Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Thus far, Lord Christ, may it fall to your servants to speak and to hear concerning the discipline of repentance — up to the point at which even the hearers ought no longer to sin at all: or else, may they know nothing further of repentance, and seek nothing further from it. [2] I am reluctant to append any mention of a second — indeed now a final — hope, for fear that in discussing the remaining help of repentance we might seem to be pointing out room still left for sinning. [3] Far be it that anyone should interpret it this way — as though the door still stood open to him for sinning simply because it stands open for repenting — and turn the overflow of heaven's clemency into fuel for human recklessness! [4] Let no one be the worse for the Lord being the better, sinning as many times as he is forgiven; for whoever has no end of offending will certainly have an end of escaping. We have escaped once: let that be as far as we throw ourselves back into danger, even supposing we seem likely to escape again. [5] Many who have been rescued from shipwreck afterward renounce both ship and sea, and honor God's kindness — their own deliverance, that is — by keeping the danger in memory. I praise the fear, I esteem the modesty: they do not want to be a burden on divine mercy a second time, they dread seeming to trample on what they have already obtained; out of a wholesome anxiety, at least, they avoid experiencing again what they have once learned to fear. [6] So restraint in recklessness is proof of fear; and a man's fear is God's honor. [7] But that most obstinate enemy never gives his malice a holiday; indeed, he rages most fiercely precisely when he feels a man has been fully set free — he is kindled hottest exactly when he is being put out. [8] He must grieve and groan when pardon is granted for sins, when so many works of death in a man are torn down, so many old titles of his dominion erased. He grieves that this very sinner — once his slave — will one day judge him and his angels together with Christ. [9] And so he watches, he assaults, he besieges — on the chance that he might strike the eyes with fleshly desire, or snare the mind with worldly allurements, or overturn faith through fear of earthly power, or twist a man off the sure path through perverse traditions; he is never short of stumbling-blocks, never short of temptations. [10] Foreseeing these poisons of his, then, God — though he has shut the door of pardon and barred it with the bolt of baptism — has still allowed something to remain open: he has stationed a second repentance in the vestibule, to open to those who knock — but only once more, since it is now the second time; and never again after that, since the next attempt would be in vain. [11] Is not even this single grant enough on its own? You now hold what you no longer merited, seeing that what had been given you was once forfeited. And if it is the Lord's own generosity that supplies you the means to regain what was lost, then be thankful for a kindness doubled, if not multiplied. [12] For to restore is greater than to give, since it is more wretched to have lost than never to have received at all. Still, the soul must not immediately be cut down and undermined by despair, if a man finds himself a debtor to a second repentance. [13] Let it distress you, by all means, to sin again — but let it not distress you to repent again; let it shame you to fall into danger again, but let no one be ashamed to be freed again: for an illness that recurs needs a remedy that recurs. [14] You will show yourself grateful toward the Lord if you do not refuse what he offers you once more. You have given offense, but you can still be reconciled: you have someone to satisfy — and one who is willing, at that!