40. As to the
Forgiveness of Sins, it ought to be enough
simple to believe. For who would ask the cause or the reason when a
Prince grants indulgence? When the liberality of an earthly sovereign
is no fit subject for discussion, shall man’s temerity discuss
God’s largess? For the Pagans are wont to ridicule us, saying
that we deceive ourselves, fancying that crimes committed in deed can
be purged by words. And they say, “Can he who has committed
murder be no murderer, and he who has committed adultery be accounted
no adulterer? How then shall one guilty of crimes of this sort all of a
sudden be made holy?” But to this, as I said, we answer better by
faith than by reason. For he is King of all who hath promised it: He is
Lord of heaven and earth who assures us of it. Would you have me refuse
to believe that He who made me a man of the dust of the earth can of a
guilty person make me innocent? And that He who when I was blind made
me see, or when I was deaf made me hear, or lame walk, can recover for
me my lost innocence? And to come to the witness of Nature—to
kill a man is not always criminal, but to kill of malice, not by law,
is criminal. It is not the deed then, in such matters, that condemns
me, because sometimes it is rightly done, but the evil intention of the
mind. If then my mind which had been rendered criminal, and in which
the sin originated, is corrected, why should I seem to you incapable of
being made innocent, who before was criminal? For if it is plain, as I
have shewn, that crime consists not in the deed but in the will, as an
evil will, prompted by an evil demon, has made me obnoxious to sin and
death, so the will prompted by the good God, being changed to good,
hath restored me to innocence and life. It is the same also in all
other crimes. In this way there is found to be no opposition between
our faith and natural reason, while forgiveness of sins is imputed not
to deeds, which when once done cannot be changed, but to the mind,
which it is certain can be converted from bad to good.
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