Chapter I.
St. Ambrose gives additional rules concerning
repentance, and shows that it must not be delayed.
1. Although in the
former book we have written many things which may tend to the more
perfect practice of repentance, yet inasmuch as a great deal more may
be added, we will continue the repast so as not to seem to have
relinquished the provisions of our teaching only half
consumed.
2. For repentance must be taken in hand not
only anxiously, but also quickly, lest perchance that father of the
house in the Gospel who planted a fig-tree in his vineyard should come
and seek fruit on it, and finding none, say to the vine-dresser:
“Cut it down, why doth it cumber the ground?”3049
And unless the vine-dresser should
intercede and say: “Lord, let it alone this year also,
until I dig about it and dung it, and if it bear fruit—well; but
if not let it be cut down.”3050
3. Let us then dung this field which we possess,
and imitate those hard-working farmers, who are not ashamed to satiate
the land with rich dung and to scatter the grimy ashes over the field,
that they may gather more abundant crops.
4. And the Apostle teaches us how to dung
it, saying: “I count all things but dung, that I may gain
Christ,”3051
and he, through
evil report and good report, attained to pleasing Christ. For he
had read that Abraham, when confessing himself to be but dust and
ashes,3052
in his deep
humility found favour with God. He had read how Job, sitting
among the ashes,3053
regained all
that he had lost.3054
He had
heard in the utterance of David, how God “raiseth the poor out of
the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill.”3055
5. Let us then not be ashamed to confess our
sins unto the Lord. Shame indeed there is when each makes known
his sins, but that shame, as it were, ploughs his land, removes the
ever-recurring brambles, prunes the thorns, and gives life to the
fruits which he believed were dead. Follow him who, by diligently
ploughing his field, sought for eternal fruit: “Being
reviled we bless, being persecuted we endure, being defamed we entreat,
we are made as the offscouring of the world.”3056
If you plough after this fashion you
will sow spiritual seed. Plough that you may get rid of sin and
gain fruit. He ploughed so as to destroy in himself the last
tendency to persecution. What more could Christ give to lead us
on to the pursuit of perfection, than to convert and then give us for a
teacher one who was a persecutor?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
