18.

"Let not the tempest of waters drown Me" (ver. 15). But already he had been drowned. "I have come into the depth of the sea," thou hast said, and "the tempest hath drowned Me," ¹ thou hast said. It hath drowned after the flesh, let it not drown after the Spirit. They to whom was said, If they shall have persecuted you in one city, flee ye into another; ² had this said to them, that neither in flesh they should stick, nor in spirit. For we must not desire to stick even in flesh; but as far as we are able we ought to avoid it. But if we shall have stuck, and shall have fallen into the hands of sinners: then in body we have stuck, we are fixed in the clay of the deep, it remaineth to entreat for the soul that we stick not, that is, that we consent not, that the tempest of water drown us not, so that we go into the deep of the clay. "Neither let the deep swallow Me, nor the pit close her mouth upon Me." What is this, brethren? What hath he prayed against? Great is the pit of the depth of human iniquity: every one, if he shall have fallen into it, will fall into the deep. But yet if a man being there placed confesseth his sins to his God, the pit will not shut her mouth upon him: as is written in another Psalm, "From the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord; Lord, hearken unto my voice." ³ But if there is done in him that which another passage of Scripture saith, "When a sinner shall have come into the depth of evil things, he will despise," ⁴ upon him the pit hath shut her mouth. Why hath she shut her mouth? Because she hath shut his mouth. He hath lost confession, really dead he is, and there is fulfilled in him that which elsewhere is spoken of, "From a dead man, as from one that is not, there perisheth confession." ⁵ ...