The Shepherd of Hermas

Hermas

Hermas. The Apostolic Fathers with an English translation by Kirsopp Lake. In Two Volumes. Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1913

And he said to me: Do you see this[*](The Shepherd of luxury) shepherd? Yes, sir, said I, I see him. This, said he, is the angel of luxury and deceit. He wears out the souls of the servants of God, and perverts them from the truth, deceiving them with evil desires in which they perish.

For they forget the commandments of the Living God, and walk in deceit and vain luxury, and are destroyed by this angel, some to death, and some to corruption.

I said to him: Sir, I do not know what is to

death, and what is to corruption. Listen, he said, the sheep which you see joyful and skipping, these are those which have been torn away from God completely, and have given themselves up to the lusts of this world. For these, then, there is no repentance of life, because they added to their sins and blasphemed against the name of God. Such men incur death.

But the sheep which you see not skipping, but feeding in one place, these are they who have given themselves up to luxury and deceit, but have uttered no blasphemy against the Lord. These then have been corrupted from the truth; in them there is hope of repentance, in which they can live. Corruption, then, has hope of some renewing, but death has eternal destruction.

Again I went on a little, and he showed me a great shepherd, as it were savage in appearance,[*](The Shepherd of Punishment) clothed in a white goat-skin, and he had a bag on his shoulders, with a great staff, very hard and with knots, and a great whip. And he looked very bitter so that 1 was afraid of him, such a look had he.

This shepherd then was receiving the sheep from the young shepherd; that is to say, those who were frisky and well-fed but not skipping, and put them in a certain place precipitous and thorny and full of thistles, so that the sheep could not disentangle themselves from the thorns and thistles, but were

caught in the thorns and thistles.

These then were being pastured all entangled in the thorns and thistles, and they were very wretched, being beaten by him, and lie was driving them about here and there, and gave them no rest, and those sheep had no happy time at all.