Nilus of Ancyra→Genethlius|c. 415 AD|nilus ancyra|From Ancyra|AI-assisted
To Genethlius the Ekdikos [defensor, a legal advocate].
You assert, having learned it from Solomon: "Who shall boast that he has a pure heart?" [Proverbs 20:9]. But the trouble is not so much that you do not have a pure heart, as that you do not approach the Master Christ, who is able to make it pure, begging to receive this gift. For Christ is able, if he wills, to cleanse the heart through the Holy Spirit. This is what one of the ancients sought with supplication, crying out: "Create in me a clean heart, O God" [Psalm 50/51:10, the words of David]. And God wishes, even more than we do, to bestow this gift together with the other good things; but he waits to receive from us an occasion, so that he may crown us with confidence. For what was more sinful than the tax collector? Yet, that he might say, "Be merciful to me, O God, a sinner" [Luke 18:13], he went down from the temple justified above the Pharisee. And indeed, how much power had that saying? Yet it was not the saying that cleansed him, but the disposition with which he spoke that saying as well; and before these, the love of God for mankind, which does not wish us to perish, but urges us on to make room for ourselves in repentance.
To Genethlius the Ekdikos [defensor, a legal advocate].
You assert, having learned it from Solomon: "Who shall boast that he has a pure heart?" [Proverbs 20:9]. But the trouble is not so much that you do not have a pure heart, as that you do not approach the Master Christ, who is able to make it pure, begging to receive this gift. For Christ is able, if he wills, to cleanse the heart through the Holy Spirit. This is what one of the ancients sought with supplication, crying out: "Create in me a clean heart, O God" [Psalm 50/51:10, the words of David]. And God wishes, even more than we do, to bestow this gift together with the other good things; but he waits to receive from us an occasion, so that he may crown us with confidence. For what was more sinful than the tax collector? Yet, that he might say, "Be merciful to me, O God, a sinner" [Luke 18:13], he went down from the temple justified above the Pharisee. And indeed, how much power had that saying? Yet it was not the saying that cleansed him, but the disposition with which he spoke that saying as well; and before these, the love of God for mankind, which does not wish us to perish, but urges us on to make room for ourselves in repentance.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.