maturer years as a preacher. It could be taken to imply-—which he certainly did not mean it to—that
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Satan, whose triumph is the discord of Christians. And this, you see, is an almsdeed of great value and profit, to forgive your fellow servant a debt, so that you may be released from your debts by the Lord. The heavenly teacher recom¬ mended each sort of good work to his disciples, when he said, Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you (Lk 6:37-38). Remember that servant on whom his master piled back the whole debt he had forgiven, because the man didn't pay back to his fellow servant owing him a hundred dollars the same kindness as he had received over the ten billion which he had owed.35
This kind of good work admits no excuses, because the means required consists solely of the will. Someone can say, "I can't fast, or my stomach will give me trouble." You can also say, "I would like to give to the poor, but I haven't got anything to spare"; or "I've only got so much, and I'm afraid of being left in want if I give anything away"—although even over these good works people often make false excuses for themselves, because they can't find genuine ones. Who, though, could possibly say, "The reason I didn't grant him pardon when he asked, is that my health prevented me, or because I didn't have a hand to hold it out to him with"? Forgive, in order to be forgiven yourself. Here the body isn't needed at all, no part of the body has to be brought to the assistance of the soul in order for what is being asked to be granted. It's all done by the will, completed by the will. Do it without worrying, give it without worrying; it won't give you a pain anywhere in the body, you won't find you have anything less in the house.
But now then, brothers and sisters, just see what kind of evil it must be not to forgive your repentant brother or sister, when you're commanded to go on loving your enemy.36 That being so, since it is written, Do not let the sun go down upon your anger (Eph 4:26), just ask yourselves, dearly beloved, whether people should really be called Christians, who at least in these days are unwilling to put an end to animosities, which they should never have indulged in in the first place.
NOTES
1. This sermon, and to some extent the next, is obviously very different from the previous five, above all in its length. Just possibly it wasn't preached at Mass on the first Sunday of Lent, but the day before, perhaps at a sort of vigil service, which would allow the preacher more scope, scope to deal first with a question that in all likelihood only a more devout or interested elite among the faithful would ask. But all the same, it is the length of the sermon that inclines me to date it to the few years, 391 to 396, when Augustine was just a presbyter. The style, too, lacks that touch of episcopal authority that can be detected in the others. And the much more elaborate diatribe, in sections 10 and 11, against people who try out recherche Lenten recipes, smacks of the schools of rhetoric, which in those early years he had not quite grown out of.
2. A very loose theological expression, which he would probably not have been guilty of in his maturer years as a preacher. It could be taken to imply-—which he certainly did not mean it to—that Christ assumed only a human body, and not a human soul; the error of Apollinaris.