Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
If you doubt this, unroll what the Spirit says to the churches: he charges the Ephesians with abandoning their first love, reproaches the Thyatirans with fornication and eating food offered to idols, charges the Sardians with deeds left unfinished, rebukes the Pergamenes for teaching perverse doctrines, chides the Laodiceans for trusting in their riches — and yet he calls every one of them to repentance, under threats, to be sure. [2] But he would not threaten the one who does not repent if he did not forgive the one who does — this would be doubtful, if he had not shown this overflowing clemency of his elsewhere too: 'Shall not,' he says, 'the one who has fallen rise again, and the one who has turned away, turn back?' [3] He is the one, clearly, he is the one who prefers mercy to sacrifice. The heavens rejoice, and the angels there, over a man's repentance. Take heart, you sinner: you see where your affairs are cause for joy! [4] What do those arguments of the Lord's parables mean for us? The woman who loses a coin, and searches, and finds it, and calls her friends together to rejoice — is this not a picture of the sinner restored? [5] A single little sheep, too, strays from the shepherd — yet it was not that one sheep the flock held dearer; that one alone is sought out, that one alone is missed as though for all the rest, and yet it is found and carried back on the shoulders of the shepherd himself: for it had worn itself out with much wandering. [6] Nor will I pass over in silence that gentlest of fathers, who calls back his prodigal son and gladly welcomes him once he repents after his poverty, and adorns his own joy with a feast, slaughtering the fattest calf. And why not? For he had found again the son he had lost, and felt him dearer for having, as it were, gained him anew. [7] Who is that father we are to understand him as? God, of course: no one is so much a father, no one so devoted. [8] He, then, will receive you as his son — even if you have squandered what you received from him, even if you come back stripped bare — because you have come back; and he will rejoice more over your return than over the other son's steadiness — but only if you repent from the heart, if you compare your hunger with the abundance of your father's hired hands, if you leave behind that unclean herd of swine, if you seek out your father again even though offended, saying: 'I have sinned, father, and am no longer worthy to be called yours.' [9] Confession lightens the offense exactly as much as concealment aggravates it; for confession is the resolve to make satisfaction, concealment the resolve to be defiant.