Letters

The Saviour also wept over the city of Jerusalem because its inhabitants had not repented; and Peter washed out his triple denial with bitter tears, thus fulfilling the words of the prophet: “rivers of waters run down my eyes.” Jeremiah too laments over his impenitent people, saying: “Oh that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for...my people!” And farther on he gives a reason for his lamentation: “weep ye not for the dead,” he writes, “neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goes away: for he shall return no more.” The Jew and the Gentile therefore are not to be bemoaned, for they have never been in the Church and have died once for all (it is of these that the Saviour says: “let the dead bury their dead”); weep rather for those who by reason of their crimes and sins go away from the Church, and who suffering condemnation for their faults shall no more return to it. It is in this sense that the prophet speaks to ministers of the Church, calling them its walls and towers, and saying to each in turn, “O wall, let tears run down.” In this way, it is prophetically implied, you will fulfil the apostolic precept: “rejoice with them that do rejoice and weep with them that weep,” and by your tears you will melt the hard hearts of sinners till they too weep; whereas, if they persist in evil doing they will find these words applied to them, “I...planted you a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then are you turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?” and again “saying to a stock, You are my father; and to a stone, You have brought me forth: for they have turned their back unto me, and not their face.” He means, they would not turn towards God in penitence; but in the hardness of their hearts turned their backs upon Him to insult Him. Wherefore also the Lord says to Jeremiah: “have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done? She is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there has played the harlot. And I said after she” had played the harlot and “had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not.”

2. How hard hearted we are and how merciful God is! Who even after our many sins urges us to seek salvation. Yet not even so are we willing to turn to better things. Hear the words of the Lord: “If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's and shall afterwards desire to return to him, will he at all receive her? Will he not loathe her rather? But you have played the harlot with many lovers: yet return again to me, says the Lord.” In place of the last clause the true Hebrew text (which is not preserved in the Greek and Latin versions) gives the following: “you have forsaken me, yet return, and I will receive you, says the Lord.” Isaiah also speaking in the same sense uses almost the same words: “Return,” he cries, “O children of Israel, you who think deep counsel and wicked. Return thou unto me and I will redeem you. I am God, and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth. Remember this and show yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O you transgressors. Return in heart and remember the former things of old: for I am God and there is none else.” Joel also writes: “turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting and with weeping and with mourning: and rend your heart and not your garments and turn unto the Lord your God; for he is gracious and merciful...and repents him of the evil.” How great His mercy is and how excessive— if I may so say— and unspeakable is His pitifulness, the prophet Hosea tells us when he speaks in the Lord's name: “how shall I give you up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver you, Israel? How shall I make you as Admah? How shall I set you as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger.” David also says in a psalm: “in death there is no remembrance of you; in the grave who shall give you thanks?” and in another place: “I acknowledged my sin unto you, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto you in a time when you may be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come near unto him.”

3. Think how great that weeping must be which deserves to be compared to a flood of waters. Whosoever so weeps and says with the prophet Jeremiah “let not the apple of my eye cease” shall straightway find the words fulfilled of him: “mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other;” so that, if righteousness and truth terrify him, mercy and peace may encourage him to seek salvation.

The whole repentance of a sinner is exhibited to us in the fifty-first psalm written by David after he had gone in unto Bathsheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and when, to the rebuke of the prophet Nathan he had replied, “I have sinned.” Immediately that he confessed his fault he was comforted by the words: “the Lord also has put away your sin.” He had added murder to adultery; yet bursting into tears he says: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness: according unto the multitude of your tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” A sin so great needed to find great mercy. Accordingly he goes on to say: “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned”— as a king he had no one to fear but God— “and done this evil in your sight; that you might be justified when you speak and be clear when you judge.” For “God has concluded all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.” And such was the progress that David made that he who had once been a sinner and a penitent afterwards became a master able to say: “I will teach transgressors your ways; and sinners shall be converted unto you.” For as “confession and beauty are before God,” so a sinner who confesses his sins and says: “my wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness” loses his foul wounds and is made whole and clean. But “he that covers his sins shall not prosper.”

The ungodly king Ahab, who shed the blood of Naboth to gain his vineyard, was with Jezebel, the partner less of his bed than of his cruelty, severely rebuked by Elijah. “Thus says the Lord, have you killed and also taken possession?” and again, “in the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick your blood, even yours;” and “the dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.” “And it came to pass”— the passage goes on— “when Ahab heard those words that he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth...and the word of the Lord came to Elijah saying, Because Ahab humbles himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days.” Ahab's sin and Jezebel's were the same; yet because Ahab repented, his punishment was postponed so as to fall upon his sons, while Jezebel persisting in her wickedness met her doom then and there.