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| True Repentance a Thing Divine, Originated by God, and Subject to His Laws.
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Chapter II.—True
Repentance a Thing Divine, Originated by God, and Subject to His
Laws.
But if they acted as men who had any part in God,
and thereby in reason also, they would first weigh well the importance
of repentance, and would never apply it in such a way as to make it a
ground for convicting themselves of perverse self-amendment. In
short, they would regulate the limit of their repentance, because they
would reach (a limit) in sinning too—by fearing God, I
mean. But where there is no fear, in like manner there is no
amendment; where there is no amendment, repentance is of necessity
vain, for it lacks the fruit for which God sowed it; that is,
man’s salvation. For God—after so many and so great sins of
human temerity, begun by the first of the race, Adam, after the
condemnation of man, together with the dowry of the world8424
| 8424 Sæculi dote. With
which he had been endowed. Comp. Gen. i. 28; Ps. viii.
4–8. | after his ejection from paradise and
subjection to death—when He had hasted back to His own mercy, did
from that time onward inaugurate repentance in His own self, by
rescinding the sentence of His first wrath, engaging to grant pardon to
His own work and image.8425
And so He gathered
together a people for Himself, and fostered them with many liberal
distributions of His bounty, and, after so often finding them most
ungrateful, ever exhorted them to repentance and sent out the voices of
the universal company of the prophets to prophesy. By and by, promising
freely the grace which in the last times He was intending to pour as a
flood of light on the universal world8426
through His Spirit, He
bade the baptism of repentance lead the way, with the view of first
preparing,8427
by means of the
sign and seal of repentance, them whom He was calling, through grace,
to (inherit) the promise surely made to Abraham. John holds not his
peace, saying, “Enter upon repentance, for now shall salvation
approach the nations”8428
| 8428 Comp. Matt. iii. 1, 2; Mark i. 4; Luke iii.
4–6. | —the Lord,
that is, bringing salvation according to God’s promise. To Him
John, as His harbinger, directed the repentance (which he preached),
whose province was the purging of men’s minds, that whatever
defilement inveterate error had imparted, whatever contamination in the
heart of man ignorance had engendered, that repentance should
sweep and scrape away, and cast out of doors, and thus prepare the home
of the heart, by making it clean, for the Holy Spirit, who was about to
supervene, that He might with pleasure introduce Himself there-into,
together with His celestial blessings. Of these blessings the title is
briefly one—the salvation of man—the abolition of
former sins being the preliminary step. This8429
is
the (final) cause of repentance, this her work, in taking in hand the
business of divine mercy. What is profitable to man does service to
God. The rule of repentance, however, which we learn when
we know the Lord, retains a definite form,—viz., that no
violent hands so to speak, be ever laid on good deeds or
thoughts.8430
| 8430 See the latter part of
c. i. | For God, never
giving His sanction to the reprobation of good deeds, inasmuch
as they are His own (of which, being the author, He must necessarily be
the defender too), is in like manner the acceptor of them, and if the
acceptor, likewise the rewarder. Let, then, the ingratitude of men see
to it,8431
if it attaches
repentance even to good works; let their gratitude see to it too, if
the desire of earning it be the incentive to well-doing: earthly and
mortal are they each. For how small is your gain if you do good to a
grateful man! or your loss if to an ungrateful! A good deed has
God as its debtor, just as an evil has
too; for a judge is rewarder of every cause. Well, since, God as Judge
presides over the exacting and maintaining8432
of
justice, which to Him is most dear; and since it is with an eye to
justice that He appoints all the sum of His discipline, is there room
for doubting that, just as in all our acts universally, so also in the
case of repentance, justice must be rendered to God?—which duty
can indeed only be fulfilled on the condition that repentance be
brought to bear only on sins. Further, no deed but an
evil one deserves to be called sin, nor does any one err
by well-doing. But if he does not err, why does he invade (the province
of) repentance, the private ground of such as do err? Why does he
impose on his goodness a duty proper to wickedness? Thus it comes to
pass that, when a thing is called into play where it ought not, there,
where it ought, it is neglected.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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