Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/71

Rh , in labours, in watching, in almsgivings, in prayers and oblations, in fastings and in chastity. For, knowing that they are born again unto a hope of glory, and not as yet unto glory, they ought to fear for the combat which remains, with the flesh, with the world, with the devil, wherein they cannot be victors, unless they, with God's grace, obey the apostle, who says; We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh; for if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the flesh, ye shall live.

But those who through sin have fallen away from the received grace of justification, may again be justified, when, God exciting them, through the sacrament of penance, they, by the merit of Christ, shall have obtained the recovery of the grace lost. For this manner of justification is unto the fallen the reparation, which the holy fathers have aptly called a second plank after the shipwreck of grace lost. For, on behalf of those who after baptism fall into sins, Christ Jesus instituted the sacrament of penance, when He said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whosesoever sins ye shall remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye shall retain, they are retained. Whence it is to be taught, that the penitence of a Christian man after his fall, is very different from that at his baptism; and that therein are included not only a cessation from sins, and a detestation thereof, or, a contrite and humble heart, but also the sacramental confession of the same sins, at least in desire, and to be made in its season, and sacerdotal absolution; and likewise satisfaction by fasts, almsgivings, prayers, and the other pious exercises of a spiritual life; not indeed for the eternal punishment, which is, together with the guilt, remitted, either by the sacrament, or by the desire of the sacrament; but for the temporal punishment, which, as the sacred writings teach, is not always wholly remitted, as is done in baptism, unto those who, ungrateful to the grace of God which they have