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| Of Men's Shrinking from This Second Repentance and Exomologesis, and of the Unreasonableness of Such Shrinking.
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Chapter X.—Of
Men’s Shrinking from This Second Repentance and Exomologesis, and
of the Unreasonableness of Such Shrinking.
Yet most men either shun this work, as being a
public exposure8512
of themselves, or
else defer it from day to day. I presume (as being) more mindful of
modesty than of salvation; just like men who, having contracted some
malady in the more private parts of the body, avoid the privity of
physicians, and so perish with their own bashfulness. It is
intolerable, forsooth, to modesty to make satisfaction to the offended
Lord! to be restored to its forfeited8513
salvation! Truly you are honourable in your modesty; bearing an open
forehead for sinning, but an abashed one for deprecating! I give no
place to bashfulness when I am a gainer by its loss; when itself in
some son exhorts the man, saying, “Respect not me; it is better
that I perish through8514
| 8514 Per. But
“per,” according to Oehler, is used by Tertullian as
="propter” —on your account, for your sake. | you, i.e. than
you through me.” At all events, the time when (if ever) its
danger is serious, is when it is a butt for jeering speech in the
presence of insulters, where one man raises himself on his
neighbour’s ruin, where there is upward clambering over the
prostrate. But among brethren and fellow-servants, where there is
common hope, fear,8515
joy, grief,
suffering, because there is a common Spirit from a common Lord and
Father, why do you think these brothers to be anything other
than yourself? Why flee from the partners of your own mischances, as
from such as will derisively cheer them? The body cannot feel gladness
at the trouble of any one member,8516
it must
necessarily join with one consent in the grief, and in labouring for
the remedy. In a company of two8517
is the
church;8518
but the church is
Christ.8519
| 8519 i.e. as being His
body. | When, then, you
cast yourself at the brethren’s knees, you are handling
Christ, you are entreating Christ. In like manner, when
they shed tears over you, it is Christ who suffers,
Christ who prays the Father for mercy. What a son8520
asks is ever easily obtained. Grand indeed
is the reward of modesty, which the concealment of our fault promises
us! to wit, if we do hide somewhat from the knowledge of man, shall we
equally conceal it from God? Are the judgment of men and the knowledge
of God so put upon a par? Is it better to be damned in secret
than absolved in public? But you say, “It is a miserable
thing thus to come to exomologesis:” yes, for evil does bring to
misery; but where repentance is to be made, the misery ceases, because
it is turned into something salutary. Miserable it is to be cut, and
cauterized, and racked with the pungency of some (medicinal) powder:
still, the things which heal by unpleasant means do, by the benefit of
the cure, excuse their own offensiveness, and make present injury
bearable for the sake8521
of the advantage to
supervene.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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