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| Answer to a Psychical Objection.
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Chapter
XVIII.—Answer to a Psychical Objection.
“But these (passages),” says (our opponent),
“will pertain to the interdiction of all immodesty, and the
enforcing of all modesty, yet without prejudice to the place of pardon;
which (pardon) is not forthwith quite denied when sins are condemned,
since the time of the pardon is concurrent with the condemnation which
it excludes.”
This piece of shrewdness on the part of the Psychics was
(naturally) sequent; and accordingly we have reserved for this place
the cautions which, even in the times of antiquity, were openly taken
with a view to the refusing of ecclesiastical communion to cases of
this kind.
For even in the Proverbs, which we call
Parœmiæ, Solomon specially (treats) of the adulterer
(as being) nowhere admissible to expiation. “But the
adulterer,” he says, “through indigence of senses acquireth
perdition to his own soul; sustaineth dolors and disgraces. His
ignominy, moreover, shall not be wiped away for the age. For
indignation, full of jealousy, will not spare the man in the day of
judgment.”912
If you think
this said about a heathen, at all events about believers you have
already heard (it said) through Isaiah: “Go out from the
midst of them, and be separate, and touch not the
impure.”913
You have at the
very outset of the Psalms, “Blessed the man who hath not gone
astray in the counsel of the impious, nor stood in the way of sinners,
and sat in the state-chair of pestilence;”914
whose voice,915
| 915 i.e., the voice of this
“blessed man,” this true “Asher.” | withal, (is heard)
subsequently: “I have not sat with the conclave of vanity;
and with them who act iniquitously will I not enter”—this
(has to do with “the church” of such as act
ill—“and with the impious will I not sit;”916
and, “I will wash with the innocent
mine hands, and Thine altar will I surround, Lord”917
—as being “a host in
himself”—inasmuch as indeed “With an holy (man), holy
Thou wilt be; and with an innocent man, innocent Thou wilt be; and with
an elect, elect Thou wilt be; and with a perverse, perverse Thou wilt
be.”918
And
elsewhere: “But to the sinner saith the Lord, Why
expoundest thou my righteous acts, and takest up my testament through
thy mouth? If thou sawest a thief, thou rannest with him; and
with adulterers thy portion thou madest.”919
Deriving his instructions, therefore, from hence, the apostle too
says: “I wrote to you in the Epistle, not to be mingled up
with fornicators: not, of course, with the fornicators of this
world”—and so forth—“else it behoved you to go
out from the world. But now I write to you, if any is named a
brother among you, (being) a fornicator, or an idolater” (for
what so intimately joined?), “or a defrauder” (for what so
near akin?), and so on, “with such to take no food
even,”920
not to say the
Eucharist: because, to wit, withal “a little leaven
spoileth the flavour of the whole lump.”921
Again to Timotheus: “Lay hands on no one hastily, nor
communicate with others’ sins.”922
Again to the Ephesians: “Be not, then, partners with
them: for ye were at one time darkness.”923
And yet more earnestly:
“Communicate not with the unfruitful works of darkness; nay
rather withal convict them. For (the things) which are done by
them in secrecy it is disgraceful even to utter.”924
What more disgraceful than
immodesties? If, moreover, even from a “brother” who
“walketh idly”925
he warns the
Thessalonians to withdraw themselves, how much more withal from a
fornicator! For these are the deliberate judgments of Christ,
“loving the Church,” who “hath delivered Himself up
for her, that He may sanctify her (purifying her utterly by the laver
of water) in the word, that He may present the Church to Himself
glorious, not having stain or wrinkle”—of course
after the laver—“but (that) she may be holy and
without reproach;”926
thereafter, to wit,
being “without wrinkle” as a virgin, “without
stain” (of fornication) as a spouse, “without
disgrace” (of vileness), as having been “utterly
purified.”
What if, even here, you should conceive to reply
that communion is indeed denied to sinners, very especially such as had
been “polluted by the flesh,”927
but
(only) for the present; to be restored, to wit, as the result of
penitential suing: in accordance with that clemency of God which
prefers a sinner’s repentance to his death?928
—for this fundamental ground of your
opinion must be universally attacked. We say, accordingly, that
if it had been competent to the Divine clemency to have guaranteed the
demonstration of itself even to the post-baptismally lapsed, the
apostle would have said thus: “Communicate not with the
works of darkness, unless they shall have repented;” and,
“With such take not food even, unless after they shall have
wiped, with rolling at their feet, the shoes of the
brethren;” and, “Him who shall have marred the temple
of God, shall God mar, unless he shall have shaken off from his head
in the church the ashes of all hearths.” For it had
been his duty, in the case of those things which he had condemned, to
have equally determined the extent to which he had (and that
conditionally) condemned them—whether he had condemned them with
a temporary and conditional, and not a perpetual, severity.
However, since in all Epistles he both prohibits such a character, (so
sinning) after believing, from being admitted (to the society of
believers); and, if admitted, detrudes him from communion, without hope
of any condition or time; he sides more with our opinion,
pointing out that the repentance which the Lord prefers is that which
before believing, before baptism, is esteemed better than
the death of the sinner,—(the sinner, I say,) once for all to be
washed through the grace of Christ, who once for all has suffered death
for our sins. For this (rule), even in his own person, the
apostle has laid down. For, when affirming that Christ came for
this end, that He might save sinners,929
of whom himself
had been the “first,” what does he add? “And I
obtained mercy, because I did (so) ignorantly in
unbelief.”930
Thus that
clemency of God, preferring the repentance of a sinner to his death,
looks at such as are ignorant still, and still unbelieving, for the
sake of whose liberation Christ came; not (at such) as already know
God, and have learnt the sacrament of the faith. But if the
clemency of God is applicable to such as are ignorant still, and
unbelieving, of course it follows that repentance invites clemency to
itself; without prejudice to that species of repentance after
believing, which either, for lighter sins, will be able to obtain
pardon from the bishop, or else, for greater and irremissible ones,
from God only.931
| 931 See cc. iii. and xi.,
above. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
