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| Against the Belief of Those Who Think that the Sins Which Have Been Accompanied with Almsgiving Will Do Them No Harm.
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Chapter 27.—Against the Belief of
Those Who Think that the Sins Which Have Been Accompanied with
Almsgiving Will Do Them No Harm.
It remains to reply to those who
maintain that those only shall burn in eternal fire who neglect
alms-deeds proportioned to their sins, resting this opinion on the
words of the Apostle James, “He shall have judgment without mercy
that hath showed no mercy.”1582
Therefore, they say, he that
hath showed mercy, though he has not reformed his dissolute
conduct, but has lived wickedly and iniquitously even while
abounding in alms, shall have a merciful judgment, so that he shall
either be not condemned at all, or shall be delivered from final
judgment after a time. And for the same reason they suppose that
Christ will discriminate between those on the right hand and those
on the left, and will send the one party into His kingdom, the
other into eternal punishment, on the sole ground of their
attention to or neglect of works of charity. Moreover, they
endeavor to use the prayer which the Lord Himself taught as a proof
and bulwark of their opinion, that daily sins which are never
abandoned can be expiated through alms-deeds, no matter how
offensive or of what sort they be. For, say they, as there is no
day on which Christians ought not to use this prayer, so there is
no sin of any kind which, though committed every day, is not
remitted when we say, “Forgive us our debts,” if we take care
to fulfill what follows, “as we forgive our debtors.”1583
For,
they go on to say, the Lord does not say, “If ye forgive men
their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you your little
daily sins,” but “will forgive you your sins.” Therefore,
be they of any kind or magnitude whatever, be they perpetrated
daily and never abandoned or subdued in this life, they can be
pardoned, they presume, through alms-deeds.
But they are right to inculcate the
giving of aims proportioned to past sins; for if they said that any
kind of alms could obtain the divine pardon of great sins committed
daily and with habitual enormity, if they said that such sins could
thus be daily remitted, they would see that their doctrine was
absurd and ridiculous. For they would thus be driven to
acknowledge that it were possible for a very wealthy man to buy
absolution from murders, adulteries, and all manner of wickedness,
by paying a daily alms of ten paltry coins. And if it be most
absurd and insane to make such an acknowledgment, and if we still
ask what
are those fitting alms of which even the forerunner of
Christ said, “Bring forth therefore fruits meet for
repentance,”1584
undoubtedly it will be found that they are not such as are done by
men who undermine their life by daily enormities even to the very
end. For they suppose that by giving to the poor a small fraction
of the wealth they acquire by extortion and spoliation they can
propitiate Christ, so that they may with impunity commit the most
damnable sins, in the persuasion that they have bought from Him a
license to transgress, or rather do buy a daily indulgence. And
if they for one crime have distributed all their goods to
Christ’s needy members, that could profit them nothing unless
they desisted from all similar actions, and attained charity which
worketh no evil He therefore who does alms-deeds proportioned to
his sins must first begin with himself. For it is not reasonable
that a man who exercises charity towards his neighbor should not do
so towards himself, since he hears the Lord saying, “Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself,”1585
and again, “Have compassion on
thy soul, and please God.”1586
He then who has not compassion
on his own soul that he may please God, how can he be said to do
alms-deeds proportioned to his sins? To the same purpose is that
written, “He who is bad to himself, to whom can he be good?”1587
We ought
therefore to do alms that we may be heard when we pray that our
past sins may be forgiven, not that while we continue in them we
may think to provide ourselves with a license for wickedness by
alms-deeds.
The reason, therefore, of our
predicting that He will impute to those on His right hand the
alms-deeds they have done, and charge those on His left with
omitting the same, is that He may thus show the efficacy of charity
for the deletion of past sins, not for impunity in their perpetual
commission. And such persons, indeed, as decline to abandon their
evil habits of life for a better course cannot be said to do
charitable deeds. For this is the purport of the saying,
“Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did
it not to me.”1588
He shows them that they do not
perform charitable actions even when they think they are doing
so. For if they gave bread to a hungering Christian because he is
a Christian, assuredly they would not deny to themselves the bread
of righteousness, that is, Christ Himself; for God considers not
the person to whom the gift is made, but the spirit in which it is
made. He therefore who loves Christ in a Christian extends alms
to him in the same spirit in which he draws near to Christ, not in
that spirit which would abandon Christ if it could do so with
impunity. For in proportion as a man loves what Christ
disapproves does he himself abandon Christ. For what does it
profit a man that he is baptized, if he is not justified? Did not
He who said, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he
shall not enter into the kingdom of God,”1589
say also, “Except your
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and
Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven?”1590
Why do
many through fear of the first saying run to baptism, while few
through fear of the second seek to be justified? As therefore it
is not to his brother a man says, “Thou fool,” if when he says
it he is indignant not at the brotherhood, but at the sin of the
offender,—for otherwise he were guilty of hell fire,—so he who
extends charity to a Christian does not extend it to a Christian if
he does not love Christ in him. Now he does not love Christ who
refuses to be justified in Him. Or, again, if a man has been
guilty of this sin of calling his brother Fool, unjustly reviling
him without any desire to remove his sin, his alms-deeds go a small
way towards expiating this fault, unless he adds to this the remedy
of reconciliation which the same passage enjoins. For it is there
said, “Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there
rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there
thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to
thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”1591
Just so
it is a small matter to do alms-deeds, no matter how great they be,
for any sin, so long as the offender continues in the practice of
sin.
Then as to the daily prayer which
the Lord Himself taught, and which is therefore called the Lord’s
prayer, it obliterates indeed the sins of the day, when day by day
we say, “Forgive us our debts,” and when we not only say but
act out that which follows, “as we forgive our debtors;”1592
but we
utter this petition because sins have been committed, and not that
they may be. For by it our Saviour designed to teach us that,
however righteously we live in this life of infirmity and darkness,
we still commit sins for the remission of which we ought to pray,
while we must pardon those who sin against us that we ourselves
also may be pardoned. The Lord then did not utter the words,
“If ye forgive men their trespasses, your Father will also
forgive you your trespasses,”1593
in order that we might
contract from this petition such confidence as should
enable us to sin securely from day to day, either putting ourselves
above the fear of human laws, or craftily deceiving men concerning
our conduct, but in order that we might thus learn not to suppose
that we are without sins, even though we should be free from
crimes; as also God admonished the priests of the old law to this
same effect regarding their sacrifices, which He commanded them to
offer first for their own sins, and then for the sins of the
people. For even the very words of so great a Master and Lord are
to be intently considered. For He does not say, If ye forgive men
their sins, your Father will also forgive you your sins, no matter
of what sort they be, but He says, your sins; for it was a daily
prayer He was teaching, and it was certainly to disciples already
justified He was speaking. What, then, does He mean by “your
sins,” but those sins from which not even you who are justified
and sanctified can be free? While, then, those who seek occasion
from this petition to indulge in habitual sin maintain that the
Lord meant to include great sins, because He did not say, He will
forgive you your small sins, but “your sins,” we, on the other
hand, taking into account the character of the persons He was
addressing, cannot see our way to interpret the expression “your
sins” of anything but small sins, because such persons are no
longer guilty of great sins. Nevertheless not even great sins
themselves—sins from which we must flee with a total reformation
of life—are forgiven to those who pray, unless they observe the
appended precept, “as ye also forgive your debtors.” For if
the very small sins which attach even to the life of the righteous
be not remitted without that condition, how much further from
obtaining indulgence shall those be who are involved in many great
crimes, if, while they cease from perpetrating such enormities,
they still inexorably refuse to remit any debt incurred to
themselves, since the Lord says, “But if ye forgive not men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses?”1594
For this
is the purport of the saying of the Apostle James also, “He shall
have judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy.”1595
For we
should remember that servant whose debt of ten thousand talents his
lord cancelled, but afterwards ordered him to pay up, because the
servant himself had no pity for his fellow-servant, who owed him an
hundred pence.1596
The
words which the Apostle James subjoins,“And mercy rejoiceth
against judgment,”1597
find their application among those
who are the children of the promise and vessels of mercy. For
even those righteous men, who have lived with such holiness that
they receive into the eternal habitations others also who have won
their friendship with the mammon of unrighteousness,1598
became
such only through the merciful deliverance of Him who justifies the
ungodly, imputing to him a reward according to grace, not according
to debt. For among this number is the apostle, who says, “I
obtained mercy to be faithful.”1599
But it must be admitted, that those
who are thus received into the eternal habitations are not of such
a character that their own life would suffice to rescue them
without the aid of the saints, and consequently in their case
especially does mercy rejoice against judgment. And yet we are
not on this account to suppose that every abandoned profligate, who
has made no amendment of his life, is to be received into the
eternal habitations if only he has assisted the saints with the
mammon of unrighteousness,—that is to say, with money or wealth
which has been unjustly acquired, or, if rightfully acquired, is
yet not the true riches, but only what iniquity counts riches,
because it knows not the true riches in which those persons abound,
who even receive others also into eternal habitations. There is
then a certain kind of life, which is neither, on the one hand, so
bad that those who adopt it are not helped towards the kingdom of
heaven by any bountiful alms-giving by which they may relieve the
wants of the saints, and make friends who could receive them into
eternal habitations, nor, on the other hand, so good that it of
itself suffices to win for them that great blessedness, if they do
not obtain mercy through the merits of those whom they have made
their friends. And I frequently wonder that even Virgil should
give expression to this sentence of the Lord, in which He says,
“Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,
that they may receive you into everlasting habitations;”1600
and this
very similar saying, “He that receiveth a prophet, in the name of
a prophet, shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he that
receiveth a righteous man, in the name of a righteous man, shall
receive a righteous man’s reward.”1601
For when that poet described the
Elysian fields, in which they suppose that the souls of the blessed
dwell, he placed there not only those who had been able by their
own merit to reach that abode, but added,—
“And they who grateful memory
won
By services to others done;”1602
that is, they who had served others, and thereby merited
to be remembered by them. Just as if they used the expression so
common in Christian lips, where some humble person commends himself
to one of the saints, and says, Remember me, and secures that he do
so by deserving well at his hand. But what that kind of life we
have been speaking of is, and what those sins are which prevent a
man from winning the kingdom of God by himself, but yet permit him
to avail himself of the merits of the saints, it is very difficult
to ascertain, very perilous to define. For my own part, in spite
of all investigation, I have been up to the present hour unable to
discover this. And possibly it is hidden from us, lest we should
become careless in avoiding such sins, and so cease to make
progress. For if it were known what these sins are which, though
they continue, and be not abandoned for a higher life, do yet not
prevent us from seeking and hoping for the intercession of the
saints, human sloth would presumptuously wrap itself in these sins,
and would take no steps to be disentangled from such wrappings by
the deft energy of any virtue, but would only desire to be rescued
by the merits of other people, whose friendship had been won by a
bountiful use of the mammon of unrighteousness. But now that we
are left in ignorance of the precise nature of that iniquity which
is venial, even though it be persevered in, certainly we are both
more vigilant in our prayers and efforts for progress, and more
careful to secure with the mammon of unrighteousness friends for
ourselves among the saints.
But this deliverance, which is
effected by one’s own prayers, or the intercession of holy men,
secures that a man be not cast into eternal fire, but not that,
when once he has been cast into it, he should after a time be
rescued from it. For even those who fancy that what is said of
the good ground bringing forth abundant fruit, some thirty, some
sixty, some an hundred fold, is to be referred to the saints, so
that in proportion to their merits some of them shall deliver
thirty men, some sixty, some an hundred,—even those who maintain
this are yet commonly inclined to suppose that this deliverance
will take place at, and not after the day of judgment. Under this
impression, some one who observed the unseemly folly with which men
promise themselves impunity on the ground that all will be included
in this method of deliverance, is reported to have very happily
remarked, that we should rather endeavor to live so well that we
shall be all found among the number of those who are to intercede
for the liberation of others, lest these should be so few in
number, that, after they have delivered one thirty, another sixty,
another a hundred, there should still remain many who could not be
delivered from punishment by their intercessions, and among them
every one who has vainly and rashly promised himself the fruit of
another’s labor. But enough has been said in reply to those who
acknowledge the authority of the same sacred Scriptures as
ourselves, but who, by a mistaken interpretation of them, conceive
of the future rather as they themselves wish, than as the
Scriptures teach. And having given this reply, I now, according
to promise, close this book. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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