Annotation CXIX

”And immediately the cock crew; and going out, he wept bitterly.” — Matthew 26:74–75

Whether it is possible that those who have denied Christ should return to repentance and obtain pardon.

Origen, treatise 35 on Matthew, discoursing on these words, seems to maintain that it is impossible that those who — after receiving the grace and faith of the evangelical preaching — have denied Christ, should again return to repentance and obtain pardon of [their] offense. Which error was condemned in the Novatians. His words are read in this manner: “But perhaps all men too, when they deny Jesus — in such wise that the sin of their denial may receive healing — are seen to deny him before cockcrow, the Sun of justice not yet having risen for them, nor his rising drawing near to them. But if, after the rising of such a Sun to the soul, we sin willingly, after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains for us a sacrifice for sin, but a terrible judgment, and the zeal of fire, which shall consume the enemies.¹ And in Peter, indeed, then denying, it was not fitting to say, ‘How do you not think that they deserve worse punishments, who have trodden under foot the Son of God, and have esteemed the blood of the testament — by which they were sanctified — [as] common, and have done injury to the Spirit of grace?’² For Peter had not yet been sanctified by the blood of Christ, which was the blood of the New Testament; nor did he do injury to the Spirit of grace, which he had not from the beginning even received: since Jesus had not yet been glorified, nor was the Holy Spirit [yet] in men.³ But if in us this impious sin of denial should be committed, it is fitting to say all these [things]; since we too have been sanctified in the blood of the testament, and have received the Spirit of grace. Therefore, to esteem [as] common the most precious blood of the testament, and to do injury to the Spirit of grace, is worse than all sins — so that we can receive remission neither in this world nor in the [world] to come, if we deny the Son of God. Since, therefore, the night has gone before us, and the day has drawn near, and the sign of the day — the cockcrow — has sounded for us: therefore let us stand, striving against sin even unto blood, and for the sake of charity; let us bear all [things], never falling away, that with the perfect we may obtain the inheritance therein. And attend to this: that before cockcrow, and before the Holy Spirit, in the time of the deep night, even if one has frequently denied, he can [still] live — which is manifest from the fact that Peter denied thrice. But if, after cockcrow, [even] once, being set in any danger, one has denied: it is impossible for him to be renewed unto repentance,⁴ so as again to crucify to himself the Son of

to himself the Son of God.” Thus far Origen — who is believed to have drunk in this error from the school of Clement of Alexandria, his teacher. For he [Clement], in the second book of the Stromata, seems to admit only two penances throughout the whole of life — one before baptism, the other after — but by no means more. However, it is credible that both Clement and Origen did not wish to deny penance to the lapsed, but wished to deter [men] from sinning by relapse, by these sayings. But to those [things] which Origen brings forth from the epistle to the Hebrews against a repeated penance, you have the response in book 7, in the confutation of the eighth heresy, objection 2.