“They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rocks as a shelter. The showers of the mountains are the words of the doctors. Concerning which mountains it is said with the voice of the Church: ‘I will lift up my eyes unto the hills.’ The showers of the mountains water these, for the streams of the holy fathers saturate. We receive the ‘shelter’ as a covering of good works, by which one is covered so that before the eyes of omnipotent God the filthiness of his perversity is concealed. Wherefore it is written, ‘Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered’ (Ps. xxxii. 1). And under the name of stones whom do we understand except the strong men of the Church? To whom it is said through the first shepherd: ‘Ye also as living stones are built up a spiritual house’ (1 Peter ii. 5). So those who confide in no work of their own, run to the protection of the holy martyrs, and press with tears to their sacred bodies, pleading to obtain pardon through their intercession.”[117] Another point of Gregorian emphasis: no delict is remitted without punishment.[118] To complement which principle, Gregory develops the doctrine of penance in its three elements, _contritio_, _conversio mentis_, _satisfactio_. Our whole life should be one long penitence and penance, and baptism of tears; for our first baptism cannot wash out later sins, and cannot be repeated. In the fourth book of the _Dialogi_ he develops his cognate doctrine of Purgatory,[119] and amplifies upon the situation and character of hell. These things are implicit in Augustine and existed before him: with Gregory they have become explicit, elaborated, and insisted on with recurrent emphasis. Thus Augustinianism is altered in form and barbarized.[120] Gregory is throughout prefigurative of the Middle Ages, which he likewise prefigures in his greatness as a sovereign bishop and a man of ecclesiastical affairs. He is energetic and wise and temperate. The practical wisdom of the Catholic Church is in him and in his rightly famed book of _Pastoral Rule_. The temperance and wisdom of his letters of instructions to Augustine of Canterbury are admirable. The practical exigency seemed always to have the effect of tempering any extreme opinion which apart from it he might have expressed; as one sees, for example, in those letters to this apostle to the English, or in his letter to Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles, who had been too violent as to paintings and images. Gregory’s stand is moderate and reasonable. Likewise he opposes the use of force to convert the Jews, although insisting firmly that no Jew may hold a Christian slave.[121]