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| Final Considerations to Induce to Exomologesis.
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Chapter XII.—Final Considerations to Induce to
Exomologesis.
If you shrink back from exomologesis, consider in your heart the
hell,8525
| 8525 Gehennam. Comp. ad
Ux.ii. c. vi. ad fin. | which exomologesis will extinguish for you; and
imagine first the magnitude of the penalty, that you may not hesitate
about the adoption of the remedy. What do we esteem that treasure-house
of eternal fire to be, when small vent-holes8526
| 8526 Fumariola, i.e. the
craters of volcanoes. | of
it rouse such blasts of flames that neighbouring cities either are
already no more, or are in daily expectation of the same fate? The
haughtiest8527
| 8527 Superbissimi: perhaps
a play on the word, which is connected with “super” and
“superus,” as “haughty” with
“high.” | mountains start
asunder in the birth-throes of their inly-gendered fire;
and—which proves to us the perpetuity of the
judgment—though they start asunder, though they be devoured, yet
come they never to an end. Who will not account these occasional
punishments inflicted on the mountains as examples of the judgment
which menaces the impenitent? Who will not agree that such sparks
are but some few missiles and sportive darts of some inestimably vast
centre of fire? Therefore, since you know that after the first bulwarks
of the Lord’s baptism8528
| 8528 For Tertullian’s
distinction between “the Lord’s baptism” and
“John’s” see de Bapt. x. | there still remains
for you, in exomologesis a
second reserve of aid against hell, why do you desert your own
salvation? Why are you tardy to approach what you know heals you?
Even dumb irrational animals recognise in their time of need the
medicines which have been divinely assigned them. The stag, transfixed
by the arrow, knows that, to force out the steel, and its inextricable
lingerings, he must heal himself with dittany. The swallow, if she
blinds her young, knows how to give them eyes again by means of her own
swallow-wort.8529
| 8529 Or
“celandine,” which is perhaps only another form of
“chelidonia” (“Chelidonia major,”
Linn.). | Shall the sinner,
knowing that exomologesis
has been instituted by the Lord for his restoration, pass that by
which restored the Babylonian king8530
to his realms?
Long time had he offered to the Lord his repentance, working out
his exomologesis by a seven
years’ squalor, with his nails wildly growing after the
eagle’s fashion, and his unkempt hair wearing the shagginess of a
lion. Hard handling! Him whom men were shuddering at, God was receiving
back. But, on the other hand, the Egyptian emperor—who, after
pursuing the once afflicted
people of God, long denied to their Lord, rushed into the
battle8531
—did, after so
many warning plagues, perish in the parted sea, (which was permitted to
be passable to “the People” alone,) by the backward roll of
the waves:8532
for repentance and
her handmaid8533
| 8533
“Ministerium,” the abstract for the concrete: so
“servitia” = slaves. |
exomologesis he had cast away.
Why should I add more touching these two
planks8534
| 8534 See c. iv.
[Tabula was the word in cap. iv. but here it becomes
planca, and planca post naufragium is the theological
formula, ever since, among Western theologians.] | (as it were) of
human salvation, caring more for the business of the pen8535
| 8535 See de Bapt.
xii. sub init. | than the duty of my conscience? For, sinner
as I am of every dye,8536
and born for
nothing save repentance, I cannot easily be silent about that
concerning which also the very head and fount of the human race, and of
human offence, Adam, restored by exomologesis to his own paradise,8537
| 8537 Cf. Gen. iii. 24 with Luke xxiii. 43, 2 Cor. xii. 4,
and Rev. ii. 7. [Elucidation
IV.] | is not silent.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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