, where it itself encourages the person, saying: "Do not pay attention to me, for your sake it is better for me to die!" But among brothers and converts, where there is common hope, fear, joy, sorrow, suffering, because there is one common Spirit from the one Lord and Father for all, how can they be considered anything other than yourself? Why do you avoid your companions in misfortune as if they were some kind of mockers? The body cannot rejoice in the suffering of one of the members; it inevitably suffers wholly and contributes to healing. Both you and he, we are all the Church, and the Church is Christ. Consequently, when you fall down on the knees of the brethren, you touch Christ, you beseech Christ. In the same way, when they shed tears over you, Christ suffers, Christ beseeches the Father. It is always easy to fulfill what the Son asks. Needless to say, a great gain for modesty promises a hidden sin! If we are able to hide something from human attention, then can we really hide it from God? Is it really possible to compare man's opinion of us with God's knowledge? Or is it better to be secretly condemned than openly acquitted? They say that the trouble is to proceed to public confession. But only through evil do they get into trouble, and where it is necessary to repent, there is no trouble, since repentance serves salvation. The trouble is when they cut, cauterize and torture with some caustic powder. However, in that which, although unpleasant, brings healing, harm is tolerated because of its healing properties, and it is even recommended to endure suffering for the sake of future benefit.

11. But it happens that in addition to shame, which is considered the main cause of indecision, one is also afraid of bodily burdens, that one will have to be unwashed, smeared, and in coarse rags lie on terrifying ashes, without any joy in the soul, with a face sunken from fasting. But is it proper for us to pray for the forgiveness of sins in scarlet and Tyrian purple? Hurry up and take pins for styling hair and tooth powder, take iron or copper scissors for cutting nails! Smear your cheeks and lips with paint for shine, for a fake blush! Find a more pleasant place, in the gardens or by the sea, and settle there, increasing your expenses, looking for a bird bursting with fat and strained old wine. And if anyone asks you why you are so luxurious, answer: "I have sinned against God, and I fear that I may perish forever! That is why I do not know what to do, I am exhausted and tormented, in order to be reconciled with God, who has been offended by my sin." But people who seek office are not ashamed or lazy to achieve what they desire, exposing themselves to all kinds of privations, both for soul and body, and not only to privations, but also to outright insults. What humiliating clothes they do not wear! What reception rooms are filled to greet the host, even in the middle of the night, or immediately after dinner! At every meeting with a more important personage, they seem to decrease in stature, and are not seen at feasts, they keep away from festivities and deprive themselves of free happiness and joy. And all this for the sake of a short-lived pleasure lasting only one year! And we, in view of the danger of eternal torment, still doubt whether to endure what the aspirant endures axe and fasces! Should we hesitate to impose restrictions on ourselves in food and clothing in the face of the offended Lord, when even pagans do this, without offending anyone? This is who the Scripture reminds us of: Woe to him who imposes his sins as on one long rope! [131]

12. If you still doubt the expediency of public repentance, imagine the hell that it has extinguished for you personally, and so that you do not doubt the need for treatment, imagine the severity of the punishment. What must this abyss of eternal fire be like, when its small vents are blazing with such flames that the neighboring cities have either already perished or are expecting the same fate any day now?! Under the pressure of the inner fire, the highest mountains are splitting! And the fact that they, although split and fragmented, never cease to exist, is not for us a proof of the eternally lasting Judgment? Who would not find these torments of the mountains a clear example of the Judgment threatening everyone? Who will not agree that these sparks are only the eruptions of some vast and immense hearth, as if they were its test arrows? Thus, you know that, in addition to the first bulwark against hell, which is given at the Lord's baptism, you also have a second remedy, in the form of public repentance. So why do you neglect your salvation? Why are you delaying to embark on what you know will bring you healing? Even dumb and mindless animals, when necessary, seek for themselves God-ordained remedies. A deer wounded by an arrow knows that it should be treated with an ash tree in order to remove the tip with a curved point from the wound. A swallow, if it has blinded its chicks, is able to restore their sight with a "swallow root" [132]. And the sinner, knowing the public repentance given by God for his healing, bypasses it, although it was this that restored the Babylonian king to the kingdom! For a long time he repented before the Lord, performing public repentance, and for seven years he did not take off his sackcloth, when his nails also grew like lion's claws, and his hair, due to neglect of them, gave him a terrible aquiline appearance. What self-deprecation! But whom people shunned in fear, God accepted [133]. On the contrary, the king of Egypt undertook to persecute the people of God, who had long been in enslavement, when they did not want to return them to God. In spite of such great signs of plagues, Pharaoh rushed into battle and perished in the newly closed waters of the parted sea, which opened the way only for one people. For Pharaoh rejected repentance and the very method of its implementation—public confession.

Is it necessary to continue the discussion of these two boards, as it were, of human salvation, being more concerned with the mode of expression than with the duty imposed by conscience? Since I am sinful all around and was born for nothing else but to repent, I cannot keep silent about this, just as Adam himself, the ancestor of both the human race and the offense of the Lord, Adam, who was returned to paradise precisely through the public confession of sins, is not silent.

On the Testimony of the Soul

1. Whoever wishes to borrow from the most widespread writings of philosophers, poets, or any other teachers of pagan learning and wisdom, the testimonies of Christian truth, in order to convict its enemies and persecutors by their own writings, both of their own errors and of injustice to us, will need great curiosity and a still greater memory. Some, however, who have retained both a diligent curiosity and a firm memory in regard to former literature, have indeed furnished us with small writings on the subject. They make special mentions and testimonies concerning the meaning, origin, continuity, and proofs of those judgments, from which it may be understood that we have introduced nothing so new and unusual as to be appreciated in the most common and common writings, though they have rejected some errors, and introduced some correctness.

However, the unimaginable obstinacy of people refuses to trust even those of their teachers who are considered excellent and the best in other things, as soon as they find arguments in defense of Christians. Poets are empty when they attribute human passions and conversations to the gods. Philosophers are foolish when they knock at the door of truth. A man will be considered wise and prudent only until he proclaims something Christian: for if he acquires some wisdom and prudence by rejecting the ceremonies or condemning this world, he will be considered a Christian. Therefore, we will no longer have anything in common with the writings and doctrine of perverse happiness, where one trusts fiction rather than truth. Some, perhaps, could preach about the one and only God. But in any case, [we] have not been told anything that a Christian would consider impossible to blame; Not everyone knows what is reported, and those who know do not trust their knowledge — people are very far from recognizing our writings, and only those who have already become a Christian turn to them.

I have recourse to a new testimony, which, however, is more famous than all works, more effective than any teaching, more accessible than any publication; it is greater than the whole man, although it constitutes the whole man. Open up to us. soul! If you are divine and eternal, as most philosophers believe, you will not lie. If you are not divine by virtue of your mortality (as only Epicurus imagines), much less will you lie, whether you came down from heaven or came from the earth, whether you were composed of numbers or atoms. whether you begin with the body or enter it later, in whatever way you make man a rational being, more capable of feeling and knowing than anyone else.

I appeal to you, but not to the one who spews out wisdom, having been brought up in schools, refined in libraries, nourished in academies and Attic porticoes. I appeal to you, simple, uneducated, coarse and ill-bred, as you are among people who have only you, to the one you are in the streets, in the squares, and in the weavers' workshops. I need your inexperience, for no one believes in your insignificant knowledge. I ask of you what you bring into man, what you have learned to feel either from yourself or with the help of your creator, whatever he may be. You, as far as I know, are not a Christian: for the soul usually becomes a Christian, and is not born a Christian. But now the Christians demand testimony from you, a stranger, against your own, so that they may be ashamed of you, for they hate and ridicule us for the knowledge of which they now accuse you.

2. We are displeased because we publicly call by this one name the only God, from Whom all things are subject and to Whom all things are subject. Bear witness, soul, if you know it. For thou, as we hear, proclaim openly and with all the freedom that we have: "What God will give" and "If God wills." With these words you indicate that there is One Whose authority you acknowledge and to Whose will you turn your gaze. At the same time, you assert that there are no other gods, whom you list by name: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Minerva. For you assert that there is only one God, and only Him, you call God; therefore, when you sometimes call them also; gods, it is clear that you are using someone else's name and as if borrowed. Nor is the nature of the God whom we preach hidden from you. "God is good," "God does good" — this is your voice. And you, of course, add: "And man is evil," indicating by this contrast, indirectly and figuratively, that man is evil precisely because he has distanced himself from the Good God. And you, just as willingly as befits a Christian, proclaim that the God of goodness and goodness is the source of all blessing (this is considered by us the highest sacrament of teaching and communion): "God will bless you." But if you turn God's blessing into a curse, then, as you should, together with us, you recognize all His power over us.

There are also those who, without rejecting God, do not recognize Him as the Overseer, the Disposer, and the Judger, for which we are most blamed, for we accept this teaching for fear of the proclaimed judgment. By honoring God in this way, they free Him from the burdens of supervision and punishment, and do not even recognize His wrath. "For," they say, "if God is angry, he is subject to corruption and passion; and what suffers and deteriorates may even perish, but for God this is inadmissible." Agreeing that the soul is divine and came from God, they fall, according to the testimony of the soul itself, into a contradiction with the opinion given above. For if the soul is divine or given by God, then it has undoubtedly come to know its Giver, and if it has, then, of course, it fears Him, so great a Creator.

How can she not be afraid of Him Whom she would like to see merciful, and not wrathful? Where, then, does the soul's natural fear of God come from, if God does not know wrath? How does He who does not know offense cause fear? And what do they fear if not anger? And where does anger come from, if not out of a desire to punish? Where does the desire to punish come from, if not from a just court? Whence comes judgment itself, if not from omnipotence? And who is omnipotent except the one God?