Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Most people, however, presume either to dodge this task—the public confession of themselves—or to put it off day after day, being more mindful of their shame than of their salvation, like those who, having contracted some affliction in the more embarrassing parts of the body, avoid the physicians' notice of it and so perish along with their own blushing. [2] Intolerable, apparently, that shame should give satisfaction to an offended Lord, that it should be reshaped toward a salvation held out to it! Are you a good man only where shame is concerned—unfolding a bold face for sinning, but drawing it back for begging pardon? [3] I give no room to blushing here, since I gain more from its loss, since the man himself is in a manner exhorted, 'do not look back on me,' when he says, 'it is better for me that you perish.' [4] Certainly the danger in it is burdensome, if it be, only when it falls among mockers amid their jeering talk, where one man is puffed up over another's ruin, where the fallen is trampled further; but among brothers and fellow-servants, where hope, fear, joy, grief, and suffering are shared, because the spirit is shared, from one common Lord and Father, what else do you suppose these to be but yourself? [5] Why do you flee those who share your falls, as if they were mockers applauding? A body cannot rejoice over the affliction of a single member: the whole must grieve together and labor together toward the remedy. [6] In one person and another the church exists, and the church is Christ: therefore, when you stretch yourself out at the knees of the brothers, it is Christ whom you touch, Christ to whom you make your plea; likewise when they weep on your behalf, it is Christ who suffers, Christ who pleads with the Father. What a son asks for is always readily granted. [7] What a grand profit, to be sure, the concealment of a sin promises to one's modesty! As if, once we have withdrawn something from human notice, we thereby hide it from the Lord too! [8] Are the estimation of men and the conscience of God really to be set on a par? Or is it better to lie hidden while condemned than to be absolved openly? [9] 'It is a wretched thing to come to confession in this way.' I grant it—wretched if one comes to it out of love of sinning still; but where repentance is due, wretchedness departs, because the act itself becomes salutary. [10] It is a wretched thing to be cut and burned with the cautery and tormented by the bite of some caustic powder: and yet the things that heal by way of unpleasantness both excuse their own offensiveness by the profit of the cure and commend the present injury for the sake of the benefit that is to come.