Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/410

Rh Church; to reduce those acts to a few prayers, or to some fact after absolution has been now conferred, seems rather the material desire of preserving to this sacrament the bare name of penance, than an enlightened means, and one suited to augment that fervour of charity which ought to precede absolution; we are indeed very averse to the practice, to be disproved of, of imposing penances to be fulfilled even after absolution; if all our good works have our defects annexed to them, how much more ought we to dread, lest we incur very many imperfections in the very difficult and momentous work of our reconciliation," in as far as it intimates that penances which are imposed after absolution, are to be considered rather as a supplement for defects incurred in the work of our reconciliation, than as penances truly sacramental and satisfactory for sins confessed: as if, that the true nature of a sacrament, not the bare name, be preserved, it were necessary, out of the ordinary way, that the acts of humiliation and penance, which are imposed by way of sacramental satisfaction, ought to precede absolution: False rash, injurious to the common practice of the Church leading into an error stamped with the brand of heresy in the case of Peter de Osma.

XXXVI. The doctrine of the synod, after premising, "When unequivocal signs of the love of God prevailing in the heart of man shall be had, that he may be fairly indicated as worthy to be admitted to a participation of the blood of Jesus Christ, which takes place in the sacraments;" it adds, "that the suppositious conversions, which are done by attrition, are wont to be neither effectual nor permanent;" consequently, "that the pastor of souls ought to insist on unequivocal signs of prevailing charity, before he admits his penitents to sacraments," which signs, as it then says (§ 17), "the pastor will be able to deduce from a steady cessation from sin and his fervour in good works;" which fervour of charity, moreover, it represents (de pœnit. § 10) as a disposition which ought to precede absolution; so understood, that not only imperfect contrition, which