...Because the sacred fire that lights all nature liveliest of all in its own image glows. All these prerogatives the human creature possesses, and if one of them should fail, he must diminish from his noble stature. Sin only can disenfranchise him, and veil his likeness to the Highest Good; whereby the light in him is lessened and grows pale. Ne'er can he win back dignities so high till the void made by guilt be all filled in with just amends paid for by illicit joy. Now, when your nature as a whole did sin in its first root, it lost these great awards, and lost the Eden of its origin; nor might they be recovered afterwards by any means, as if thou search thou'lt see, except by crossing one of these two fords; either must God, of his sole courtesy, remit, or man must pay with all that's his, the debt of sin in its entirety. Within the Eternal Counsel's deep abyss rivet thine eye, and with a heed as good as thou canst give me, do thou follow this. Man from his finite assets never could make satisfaction; ne'er could he abase him so low, obey thereafter all he would, as he'd by disobedience sought to raise him; and for this cause man might not pay his due himself, nor from the debtor's roll erase him. Needs then must God, by his own ways, renew man's proper life, and reinstate him so; his ways I say - by one, or both of two. And since the doer's actions ever show more gracious as the style of them makes plain the goodness of the heart from which they flow, that most high Goodness which is God was fain - even God, whose impress Heaven and earth display - by all His ways to lift you up again; nor, between final night and primal day, was e'er proceeding so majestical and high, nor shall not be, by either way; for God's self-giving, which made possible that man should raise himself, showed more largesse than if by naked power He'd cancelled all; and every other means would have been less than justice, if it had not pleased God's Son to be humiliate in fleshliness.
Dante Alighieri, Paradiso
atonement, repentance, sin