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| He Who Confesseth Rightly Unto God Best Knoweth Himself.
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Chapter III.—He Who Confesseth
Rightly Unto God Best Knoweth Himself.
3. What then have I to do with men, that they
should hear my confessions, as if they were going to cure all my
diseases?821
A people
curious to know the lives of others, but slow to correct their own.
Why do they desire to hear from me what I am, who are unwilling to
hear from Thee what they are? And how can they tell, when they hear
from me of myself, whether I speak the truth, seeing that no man
knoweth what is in man, “save the spirit of man which is in him
“?822
But if they
hear from Thee aught concerning themselves, they will not be able
to say, “The Lord lieth.” For what is it to hear from Thee of
themselves, but to know themselves? And who is he that knoweth
himself and saith, “It is false,” unless he himself lieth? But
because “charity believeth all things”823
(amongst those at all events whom
by union with itself it maketh one), I too, O Lord, also so confess
unto Thee that men may hear, to whom I cannot prove whether I
confess the truth, yet do they believe me whose ears charity
openeth unto me.
4.
But yet do Thou, my most secret Physician, make clear to me what
fruit I may reap by doing it. For the confessions of my past
sins,—which Thou hast “forgiven” and “covered,”824
that Thou
mightest make me happy in Thee, changing my soul by faith and Thy
sacrament,—when they are read and heard, stir up the heart, that
it sleep not in despair and say, “I cannot;” but that it may
awake in the love of Thy mercy and the sweetness of Thy grace, by
which he that is weak is strong,825
if by it he is made conscious of
his own weakness. As for the good, they take delight in hearing of
the past errors of such as are now freed from them; and they
delight, not because they are errors, but because they have been
and are so no longer. For what fruit, then, O Lord my God, to whom
my conscience maketh her daily confession, more confident in the
hope of Thy mercy than in her own innocency,—for what fruit, I
beseech Thee, do I confess even to men in Thy presence by this book
what I am at this time, not what I have been? For that fruit I have
both seen and spoken of, but what I am at this time, at the very
moment of making my confessions, divers people desire to know, both
who knew me and who knew me not,—who have heard of or from
me,—but their ear is not at my heart, where I am whatsoever I am.
They are desirous, then, of hearing me confess what I am within,
where they can neither stretch eye, nor ear, nor mind; they desire
it as those willing to believe,—but will they understand? For
charity, by which they are good, says unto them that I do not lie
in my confessions, and she in them believes me.
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