Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Because this second and final chance at repentance is so restricted, its demonstration must be all the more strenuous — not left to conscience alone, but carried out through some tangible discipline. [2] That practice, which is more commonly expressed and referred to by its Greek name, is exomologesis — by which we confess our offense to the Lord: not, of course, because he does not know it, but inasmuch as satisfaction is arranged through confession, repentance is born of confession, and God is appeased by repentance. [3] Exomologesis, then, is a discipline for prostrating and humbling a man, enjoining a manner of life that entices mercy — extending even to one's dress and diet: [4] it commands one to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to darken the body with squalor, to cast the mind down into grief, to exchange, by grim treatment, whatever in oneself has sinned; for the rest, to take food and drink in their plain form — not, of course, for the belly's sake but the soul's; and, above all, to nourish one's prayers with fasting, to groan, to weep and to bellow day and night to the Lord your God, to fall prostrate before the presbyters, to kneel at God's altars, to charge all the brothers with carrying the embassy of one's own supplication. [5] All this exomologesis does, that it may commend repentance, that it may honor the Lord through fear of danger, that by pronouncing sentence on the sinner itself it may stand in for God's own indignation, and that by temporal affliction it may — I will not say cheat, but blot out — the eternal punishments. [6] So then, the more it casts a man down, the more it lifts him up; the more squalid it makes him, the cleaner it renders him; the more it accuses, the more it excuses; the more it condemns, the more it absolves. To the exact degree that you do not spare yourself, believe me — to that same degree God will spare you!