Tertullian, On Repentance 6

My modest effort to set out the case for repentance—undertaken once, maintained forever—addresses everyone devoted to the Lord, all of them petitioners for salvation earned from God; yet it bears down hardest on the new converts. They have only just begun to steep their ears in divine sermons; they are still infants, fresh from their old life, groping about with undeveloped vision. True, they renounce their past and take up repentance, yet they neglect to shut themselves inside it. For the very desire for something from that past cuts them off short—just as fruit that has already begun to wither or turn bitter still flatters itself with a trace of its former sweetness. Moreover, every fault of hesitation and evasion toward repentance carries the presumption of baptism. Certain of unquestioned forgiveness, they steal the interim and issue themselves a license to sin, not instruction to avoid it. How foolish, how unjust: to skip repentance yet claim forgiveness—that is, to refuse the price and still reach for the merchandise. The Lord established that price for granting pardon; with this repentance-payment he offers to redeem impunity. If merchants test the coin before they strike a bargain, lest it be counterfeit, clipped, or adulterated, do we really believe the Lord submits repentance to prior testing before granting so great a reward as eternal life? But let us put off the truth of repentance for a moment. Do you suppose the corrected will be obvious once we are absolved? Not at all. While pardon still hangs in the balance, punishment looms; we do not yet merit release so that we may merit it when God threatens, not when he forgives. What servant, once freed, charges himself with his own thefts and escapes? What soldier, once discharged, still answers for his old offenses? The sinner must lament before forgiveness, because the time for repentance is a time of danger and fear. I do not deny that the divine benefit—the abolition of sins—is entirely secure for those initiated into the water; but reaching it demands effort. Who would grant even a single sprinkling of any water to a man of such faithless repentance? Stealthy assault and self-serving assertions come easily. But God guards his treasure and does not let the unworthy sneak in. What does he finally say? Nothing hidden will stay unrevealed. However much darkness you pile over your deeds, God is light. Some, however, imagine God is obliged to deliver his promise even to the unworthy, turning his liberality into a form of servitude. If he grants the sign of death out of necessity, he does it unwillingly; and who lets stand what he gave unwillingly? Do not many fall away afterward? Is that gift not taken from many? These are the infiltrators who, having assaulted the pledge of repentance, build a house doomed to collapse on sand. So let no one flatter himself just because he is counted among the novices, as if he may still sin now that he has come to know the Lord; let him fear and revere at the same time. But what does it profit you to have known, when you lie in the very things you were ignorant of before? What separates you from a perfect servant of God? Is Christ one thing to the baptized and another to the hearers? Is there another hope, another reward, another fear of judgment, another necessity of repentance? That washing is the seal of a faith which begins with and is commended by the faith of repentance. We are not washed so that we may cease to sin, since we have already been washed in heart. For this is the hearer’s first washing: a whole fear; from then on, as long as you sense the Lord, you possess sound faith, a conscience that has once embraced repentance. Yet if we stop sinning after the waters, we put on innocence by compulsion, not free will. Who then excels in goodness? To whom is evil not permitted, or displeasing? Who is commanded, and who delights, to be free of crime? So we do not turn our hands from theft unless prison’s harshness stops us; we do not restrain our eyes from lust unless bodyguards block us. If no one devoted to the Lord stops sinning unless bound by baptism, I cannot tell whether such a baptized man grieves more over having stopped sinning than he rejoices over having escaped. Therefore hearers ought to desire baptism, not presume it. He who desires honors; he who presumes is proud. In the one appears modesty; in the other, petulance. The one strives; the other neglects. The one wants to merit; the other promises himself the debt: the one receives; the other invades. Whom do you judge more worthy, if not the more corrected? Whom more corrected, if not the more fearful, and therefore the one who has performed true repentance? He still feared to sin, lest he fail to merit receiving. But the presumptuous man, secure in his self-made promise, could not fear; thus he did not fulfill repentance, because he lacked its instrument—fear. Presumption is a slice of shamelessness; it crowds the petitioner and despises the giver. Consequently it sometimes deceives. For it promises before the debt is due, and the one who must pay is always offended.