On Repentance 11

What if, besides shame, which they think the weightier, they also dread the bodily discomforts: that they must go about unwashed, dirty, deprived of cheer, in the roughness of sackcloth, the unsightliness of ashes, and a face hollow from fasting? Is it fitting, then, for us to make supplication for our sins in scarlet and Tyrian purple? Here, bring the pin for parting the hair, the powder for polishing the teeth, some two-pronged tool of iron or bronze for trimming the nails! If any false gloss, if any forced blush is available, let it be pressed on lips or cheeks! Seek out besides more cheerful baths in garden or seaside retreats; add to the expense; procure an enormous fattening of poultry; refine old wine; and when anyone asks you for whom you are lavishing all this, say: “I have sinned against God, and I am in danger of perishing forever; so now I am in suspense, and I waste away and am tormented, so that I may reconcile to myself God, whom I have wounded by sinning.” But those who go canvassing to obtain a magistracy are neither ashamed nor sorry to struggle for the sake of their wishes through discomforts of soul and body, and not only discomforts but every kind of insult. What meanness of dress do they not affect? What halls do they not besiege with greetings late at night and early in the morning? They shrink before every meeting with any greater personage; they are seen at no banquets, they gather at no revels; they are exiles from the happiness of freedom and joy; and all this for the fleeting joy of a single year. Shall we hesitate to bear, when eternity is at stake, what the pursuit of the axes and rods endures? And shall we fail to offer to an offended Lord the chastisement of food and dress that the heathen impose on themselves when they have offended no one at all? These are those of whom Scripture speaks: “Woe to those who bind their sins together as with a long rope.”