Annotatio CLXXIII
”Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy.” — Psalm 50:3
Chrysostom, in homily 2 on Psalm 50, when from the words of this little verse he encouraged every most desperate sinner to penance,1 burst forth into that voice — repeated by him very often, also in many homilies: “Thou hast sinned? Repent. A thousand times [hast thou sinned]? A thousand times repent — nay, repent even still.” Which voice there were not lacking of old [some] who condemned, as a certain seed-plot of intemperance and unbridled license. But among others, Socrates of Constantinople, in the sixth book of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 21, writes of it in this manner: “It comes upon me to wonder how John [Chrysostom], since he exercised so great a zeal for temperance, taught in his homilies to contemn temperance. For since there was but a single penance given by the synod of bishops to the lapsed,2 he dared to say, ‘Thou too, who hast done penance a thousand times, approach’: on account of which doctrine he was condemned also by [his] friends, especially by Sisinnius, bishop of the Novatians, who wrote a book against this saying, and on account of it strongly resisted him.” These things Socrates: whom there is no doubt to have been a Novatian,3 and on that account offended, together with his own bishop, at Chrysostom’s sayings. Yet Chrysostom, saying these things, did not look to that solemn and public penance which the synodical decrees granted but once to the lapsed, but to the private, singular, and secret penance, which is necessary before God — or before a particular priest — to everyone sinning: this [penance], to [him who has sinned] a thousand times, Chrysostom offers a thousand times as a remedy — not that he might furnish them the matter of intemperate license, but that he might free them from all occasion of despairing. Which he himself also, in the same homily, after the aforesaid words, plainly declares, thus adding: “These things I say, not that I may make you negligent, but that I may lead you to the faith of a salutary expectation: lest you ever despair of yourselves, but always trust in the mercy of God — for one must despair only of that [man] who has despaired of himself.”