Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Whatever our modest talent has attempted to suggest about taking up repentance once and holding to it forever applies to all who are debtors to the Lord, since all are petitioners seeking salvation from God — but it bears down especially on these novices, who are just now beginning to steep their ears in the divine words and who, like puppies still fresh from infancy with their eyes not yet fully opened, crawl about uncertainly: they say they renounce their former ways and take up repentance, but neglect to shut it in. [2] For the very ebb of desire itself calls them back to crave something from their old ways — like fruit, which even as it starts to sour and turn bitter with age, still to some degree flatters its own sweetness. [3] Besides, presumption on baptism brings with it every vice of delay and evasion toward repentance. For, sure of the certain pardon of their sins, they steal the time in between and grant themselves a furlough to sin rather than a training in not sinning. [4] How foolish, how perverse, to fail to complete repentance and yet expect pardon for one's sins — that is, to withhold the price and still reach out a hand for the goods! For it is at this price that the Lord has arranged to award pardon; it is by this payment of repentance that he offers impunity to be redeemed. [5] If merchants, before striking a bargain, inspect the coin offered them to make sure it bears no scratch, no clipping, no forgery, shall we not trust that the Lord will likewise scrutinize our repentance before he confers on us so vast a wage — nothing less than life everlasting? [6] 'But let us put off the reality of repentance a while; we may reform, I suppose, once we're absolved.' By no means. Rather, while pardon still hangs in the balance, punishment is what lies in view; while we do not yet deserve release — so that we may come to deserve it — this is the time when God threatens, not when he forgives. [7] For what slave, once he has been changed into a freedman, holds himself to account for his thefts and his flights? What soldier, once discharged from his camp, still bothers over his old marks of service? [8] The sinner must weep for himself before pardon comes, because the time of repentance is the same as the time of danger and fear. [9] I do not deny that the divine benefit — the wiping out of sins — is by all means secured for those about to enter the water; but one must labor to arrive there. For who will lend a single splash of any water to you, a man of such untrustworthy repentance? [10] It is easy enough to steal your way in and deceive the man in charge of this matter with your protestations — but God keeps watch over his treasury, and will not let the unworthy creep in unseen. What, after all, does he say? Nothing hidden that will not be revealed. Pile up as much darkness as you like over your deeds — God is light! [11] Some, however, imagine that God is under some necessity to grant even the unworthy what he has promised, and they turn his generosity into servitude. [12] But if he grants us the seal of death out of necessity, then he does it unwillingly; and who promises that a gift given unwillingly will last? [13] For do not many afterward fall away? Is not the gift taken back from many? These, clearly, are the ones who creep in unnoticed — who, having only pretended faith in repentance, build a house doomed to collapse, upon the sand! [14] Let no one flatter himself because he is still counted among the raw recruits of the hearers, as though this still gave him license to sin. The moment you have come to know the Lord, fear him; the moment you have looked upon him, revere him! [15] Otherwise, what does it matter that you have come to know him, if you still brood over the same things you did back when you were ignorant? What, then, separates you from the full servant of God? Is Christ one thing to the baptized and another to the hearers? [16] Is there a different hope or reward, a different dread of judgment, a different obligation to repent? That washing is the sealing of faith — and that faith is begun, and commended, by faith in repentance. [17] We are not washed in order that we may stop sinning, but because we have already stopped, since we have already been washed in heart: for this is the hearer's first baptism. Whole and unbroken fear follows from having come to know the Lord; sound faith, from a conscience that has once embraced repentance! [18] But if it is only from the water onward that we cease to sin, then we put on innocence by necessity, not by choice. Who, then, excels in goodness — the one for whom it is simply not permitted to be bad, or the one to whom being bad is distasteful? The one who is ordered to keep clear of crime, or the one who delights in doing so? [19] So then, are our hands to stay off plunder only because a stout, bolted door stands in the way, and our eyes to be reined back from seductive lust only because bodily guardians bar the path — if no one owed to the Lord will cease from sin except the man baptism has bound? [20] But if a man really thinks this way, I do not know whether, once baptized, he will be more grieved that he has stopped sinning than glad that he has escaped! Hearers, then, ought to long for baptism, not presume upon it. [21] For the one who longs for it honors it; the one who presumes upon it grows proud. In the one, modesty appears; in the other, insolence. The one takes pains; the other is careless. The one wants to earn it; the other counts it owed to him in advance. The one receives it; the other seizes it. [22] Whom would you judge worthier, but the one who is more reformed? And who is more reformed than the one who is more fearful, and thereby has genuinely performed repentance? For he was afraid to keep sinning, lest he not deserve to receive. [23] But that presumptuous man, promising the gift to himself in advance, was of course free of care and so could not fear — and thus he did not fulfill repentance either, since he lacked repentance's own instrument, namely fear. [24] Presumption is a share of shamelessness: it puffs up the petitioner and looks down on the giver; and so it sometimes ends in disappointment. For it promises itself the thing before it is even owed — and by that the one who is to grant it is always offended.