ACC ~ Revelation 2 v5a

THE CALL TO REPENTANCE IS A PROMISE OF FORGIVENESS TO THE PENITENT. CYPRIAN: But I wonder that some are so obstinate as to think that penance ought not to be allowed to the lapsed or as to consider that pardon ought to be denied to the penitent when it is written, “Remember whence you have fallen and repent and do the former works.” This is certainly said to him who, it is ascertained, has fallen and whom the Lord exhorts to rise again through works since is it written, “Alms deliver … from death.” Certainly not from that death which once the blood of Christ extinguished and from which the water of beneficial baptism and the grace of our Redeemer freed us, but from that which afterward creeps in through sins. In another place, also, time is given for repentance, and the Lord threatens the one who does not do penance. “I have,” he says, “many things against you: that you permit your wife Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach, and to seduce my servants, to commit fornication and to eat of things sacrificed to idols. And I gave her time that she might repent, and she does not want to repent of her fornication. Behold, I will cast her upon a bed, and those who commit fornication with her are in the greatest tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds.” The Lord certainly would not exhort to repentance if it were not because he promises pardon to the penitent. LETTER 55.22, TO ANTONIAN.

REPENTANCE IS TO BE FOLLOWED BY ACTIONS THAT EXPRESS REPENTANCE. APRINGIUS OF BEJA: For although he wishes that we remember those instances in which we have badly fallen, he exhorts that we might not fall again. And that our faults which we have committed might be cleansed, he shows a way by which one might come to pardon when he says, “Repent.” That is, wash away your sins with tears, just as “that sinful woman,” as a type of the church, “washed the feet of Jesus with her tears and wiped them with her hair.”And he exhorts and commands what one should do after repentance: “Do your first works,” either by an extraordinary goodness or do those works which you had done in the earnestness of your first conversion. TRACTATE ON THE APOCALYPSE 2.5.

Rev