Christian saints -- India -- Romances; Gautama Buddha -- Legends -- Adaptations; Princes -- India -- Romances
"Wherefore we are commanded not to despair for our trespasses, but to
acknowledge the goodness of God, and condemn the sins whereof
forgiveness is offered us by reason of the loving-kindness of Christ,
who for our sins shed his precious blood. In many places of Scripture
we are taught the power of repentance, and especially by the precepts
and parables of our Lord Jesus Christ. For it saith, 'From that time
began Jesus to preach and to say, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand."' Moreover he setteth before us, in a parable, a certain
son that had received his father's substance, and taken his journey
into a far country, and there spent all in riotous living. Then, when
there arose a famine in that land, he went and joined himself to one of
the citizens of that land of iniquity, who sent him into his fields to
feed swine,--thus doth he designate the most coarse and loathsome sin.
When, after much labour, he had come to the utmost misery, and might
not even fill his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, at last
he came to perceive his shameful plight, and, bemoaning himself, said,
'How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare,
and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will
say unto him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee,
and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired
servants."' And he arose, and came to his father. But, when he was yet
a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and
embraced him, and kissed him tenderly, and, restoring him to his former
rank, made a feast of joyaunce because his son was found again, and
killed the fatted calf. Lo, this parable, that Jesus spake to us,
concerneth such as turn again from sin, and fall at his feet in
repentance. Again, he representeth a certain good shepherd that had an
hundred sheep, and, when one was lost, left the ninety and nine, and
went forth to seek that which was gone astray, until he found it: and
he laid it on his shoulders, and folded it with those that had not gone
astray, and called together his friends and neighbours to a banquet,
because that it was found. 'Likewise,' saith the Saviour, 'joy shall
be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and
nine just persons which need no repentance.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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