Do I say he shall be pardoned? I do not say it. And what say you to me? I know not. I presume not, I promise not, I know not. Will you free yourself from doubt? Will you avoid that which is uncertain? Repent while thou art in health. For if you do penance while you are well, and sickness find you so doing, run to be reconciled; and if you do 80, you are secure. Why are you secure? Because you repented at that time when you could have sinned. But if you repent then when you cannot sin, thy sins have left thee, thou hast not left them. But how know you that God will not forgive him? You say true. How? I know not. I know that, I know not this. For therefore I give repentance to you, because I know not. For if I knew it would profit you nothing, I would not give it you. And if I did know that it would profit you, I would not affright you. There are but these two things. Either thou shalt be pardoned, or thou shalt not. Which of these shall be in thy portion I know not. Therefore keep that which is certain, and let go that which is uncertain." Some suppose these to have been the words of St. Ambrose, not of St. Austin. But St. Austin" hath in his sermons de Tempore' something more decretory than the former discourse. 'He that is polluted with the filth of sins, let him be cleansed 'exomologesis satisfactione,' 'with the satisfaction of repentance.' Neither let him put it off, that he do not require it till his death-bed, where he cannot perform it. For that persuasion is unprofitable. It is nothing for a sinner to repent, unless he finish his repentance. For the voice of the penitent alone is not sufficient for the amendment of his faults: for in the satisfaction for great crimes, not words, but works, are looked after. Truly repentance is given in the last, because it cannot be denied ; but we cannot affirm, that they who so ask, ought to be absolved. For how can the lapsed man do penance? How shall the dying man do it? How can he repent, who cannot do works of satisfaction or amendment of life? And therefore that repentance which is required by sick men, is itself weak; that which is required by dying men, I fear lest that also die. And therefore whosoever will find mercy of God, let him do his repentance in this world, that he may be saved in the world to come."-Higher yet are the words of Pauli "Serm. 57. nus, bishop of Nola, to Faustus of Rhegium, inquiring what is to be done to death-bed penitents: "Inimicâ persuasione mentitur, qui maculas longâ ætate contractas subitis et inutilibus abolendas gemitibus arbitratur: quo tempore confessio esse potest, satisfactio esse non potest *." "He lies with the persuasion of an enemy, who thinks that those stains which have been long contracting, can be suddenly washed off with a few unprofitable sighings, at that time when he can confess, but never make amends.” -And a little after; "Circa exequendam interioris hominis sanitatem, non solùm accipiendi voluntas, sed agendi expectatur utilitas:" and again, "Hujusmodi medicina sicut ore poscenda, ita opere consummanda est.” "Then a man repents truly, when what he affirms with his mouth, he can finish with his hand ;”—that is, not only declaim against sin, but also mortify it. To which I add the words of Asterius, bishop of Amasea. “At cum debitum tempus adveniet, et indeprecabile decretum corporis et animæ nexum dissolvet, reputatio subibit eorum quæ in vita patrata sunt, et pœnitentia sera et nihil profutura. Tunc enim demum pœnitentia prodest, cum pœnitens emendandi facultatem habet; ́sublatâ verò copiâ recte faciendi, inutilis est dolor, et irrita pœnitentia:" "When the set time shall come, when the irrevocable decree shall dissolve the union of soul and body, then shall the memory of those things return which were done in our lifetime, and a late repentance that shall profit nothing. For then repentance is profitable, when the penitent can amend his fault: but when the power of doing "well is taken away, grief is unprofitable, and the repentance vain." Now to the words of Gennadius before quoted, I an*swer, that they are a fierce reproof of the Novatian doctrine, and too great an earnestness of going so far from them, that he left also the severity, which wise and good men did at that time teach, and ought always to press. He went to cure one error by another, never thinking any contradictory sufficient, unless it were against every thing that the Novatians did say, though also it was said and believed by the orthodox. But I shall resume this discourse in the following chapters, where upon another occasion I shall give account of the se-verity of the primitive church in this article; which at first Epist. 1. Bibl. SS. PP. tom. 3. y Homil. de Divit. et Lazaro. was at least as strict as the severest part of this discourse, till by degrees it lessened and shrunk into the licentiousness and dissolution of the present age. 67. Obj. 6. But if it be necessary to extirpate the habits of sin, and to acquire (being helped by God's grace) the contrary habits of virtue; how can it fare with old and decayed men, or with men that have a lingering, tedious, protracted sickness (for I suppose their case is very near the same), who were intemperate or unchaste all their lifetime, and until they could be so no longer; but how can they obtain the habit of chastity who cannot do any acts of chastity; or of intemperance, who have lost their stomach, and have not any inclination or temptation to the contrary? And every virtue must be 'cum potentiâ ad oppositum;' if it be not chosen, it is not virtue, nor rewardable. And the case is almost the same to all persons young or old, who have not opportunity of acting those graces, in the matter of which they have formerly prevaricated. 68. To this I answer many things, and they are of use in the explication of this material question. I. Old men may exercise many acts of chastity both internal and external. For if they may be unchaste, they may also be chaste; but St. Paul speaks of the doeλynkóтEÇ, men that being past feeling, yet were given to lasciviousness;' avdoóraides avdρes, 'half men, half boys,' 'prurientes in sepulchro.' For it is not the body but the soul that is wanton; and an evil man may sin with ineffective lusts; as he that lusts after a woman, whom he cannot have, sins with his soul. Now wherever these unlawful desires can be, there also they can be mortified; and an old man can love to talk of his past vanities, or not rescind them by repentance, or desire that he were young and active in wickedness; and therefore if he chooses not to do so, and therefore avoids these and the like, out of hatred of his old impurities, he does the proper works of that grace, which he also may do the easier, because then his temptations to the contrary are not so strong: but this advantage is not worth staying for so long. They that do so, venture damnation a long time together, and may also have an evil proper to that state, greater than this little advantage I instance. II. If there were no other act of chastity to be exercised by old persons, by reason of their disability; yet the very accepting from the hands of God that disability, and the delighting in that circumstance of things, in which it is impossible to sin as formerly, must needs be pleasing to God, because it is a nolition of the former sins, and a desire of pleasing him. III. Every act of sorrow for unchastity is an act of chastity; and if this sorrow be great and lasting, permanent and habitual, it will be productive of much good. And if to these the penitent adds penal actions and detestations of his crimes, revenge and apt expressions of his holy anger against his sin, these do produce a quality in the soul contrary to that which made him formerly consent to lust. IV. When a vicious habit is to be extirpated, and the contrary introduced, it is not necessary that the contrary be acted by the body, but be radicated in the soul; it is necessary that the body do not sin in that instance; but it is not always required, that contrary acts be done by the body. Suppose Origen had been a lustful person before his castration, yet he might have been habitually chaste afterward, by doing spiritual acts of a corporal chastity. And there are many sins whose scene lies in the body, to which the body afterward cannot oppose a bodily act in the same instance; as he that by intemperate drinking once or oftener, falls into a loathing of wine; he that dismembers himself; and many others; for which a repentance is possible and necessary, but yet a contrary specific act cannot be opposed. In these cases it is sufficient that the habit be placed in the soul, and a perfect contrary quality superinduced, which is to be done by a frequent repetition of the acts of repentance proper to the sin. V. There are some sins for which amends is to be made in the way of commutation, when it cannot be in the proper instance. "Redime peccata tua eleemosynis," said Daniel' to Nebuchadnezzar; "Redeem thy sins with alms, and thy iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor." Our English Bibles read this, "Break off thy sins by alms," as if alms were directly contrary to pride, or lust, or gluttony, or tyranny; and the shewing mercy to the poor a direct intercision and interruption of the sin. He that gives alms that he may keep his lust, loses his soul and his money too. But he that leaves his lust, or is driven from it, and gives alms to obtain 2 Dan. iv. 27. God's favour for his pardon, by doing something that is gracious in his eyes, this man is a good penitent; if his alms be great and proportionable, given freely and without constraint, when he can keep them, and receive and retain the temporal advantage, and be assisted by all those other acts and habits, of which his present state is capable. It cannot be said, that to give alms can, in all such cases, be sufficient; as it will be hard to say that so many acts of the contrary grace will suffice to get a habit, or obtain a pardon; but it is true, that to give alms is a proper action of repentance in such cases, and is in order to pardon. For, VI. As there is a supreme habit of vice, a transcendent vileness, that is, a custom and readiness to do every sin as it is presented in its proper temptation, and this is worse than the habit of any one sin; so there is a transcendent habit of grace, by which a man is so holy and just and good, that he is ready to obey God in every instance. That is malice, and this is charity. When a man hath this grace habitually, although it may be so that he cannot produce the proper specific habit opposite to his sin for which he specially repents, yet his supreme habit does contain in it the specific habit virtually and transcendently. An act of this charity will not do this, but the habit will. For he that does a single act of charity, may also do a single act of malice; and he that denies this, knows not what he says, nor ever had experience of himself or any man else. For if he that does an act of charity, that is, he who by a good motion from God's Spirit, does any thing because God hath commanded, to say that this man will do every thing which is so commanded, is to say, that a good man can never fall into a great sin: which is evidently untrue. But if he that does one act in obedience to God, or in love to him (for obedience is love), will also do more, then every man that does one act to please his senses, may as well be supposed that he will do more; and then no man's life should have in it any variety, but be all of a piece, entirely good, or entirely evil. I see no difference in the instances, neither can there be, so long as a man in both states hath a power to choose. But then it will follow, that a single act of contrition, or of charity, cannot put a man into the state of the divine favour, it must be the grace or habit of charity; and that is a magazine of habits by equivalency, |