The one further repentance after baptism

Up to this point, Christ our Lord, may your servants be permitted to learn and hear about the discipline of repentance. May they learn it only up to the point where catechumens must no longer sin, so that they know nothing of repentance and seek nothing from it. I am reluctant to add any mention of the second hope, which is now indeed the last hope, lest by discussing the remaining help of repentance I seem to be pointing out a period of time for further sinning. Far be it from anyone to interpret it this way: as if the door to sinning still stands open for him because the door to repentance stands open, and as if the overflowing of heavenly mercy gives license to human rashness. Let no one become worse because God is better, sinning as often as he is forgiven. Otherwise, he will certainly reach an end of escaping when he reaches an end of offending. We have escaped once. Let us go on endangering ourselves only so far, even if we seem likely to escape again. Many who have been freed from shipwreck renounce both ship and sea from then on, and honor God's benefit, their salvation, by remembering the danger. I praise their fear. I love their modesty. They do not wish to burden divine mercy again. They are afraid of seeming to trample on what they have received, and with a certainly good anxiety they avoid experiencing again what they once learned to fear. Thus restraint from rashness is a testimony of fear. And human fear is an honor to God.

But that most obstinate enemy never lets his malice rest. Indeed, he rages most fiercely when he feels a person has been fully set free. He is most inflamed when he is being extinguished. He must grieve and groan, since the forgiveness of sins has been granted, so many works of death in a person have been destroyed, so many titles of his former condemnation have been erased. He grieves that that sinner, the servant of Christ, is going to judge him and his angels. So he watches, attacks, besieges, to see if he can strike the eyes with fleshly desire, or entangle the mind with worldly enticements, or overturn faith through fear of earthly power, or twist it from the sure path by perverse traditions. He does not fail in scandals or temptations. Therefore God, foreseeing these poisons of his, though the door of forgiveness is closed and the bar of baptism is fastened, has still permitted something to remain open. He has placed second repentance at the threshold, to open the way for those who knock. But only once, because it is already the second time. But never again, because the previous time was in vain. For is not even this once enough? You have what you no longer deserved, for you lost what you had received. If the Lord's indulgence provides you with the means to restore what you had lost, be grateful for the repeated benefit, not to mention the increased one. For it is greater to restore than to give, since it is more wretched to have lost than never to have received at all.

But the soul must not be cut down and overthrown immediately by despair if someone has become a debtor of second repentance. Let it shame you to sin again, but let it not shame you to repent again. Let it shame you to be endangered again, but not to be freed again. Let no one be ashamed. For repeated sickness the medicine must be repeated. You will show yourself grateful to the Lord if you do not refuse what the Lord offers you. You have offended, but you can still be reconciled. You have someone to whom you can make amends, and he is willing.