Pastoral Rule

How the impudent and bashful are to be admonished.

(Admonition 8). Differently to be admonished are the impudent and the bashful. For those nothing but hard rebuke restrains from the vice of impudence; while these for the most part a modest exhortation disposes to amendment. Those do not know that they are in fault, unless they be rebuked even by many; to these it usually suffices for their conversion that the teacher at least gently reminds them of their evil deeds. For those one best corrects who reprehends them by direct invective; but to these greater profit ensues, if what is rebuked in them be touched, as it were, by a side stroke. Thus the Lord, openly upbraiding the impudent people of the Jews, saying, There has come unto you a whore's forehead; you would not blush. But again He revives them when ashamed, saying, You shall forget the confusion of your youth, and shall not remember the reproach of your widowhood; for your Maker will reign over you. Paul also openly upbraids the Galatians impudently sinning, when he says, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? And again, Are you so foolish, that, having begun in the Spirit, you are now made perfect in the flesh? But the faults of those who are ashamed he reprehends as though sympathizing with them, saying, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last you have flourished again to care for me, as indeed you did care, for you lacked opportunity; so that hard upbraiding might discover the faults of the former, and a softer address veil the negligence of the latter.