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To speak generally, penitence is a repentance whereby
a man rejects and detests the sin he has committed,
with the resolution to repair as much as in him lies
the offence and injury done to him against whom he
has sinned.
I comprehend in penitence a purpose to repair the
offence, because that repentance does not
sufficiently detest the fault which voluntarily
permits the principal effect thereof, to wit the
offence and injury, to subsist; and it permits it to
subsist, so long as, being able in some sort to make
reparation, it does not do so.
I omit here the penitence of certain pagans, who,
as Tertullian witnesses, had some appearances of it
amongst them, but so vain and fruitless that they
often had penitence for having done well; for I speak
only of virtuous penitence, which according to the
different motives whence it proceeds is also of
various species. There is one sort purely moral and
human, as was that of Alexander the Great, who having
slain his dear Clitus determined to starve himself to
death, so great, says Cicero, was the force of
penitence: or that of Alcibiades, who, being
convinced by Socrates that he was not a wise man,
began to weep bitterly, being sorrowful and afflicted
for not being what he ought to have been, as S.
Augustine says. Aristotle also, recognising this sort
of penitence, assures us that the intemperate man who
of set purpose gives himself over to pleasures is
wholly incorrigible, because he cannot repent, and he
that is without repentance is incurable.
Certainly, Seneca, Plutarch and the Pythagoreans,
who so highly commend the examen of conscience, but
especially the first, who speaks so feelingly of the
torment which interior remorse excites in the soul,
must have understood that there was a repentance; and
as for the sage Epictetus, he so well describes the
way in which a man should reprehend himself that it
could scarcely be better expressed.
There is yet another penitence which is indeed
moral, yet religious too, yea in some sort divine,
proceeding from the natural knowledge which we have
of our offending God by sin. For certainly many
philosophers understood that to live virtuously was a
thing agreeable to the divinity, and that
consequently to live viciously was offensive to him.
The good man Epictetus makes the wish to die a
true Christian (as it is very probable he did), and
amongst other things he says he should be content if
dying he could lift up his hands to God and say unto
him: For my part I have not dishonoured Thee: and,
further, he will have his philosopher to make an
admirable oath to God never to be disobedient to his
divine Majesty, nor to question or blame anything
coming from him, nor in any sort to complain thereof;
and in another place he teaches that God and our good
angel are present during our actions.
You see clearly then, Theotimus, that this
philosopher, while yet a pagan, knew that sin
offended God, as virtue honoured him, and
consequently he willed that it should be repented of,
since he even ordained an examen of conscience at
night, about which, with Pythagoras, he lays down
this maxim
If thou hast ill done, chide thyself bitterly,
If thou hast well done, rest thee contentedly.
Now this kind of repentance joined to the
knowledge and love of God which nature can give, was
a dependence of moral religion. But as natural reason
bestowed more knowledge than love upon the
philosophers, who did not glorify God in proportion
to the knowledge they had of him, so nature has
furnished more light to understand how much God is
offended by sin, than heat to excite the repentance
necessary for the reparation of the offence.
But although religious penitence may have been in
some sort recognized by some of the philosophers, yet
this has been so rarely and feebly, that those who
were reputed the most virtuous amongst them, to wit
the Stoics, maintained that the wise man was never
grieved, whereupon they framed a maxim as contrary to
reason, as the proposition on which it was grounded
was contrary to experience, namely, that the wise man
sinned not.
We may therefore well say, Theotimus, that
penitence is a virtue wholly Christian, since on the
one side it was so little known to the pagans, and,
on the other side, it is so well recognized amongst
true Christians, that in it consists a great part of
the evangelical philosophy, according to which
whosoever affirms that he sins not, is senseless, and
whosoever expects without penitence to redress his
sin is mad; for it is our Saviour's exhortation of
exhortations: Do penance.(1) And now let me give a
brief description of the progress of this virtue.
We enter into a profound apprehending of the fact
that, as far as is in us, we offend God by our sins,
despising and dishonouring him, giving way to
disobedience and rebellion against him; and he also
on his part considers himself as offended, irritated,
and despised; for he dislikes, reproves and
abominates iniquity. From this true apprehension
there spring several motives, which all, or several
together, or each one apart, may carry us to this
repentance.
For we consider sometimes how God who is offended
has established a rigorous punishment in hell for
sinners, and how he will deprive them of the paradise
prepared for the good. And as the desire of paradise
is extremely honourable, so the fear of losing it is
an excellent fear; and not only so, but the desire of
paradise being very worthy of esteem, the fear of its
contrary, which is hell, is good and praiseworthy.
Ah! who would not dread so great a loss, so great
a torment! And this double fear - the one servile,
the other mercenary - greatly bears us on towards a
repentance for our sins, by which we have incurred
them. And to this effect in the holy Word this fear
is a hundred and a hundred times inculcated. At other
times we consider the deformity and malice of sin,
according as faith teaches us; for example, because
by it the likeness and image of God which we have, is
defiled and disfigured, the dignity of our soul
dishonoured, we are made like brute beasts we have
violated our duty towards the Creator of the world,
forfeited the good of the society of the angels, to
associate and subject ourselves to the devil, making
ourselves slaves of our passions, overturning the
order of reason, offending our good angels to whom we
have so great obligations.
At other times we are provoked to repentance by the
beauty of virtue, which brings as much good with it
as sin does evil; further we are often moved to it by
the example of the saints; for who could ever have
cast his eyes upon the exercises of the incomparable
penitence of Magdalen, of Mary of Egypt, or of the
penitents of the monastery called Prison, described
by S. John Climacus, without being moved to
repentance for his sins, since the mere reading of
the history incites to it such as are not altogether
insensible.
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