Page:Faithcatholics.pdf/366

 with you all days even to the end of the world. (Matt. xxviii 20.) Whatever, therefore, is duly and with a happy effect performed by us, is the gift, we cannot doubt, of the holy Spirit.” Ep. lxxxiii. al. sci. p. 605.

They, who by sin have fallen from the grace of justification, are enabled again to be justified, when God, exciting them through the Sacrament of penance, they recover that lost grace by the merit of Christ. This mode of justification is reparation to the fallen; and which the holy Fathers have aptly styled the second plank after shipwreck. For for those who fall after baptism, Christ instituted the Sacrament of penance, when he said: Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” &c. Sess. vi. c. 14. p. 37.—“Our Lord then principally instituted this Sacrament, when, after his resurrection, breathing on his Disciples, he said: Receive ye the Holy Ghost ; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven ; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. (John xx.) By which signal action, and by words so plain, the Catholic Church, agreeably to the unanimous sense of the Fathers, has always understood, that the power of forgiving and of retaining sins, was given to the Apostles and to their legitimate Successors. And, with just reason, she therefore rejected and condemned as heretics, the Novatians, who obstinately, in former times, denied that power.” Sess. xiv. c. 1. p. 108.

The essential parts of Penance are three; Contrition, Confession, and Satisfaction; without which, in the case of grievous