13.

I beseech thee, hast thou not read, "Boast not, and speak not loftily, and let not arrogancy proceed out of your mouth: for the Lord lifteth the poor from the earth; He raiseth up the beggar from the dunghill, and maketh him to sit with the mighty ones of the people?" ¹ Hast thou not read, that "the Lord resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble?" ² Hast thou not read, "Whoso exalteth himself shall be humbled?" ³ Hast thou not read, that "God destroys the remembrance of the proud, and does not forsake the memory of the lowly?" Hast thou not read, that "with what judgment a man shall judge he must be judged?" ⁴ Hast thou not read, that "he who hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because the darkness hath blinded his eyes?" ⁵ Whence, then, this Novatian has become both so wicked and so lost, so mad with rage of discord, I cannot discover, since he always in one household--that is, the Church of Christ--would have bewailed the sins of his neighbours as his own; ⁶ would have borne the burthens of his brethren, as the apostle exhorts; would have strengthened the faltering in the faith with heavenly counsel. But now, from the time when he began to practise that heresy of Cain which only delights in slaying, he does not even of late spare himself. But if he had read that "the righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day on which he shall have erred, and the wickedness of the wicked shall not harm him from the day in which he shall have been converted," ⁷ he would long ago have repented in ashes, who is always opposed to penitents; who labours more readily in the destruction of those things which are built and standing, than in the building up of those which are prostrate; who has once more made heathens of many most wretched brethren of ours, terrified by his false oppositions, by saying that the repentance of the lapsed is vain, and cannot avail them for salvation, although the Scripture cries aloud and says, "Remember whence thou hast fallen, and repent, or else I will come to thee except thou repent." ⁸ And indeed, writing to the seven churches, rebuking each one of them with its own crimes and sins, it said, Repent. To whom but to them, doubtless, whom He had redeemed at the great price of His blood?