Tertullian, On Repentance 12
If you hang back from confession (exomologesis), set gehenna before your heart — the hell that confession will quench for you — and first picture the size of the punishment so you will not doubt taking up the remedy. What do we make of that storehouse of everlasting fire, when mere smoke-vents of it throw such blows of flame that neighboring cities are already gone, or expect the same from day to day? The proudest mountains, swollen with fire inside, burst apart — and this proves for us that judgment lasts: though they split and are eaten up, they never come to an end. Who will not count these torments of the mountains, for now, as samples of the judgment that threatens? Who will not grant that such sparks are practice-darts from some great, unmeasured hearth?
So when you know that against gehenna, after those first defenses of the Lord's baptism, there are still second aids in confession, why desert your salvation? Why delay what you know can heal you? Even mute and irrational souls know in season the medicines God has given them — the wounded stag the dittany, the swallow the celandine for its blinded chicks. Will the sinner, knowing the confession the Lord appointed for his restoration, pass it by — the confession that restored the Babylonian king to his kingdom after seven years' filth of repentance, nails like a lion's, hair like an eagle's horror? Men shuddered at him; God was receiving him.
By contrast the Egyptian emperor who once afflicted God's people, long denied to his Lord, and then charged into battle, perished when the waves rolled back after so many plague-proofs and the parting of the sea open only to the people — for he had cast away repentance and its ministry, confession. Why say more of these two planks of human salvation? I myself am a sinner of every brand, born for nothing but repentance, and I cannot easily keep silent about that which even Adam — first of the human stock and of offense against the Lord — restored to his paradise by confession, does not keep silent.
Latin
XII. [1] Si de exomologesi retractas, gehennam in corde considera, quam tibi exomologesis extinguet, et poenae prius magnitudinem imaginare, ut de remedii adoptione non dubites. [2] Quid illum thesaurum ignis aeterni existimamus, cum fumariola quaedam eius tales flammarum ictus suscitent, ut proximae urbes aut iam nullae extent aut idem sibi de die sperent? [3] Dissiliunt superbissimi montes ignis intrinsecus feti et, - quod nobis iudicii perpetuitatem probat -, cum dissiliant, cum devorentur, numquam tamen finiuntur! [4] Quis haec supplicia interim montium non iudicii minantis exemplaria deputabit? quis scintillas tales non magni alicuius et inaestimabilis foci missilia quaedam et exercitatoria iacula consentiet?
[5] Igitur cum scias adversus gehennam post prima illa intinctionis dominicae munimenta esse adhuc in exomologesi secunda subsidia, cur salutem tuam deseris, cur cessas adgredi quod scias mederi tibi? [6] Mutae quidem animae et inrationabiles medicinas sibi divinitus adtributas in tempore agnoscunt: cervus sagitta transfixus, ut ferrum et inrevocabiles moras eius de vulnere expellat, scit sibi dictamnum edendam; hirundo si excaecauerit pullos, novit illos oculare rursus de sua chelidonia: [7] peccator restituendo sibi institutam a domino exomologesin sciens praeteribit illam, quae Babylonium regem in regna restituit? Diu enim paenitentiam domino immolarat septenni squalore exomologesin operatus, unguium leoninum in modum efferatione et capilli incuria horrorem aquilinum praeferente. Pro malae tractationis felicitatem! quem homines perhorrebant, deus recipiebat. [8] Contra autem Aegyptius imperator qui populum dei aliquando adflictum, diu domino suo denegatum persecutus [in] proelio inruit, post tot documenta plagarum discidio maris, quod soli populo pervium licebat, revolutis fluctibus perit: paenitentiam enim et ministerium eius, exomologesin, abiecerat! [9] Quid ego ultra de istis duabus humanae salutis quasi plancis, stili potius negotium quam officium conscientiae meae curans? Peccator enim omnium notarum cum sim nec ulli rei nisi paenitentiae natus, non facile possum super illa tacere, quam ipse quoque et stirpis humanae et offensae in dominum princeps Adam exomologesi restitutus in paradisum suum non tacet!