Chapter VII.
How the impudent and bashful are to be admonished.
(
Admonition
8). Differently to be
admonished are the impudent and the bashful. For those nothing
but hard rebuke restrains from the vice of impudence; while these for
the most part a modest exhortation disposes to amendment. Those
do not know that they are in fault, unless they be rebuked even by
many; to these it usually suffices for their conversion that the
teacher at least gently reminds them of their evil deeds. For
those one best corrects who reprehends them by direct invective; but to
these greater profit ensues, if what is rebuked in them be touched, as
it were, by a side stroke. Thus the
Lord
, openly upbraiding the impudent people of the Jews,
saying,
There is come unto thee a whore’s forehead; thou
wouldest not blush
(
Jerem. iii. 3
). But again He revives them
when ashamed, saying,
Thou shalt forget the confusion of thy youth,
and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood; for thy Maker
will reign over thee
(
Isai. liv. 4
). Paul also openly upbraids
the Galatians impudently sinning, when he says,
O foolish Galatians,
who hath bewitched you
(
Galat. iii. 1
)? And again,
Are ye so
foolish, that, having begun in the Spirit, ye are now made perfect in
the flesh
(
Ibid. 3
)? But the faults of those
who are ashamed he reprehends as though sympathizing with them, saying,
I rejoiced in the
Lord
greatly, that now at
the last ye have flourished again to care for me, as indeed ye did
care, for ye lacked opportunity
(
Philipp. iv. 10
); so that hard upbraiding might discover
the faults of the former, and a softer address veil the negligence of
the latter.