Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/270

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
60
REPENTANCE IN THE ANTIENT CHURCH.

they should have offended: henceforth let them know and require nothing of [such] repentance. I am loath to subjoin the mention of a second, yea of a last, hope; lest treating again of a yet remaining aid of penitence, I should seem to mark out a space for sin. God forbid, that men should so interpret this, as if a door was open to sin, because it is open to repentance; and the redundancy of divine benevolence should make human rashness to wax wanton. Let no one become the worse, because God is the more good: sinning again, because there is again forgiveness: there will be an end of escaping, if there is not of offending." After praising those then who shrunk from being again a burthen to the Divine mercy, and who dreaded to seem to trample on what they had obtained," he thus at last, timidly, or rather reverently, advances to set forth God's last provision against the malice of Satan, repentance after Baptism. "God, providing against these his poisons, though the door of full oblivion (ignoscentiæ) is closed, and the bolt of Baptism fastened up, alloweth somewhat still to be open. He hath placed in the vestibule (of the Church, where penitents used to kneel) a second repentance, which might be open to those who knock." But how does Tertullian describe this discipline? "Full confession (exomologesis) is the discipline of prostrating and humbling the whole man; enjoining a conversation which may excite pity; it enacts as to the very dress and sustenance—to lie on sackcloth and ashes: the body defiled, the mind cast down with grief: those things, in which he sinned, changed by a mournful treatment: for food and drink, bread only and water, for the sake of life not of the belly: for the most part to nourish prayer by fasting: to groan; to weep; to moan day and night before the Lord their God; to embrace the knees of the Presbyters and of the friends of God; to enjoin all the brethren to pray for them. All this is contained in 'full confession,' with the view to recommend their repentance; to honour the Lord by trembling at their peril; by pronouncing on the sinner, to discharge the office of the indignation of God; and by temporal affliction,—I say not to baffle, but—to blot out eternal torment. When therefore it