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On Repentance

Tertullian · c. 203 AD

27 min read
Ante-Nicene

An early treatise on the nature and practice of repentance, written before Tertullian's Montanist period, distinguishing pre-baptismal from post-baptismal penance.

Table of Contents

1Of Heathen Repentance2True Repentance a Thing Divine, Originated by God, and Subject to His Laws3Sins May Be Divided into Corporeal and Spiritual. Both Equally Subject, If Not to Human, Yet to Divine Investigation and Punishment4Repentance Applicable to All the Kinds of Sin. To Be Practised Not Only, Nor Chiefly, for the Good It Brings, But Because God Commands It5Sin Never to Be Returned to After Repentance6Baptism Not to Be Presumptously Received. It Requires Preceding Repentance, Manifested by Amendment of Life7Of Repentance, in the Case of Such as Have Lapsed After Baptism8Examples from Scripture to Prove the Lord's Willingness to Pardon9Concerning the Outward Manifestations by Which This Second Repentance is to Be Accompanied10Of Men's Shrinking from This Second Repentance and Exomologesis, and of the Unreasonableness of Such Shrinking11Further Strictures on the Same Subject12Final Considerations to Induce to Exomologesis