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| Of Heathen Repentance.
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I.
On Repentance.8420
| 8420 [We pass from
the polemical class of our author’s writings to those of a
practical and ethical character. This treatise on Penitence is the
product of our author’s best days, and may be dated a.d. 192.] |
[Translated by the Rev. S.
Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Of Heathen
Repentance.
Repentance, men
understand, so far as nature is able, to be an emotion of the mind
arising from disgust8421
| 8421 “Offensa
sententiæ pejoris;” or possibly, “the
miscarriage of some,” etc. | at some
previously cherished worse sentiment: that kind of men I
mean which even we ourselves were in days gone by—blind,
without the Lord’s light. From the reason of
repentance, however, they are just as far as they are from the Author
of reason Himself. Reason, in fact, is a thing of God, inasmuch
as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided,
disposed, ordained by reason—nothing which He has not
willed should be handled and understood by reason. All,
therefore, who are ignorant of God, must necessarily be ignorant also
of a thing which is His, because no treasure-house8422
at all is accessible to strangers. And thus,
voyaging all the universal course of life without the rudder of reason,
they know not how to shun the hurricane which is impending over the
world.8423
| 8423 Sæculo. [Erasmus
doubted the genuineness of this treatise, partly because of the
comparative purity of its style. See Kaye, p. 42.] | Moreover, how
irrationally they behave in the practice of repentance, it will be
enough briefly to show just by this one fact, that they exercise it
even in the case of their good deeds. They repent of good faith,
of love, of simple-heartedness, of patience, of mercy, just in
proportion as any deed prompted by these feelings has fallen on
thankless soil. They execrate their own selves for having done
good; and that species chiefly of repentance which is applied to the
best works they fix in their heart, making it their care to remember
never again to do a good turn. On repentance for evil deeds, on
the contrary, they lay lighter stress. In short, they make this same
(virtue) a means of sinning more readily than a means of
right-doing.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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