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Concerning Repentance — Historical footnotes

Chapter X.

Complete historical editorial footnotes. These notes retain the original edition’s wording; individual note authors are unspecified.

English translation and editorial credits: Augustus Henry Eugene de Romestin, Eugene de Romestin (assistant), Henry Thomas Forbes Duckworth (assistant).

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1896 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

A good deal of controversy has arisen about this passage, which certainly appears, prima facie, to contrast confession to God and to a man obviously priest or bishop. The Benedictine editors insist much upon the use of the singular number, homini, a man. But the word might conceivably be used in a general sense. There is no real doubt as to the practice of the Early Church. See note at the end of this treatise.

Editorial footnote · Concerning Repentance, Chapter X., editorial note cite_note-1 · Original source

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91. Can any one endure that you should blush to entreat God, when you do not blush to entreat a man? That you should be ashamed to entreat Him Who knows you fully, when you are not ashamed to confess your sins to a man who knows you not? Do you shrink from witnesses and sympathizers in your prayers, when, if you have to satisfy a man, you must visit many and entreat them to be kind enough to intervene; when you throw yourself at a man’s knees, kiss his feet, bring your children, still unconscious of guilt, to entreat also for their father’s pardon? And you disdain to do this in the Church in order to entreat God, in order to gain for yourself the support of the holy congregation; where there is no cause for shame, except indeed not to confess, since we are all sinners, amongst whom he is the most praiseworthy who is the most humble; he is the most just who feels himself the lowest.

1896 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

Ps. cxix. [cxviii.] 136.

Editorial footnote · Concerning Repentance, Chapter X., editorial note cite_note-3 · Original source

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93. Let, then, nothing call you away from penitence, for this you have in common with the saints, and would that such sorrowing for sin as that of the saints were copied by you. David, as it were, “ate ashes for bread, and mingled his drink with weeping,” and therefore now rejoices the more because he wept the more: “Mine eyes ran down,” he said, “with rivers of water.”