Withhold not correction from the child: for if you beat him with a rod, he shall not die.
Read Chapter 23
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
If the evil will is always to be left to its own freedom, why are careless shepherds rebuked, and why is it said to them, “The wandering sheep you have not called back, that which was lost you have not sought”? Letter
As small children who are negligent in learning become more attentive and obedient after being punished by their teacher or tutor, and as they do not listen before the lash, but, after feeling the pain of a beating, hear and respond as though their ears were just recently opened, improving also in memory, so likewise with those who neglect divine doctrine and spurn the commandments. For, after they experience God’s correction and discipline, then the commandments of God which had always been known to them and always neglected are most readily received as though by ears freshly cleansed.
When someone presumes to commit a sin against God, he ought to suffer a monastic penance. This should be done in a kind and devout spirit, so that through rebuke he may be corrected in this life in such a way that he may not perish in the future. For every sin which is not corrected in this world will be punished in the future life. Sacred Scripture speaks thus about the son and the servant: “Strike him with the rod,” it says, “and you will save him from the nether world.”
Correction and chastisement, as their very name implies, are blows inflicted upon the soul, restraining sin, warding off death, leading those enslaved by vice back to selfcontrol. Thus, Plato, recognizing that correction has the greatest influence and is the most effective purification, echoes the Word when he claims that one who is notably lacking in purification becomes undisciplined and degenerate because he was left uncorrected, while one who is to be truly happy should be the most purified and virtuous. .
