Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/388

Rh The manner full of wisdom, light, and charity, is, to give souls time to bear and feel a state of sin with humility, to seek a spirit of penitence and contrition, and to begin, at least, to satisfy the justice of God, before they are reconciled. Acts viii. 9.

We know not what is sin and true penitence, when we wish to be straightway restored to the possession of those goods of which sin hath despoiled us, and shun to endure the confusion of that separation. Luke xvii. 11, 12.

The fourteenth step to the conversion of a sinner is, that when he is already reconciled, he has the right of assisting at the sacrifice of the Church. Luke xv. 23; 1693.

The Church hath authority to excommunicate, so that it may exercise the same through its chief pastors, with the consent, at least, first obtained, of the whole body. Matt, xviii. 17.

The fear of unjust excommunication ought never to hinder us from fulfilling our duty; we are never [effectually] removed from the Church, even when we seem expelled from it by the wickedness of men, seeing we are by charity affixed to God, Jesus Christ, and the Church itself. John ix. 22, 23.

Rather to suffer excommunication and unjust anathema in peace, than to betray the truth, is to imitate the holy Paul; so far is it from being [so] to upraise oneself against authority, or to sever unity. Rom. ix. 3.

Jesus doth sometimes heal wounds, which the headlong haste of the chief pastors inflicts without his commands. Jesus restoreth what they themselves have severed through inconsiderate zeal. John xviii. 11.

Nothing excites a worse opinion of the Church among its enemies, than to see dominion exercised therein over the faith of the faithful, and that divisions should be cherished on account of matters which harm neither faith nor manners. Rom. xiv. 16.</li>

<li>To such a pass have truths come, that they are, as it were, a foreign tongue unto most Christians, and the manner of preaching them is as an unknown dialect, so removed is it from the simplicity of the apostles, and so beyond the common understanding of the faithful; nor is it sufficiently perceived, that this falling off is one of the most sensible </li> </ol>