Lactantius — Divine Institutes 6.24
Yet let no one fail or despair of himself if, conquered by desire or driven by lust or deceived by error or forced by violence, he has slipped onto the road of injustice. For he can be led back and freed if it repents him of what he has done and, turned to better things, he makes satisfaction to God. Cicero did not think this could happen; his words in the third Academic book are: but if it were allowed that those who had wandered on a journey should so correct themselves… We however know that to repent is nothing else than that a human recover mind and spirit as from madness, chastise himself for his folly, and confirm his soul to living more rightly: then he will take care above all not to be caught again in the same snares. Even mute animals, when caught by fraud, if they somehow disentangle themselves into flight, afterward grow more cautious and always avoid all those things in which they felt tricks and ambushes. So repentance makes the human cautious and careful to avoid the sins into which he once fell by fraud.
For no one can be so prudent, so circumspect, as not sometimes to slip. And therefore God, knowing our weakness, in his piety opened for the human a harbor of salvation, so that to this necessity to which our fragility is subject the medicine of repentance might give aid. Therefore whoever has wandered, let him bring back his foot and recover and reform himself as soon as possible. But to recall the step and escape to the upper air — this is the work, this the labor. For once the wrongly sweet pleasures have been tasted, they can scarcely be torn from them: they would follow the right more easily if they had not touched those sweets. But let them snatch themselves from evil slavery: every error will be pardoned them if they correct their error by a better life. Nor let anyone think he has gained if he will have no accomplice of the crime: he knows all things in whose sight we live, and if we can hide from all humans, we cannot from God, from whom nothing can be hidden, nothing secret. Seneca ended his exhortations with a marvelous sentence: There is, he says, I know not what great divinity, greater than can be thought, to whom we give service by living. Let us approve ourselves to this one. It profits nothing that conscience is shut in; we lie open to God. What truer thing could be said by one who knew God than was said by a human ignorant of true religion? For he both expressed God's majesty, saying it is greater than human mind's thought can grasp, and touched the very fountain of truth by sensing that human life is not superfluous, as the Epicureans want, but that service is given to God by living — if indeed they have lived justly and piously. He could have been a true worshiper of God if someone had shown him, and would surely have despised Zeno and his teacher Sotion if he had obtained a guide of true wisdom. Let us approve ourselves to this one, he says: a heavenly speech indeed, if confession of ignorance did not go before. It profits nothing that conscience is shut in; we lie open to God: therefore there is no place for lying, none for dissembling, because humans' eyes are kept off by walls, but God's divinity cannot be kept off even from the vitals, so as not to look through and know the whole human. The same writer in the first book of the same work: What are you doing? he says. What are you devising? What are you hiding? Your guardian follows you… Think that it has befallen you to escape everyone's eyes, madman: what does it profit you not to have an accomplice when you have a conscience? No less marvelously did Tullius speak of conscience and God. Let him remember, he says, that he has God as witness — that is, as I judge, his own mind, than which God himself has given the human nothing more divine. Likewise when he spoke of the just and good man: and so such a man, he says, will dare not only to do but not even to think anything that he would not dare to proclaim.
Let us therefore purge the conscience, which is open to God's eyes, and, as the same man says, always so live that we judge an account must be rendered by us, and let us think that at every moment we are watched not in some theater of the earth by humans, as he said, but from above by him who will be both judge and witness, to whom demanding an account of life it will not be allowed to deny one's acts. Therefore it is better either to flee conscience or of our own accord to open the soul and pour out the ruin by cutting the wounds: which no one else can heal except that one alone who restored step to the lame, sight to the blind, cleansed stained limbs, raised the dead. He will extinguish the heat of desire, will root out lusts, will pull away envy, will soften anger; he will restore true and perpetual health. This medicine must be sought by all, since the soul is vexed with greater danger than the body, and as soon as possible treatment must be applied to hidden diseases. For even if someone uses clear sharpness of eyes, all limbs whole, firmest health of the whole body, still I would not call him healthy if he is carried off by anger, swollen with pride, serves lust, burns with desires: but rather him who does not lift his eyes to another's happiness, does not admire wealth, looks at another's wife chastely, seeks nothing at all, desires nothing another's, envies no one, scorns no one, is humble, merciful, beneficent, mild, humane, and perpetual peace dwells in his mind: that human is healthy, that one just, that one perfect. Whoever therefore has obeyed all these heavenly precepts is the true worshiper of God, whose sacrifices are mildness of mind and innocent life and good acts: which all whoever displays sacrifices as often as he has done something good and pious. For God does not desire a victim — neither of a mute animal nor of death and blood — but of the human and of life. For which sacrifice there is need neither of sacred branches nor of purifications nor of turf, which are indeed most empty, but of those things which are brought forth from the inmost breast. And so on God's altar, which is truly greatest and which, placed in the human heart, cannot be stained by blood, justice is set, patience, faith, innocence, chastity, abstinence. This is the truest rite, this that law of God, as was said by Cicero, splendid and divine, which always commands what is right and honorable, forbids what is crooked and base: which one who obeys, as the most holy and certain law, must live justly and lawfully. Of which law I have set out a few heads, because I promised I would say only those things which would place the highest peak on virtue and justice. If anyone wishes to grasp all the rest, let him seek from the fountain itself from which that stream has flowed to us.
Latin
Nec tamen deficiat aliquis aut de se ipse desperet, si aut cupiditate uictus aut libidine inpulsus aut errore deceptus aut ui coactus ad iniustitiae uiam lapsus est. potest enim reduci ac liberari, si eum paeniteat actorum et ad meliora conuersus satis deo faciat. quod fieri posse Cicero non putauit, cuius haec in Academico tertio uerba sunt: quodsi liceret ut iis qui in itinere deerrauissent, sic uitam deuiam secutis corrigere errorem paenitendo, facilior esset emendatio temeritatis. licet plane. nam si liberos nostros, cum delictorum suorum cernimus paenitere, correctos esse arbitramur et abdicatos abiectosque rursus tamen suscipimus fouemus amplectimur, cur desperemus clementiam ueri patns paemtendo posse placarit\' ergo idem dominus ac parens indulgentissimus remissurum se paenitentibus peccata promittit et obliteraturum omnes iniquitates eius qui iustitiam denuo coeperit operari. sicut enim nihil prodest male uiuenti ante actae uitae: probitas, quia superueniens nequitia iustitiae opera deleuit, ita nihil officiunt peccata uetera correcto, quia superueniens iustitia labem uitae prioris aboleuit. quem enim facti sui paenitet, errorem suum pristinum intellegit, ideoque Graeci melius et significantius μετϰ́νοταν dicunt quam nos Latine possumus resipiscentiam dicere. resipiscit enim ac mentem suam quasi ab insania recipit quem errati piget, castigatque se ipsum dementiae et confirmat animum suum ad rectius uiuendum: tum illud ipsum maxime canet, ne rursus in eosdem laqueos induatur. denique muta quoque animalia cum fraude capiuntur, si aliquo se modo in fugam extricauerint, fiunt postmodum cautiora uitantque semper ea omnia in quibus dolos insidiasque senserunt. sic hominem paenitentia cautum ac diligentem facit ad euitanda peccata in quae semel fraude deciderit.
nemo enim potest esse tam prudens, tam circumspectus, ut non aliquando labatur. et idcirco deus inbecillitatem nostram sciens pro sua pietate aperuit homini portum salutis, ut huic necessitati, cui fragilitas nostra subiecta est, medicina paenitentiae subueniret. ergo quicumque aberrauerit, referat pedem seque quam primum recipiat ac reformet. sed reuocare gradum superasque euadere ad auras, hoc opus, hic labor est. degustatis enim male iucundis uoluptatibus uix diuelli ab iis possunt: facilius recta sequerentur, si earum suauitates non attigissent. sed eripiant se malae seruituti: condonabitur iis error omnis, si errorem suum uita meliore correxerint. nec lucrari se quisquam putet, si delicti conscium non habebit: scit ille omnia in cuius conspectu uiuimus, nec si uniuersos homines celare possumus, deum possumus, cui nihil absconditum, nihil potest esse secretum. Exhortationes suas Seneca mirabili sententia terminauit. magnum inquit nescio quid maiusque quam cogitari potest numen est, cui uiuendo operam damus. huic nos adprobemus. nihil prodest inclusam esse conscientiam, patemus deo. quid uerius dici potuit ab eo qui deum nosset quam dictum est ab homine uerae religionis ignaro? nam et maiestatem dei expressit maiorem esse dicendo quam ut eam cogitatio mentis humanae capere posset, et ipsum ueritatis attigit fontem sentiendo uitam hominum superuacuam non esse, ut Epicurei uolunt, sed deo ab iis operam uiuendo dari, siquidem iuste ac pie uixerint. potuit esse uerus dei cultor, si quis illi monstrasset, et contempsisset profecto Zenonem et magistrum suum Sotionem, si uerae sapientiae ducem nactus esset. huic nos inquit adprobemus: caelestis prorsus oratio, nisi antecederet ignorantiae confessio. nihil prodest inclusam esse conscientiam, patemus deo: nullus ergo mendacio, nullus dissimulationi locus est, quia parietibus oculi hominum submoventur, dei autem diuinitas nec uisceribus submoueri potest, quominus totum hominem perspiciat et norit. idem m eiusdem operis primo quid agis? inquit quid machinaris? quid abscondis? custos te tuus sequitur. alium tibi peregrinatio subduxit, alium mors, alium ualitudo: haeret hic quo carere numquam potes. quid locum abditum legis et arbitros remoues? puta tibi contigisse ut oculos omnium effugias, demens: quid tibi prodest non habere conscium habenti conscientiam? non minus mirabiliter de conscientia et deo Tullius. meminerit inquit deum h habere testem, id est, ut ego arbitror, mentem suam, qua nihil homini dedit deus ipse diuinius. item cum de iusto ac bono uiro loqueretur, itaque talis uir inquit non modo facere, sed ne cogitare quidem quicquam audebit quod non audeat praedicare.
purgemus igitur conscientiam, quae oculis dei peruia est, et, ut ait idem, semper ita uiuamus, ut rationem reddendam nobis arbitremur, putemusque nos momentis omnibus non in aliquo, ut ille dixit, orbis terrae theatro ab hominibus, sed desuper spectari ab eo qui et iudex et testis idem futurus est, cui rationem uitae reposcenti actus suos infitiari non licebit.. ergo satius est aut effugere conscientiam aut nos ipsos ultro aperire animum et perniciem rescissis uulneribus effundere: quibus nemo alius mederi potest nisi solus ille qui gressum claudis, uisum caecis reddidit, maculata membra purgauit, mortuos excitauit. ille ardorem cupiditatis extinguet, extirpabit libidines, inuidiam detrahet, iram mitigabit, ille reddet ueram et perpetuam sanitatem. adpetenda est haec omnibus medicina, quoniam maiore periculo uexatur anima quam corpus et quam primum latentibus morbis adhibenda curatio est. neque enim si utatur aliquis oculorum acie clara, membris omnibus integris, firmissima totius corporis ualitudine, tamen eum dixerim sanum, si efferatur ira, superbia tumidus infletur, libidini seruiat, cupiditatibus inardescat: sed eum potius qui ad alienam felicitatem non attollat oculos, opes non admiretur, alienam mulierem sancte uideat, nihil omnino adpetat, nihil concupiscat alienum, non inuideat ulli, non fastidiat quemquam, sit humilis misericors beneficus mitis humanus, pax in animo eius perpetua uersetur: ille homo sanus, ille iustus, ille perfectus est. quisquis igitur his omnibus praeceptis caelestibus obtemperauerit, hic cultor est uerus dei, cuius sacrificia sunt mansuetudo animi et uita innocens et actus boni: quae omnia qui exhibet, totiens sacrificat, quotiens bonum aliquid ac pium fecerit. deus enim non desiderat uictimam. neque muti animalis neque mortis ac sanguinis, sed hominis et uitae. ad quod sacrificium neque uerbenis opus est neque februis neque cespitibus, quae sunt utique uanissima, sed iis quae de intimo pectore proferuntur. itaque m aram dei, quae uere maxima est et quae in corde hominis conlocata inquinari non potest sanguine, iustitia imponitur, patientia fides innocentia castitas abstinentia. hic est uerissimus ritus, haec illa lex dei, ut a Cicerone dictum est, praeclara et diuina, semper quae recta et honesta iubet, uetat praua et turpia: cui parentem sanctissimae ac certissimae legi iuste ac legitime necesse est uiuere. cuius legis pauca equidem capita posui, quod sum pollicitus ea me tantummodo esse dicturum quae summum fastigium uirtuti et iustitiae imponerent. si quis uolet cetera omnia comprehendere, ex fonte ipso petat unde ad nos riuus iste manauit.