But because God, rich in mercy, knoweth our frame,[1] he hath bestowed a remedy of life even upon those who, after baptism, may have delivered themselves up to the servitude of sin and the power of the devil, the sacrament, to wit, of penance, by which the benefit of Christ's death is applied to those who have fallen after baptism. Penitence was indeed ever necessary, in order to attain to grace and justice, for all men who had defiled themselves by any deadly sin, even for those who had begged to be washed by the sacrament of baptism; that so, their perverseness cast aside and amended, they might, with a hatred of sin and a pious sorrow of mind, detest so great an offence of God. Whence the prophet saith: Be turned and do penance from all your iniquities, and iniquity shall not be your ruin.[2] The Lord also said,— Except ye do penance, ye shall all likeeise perish.[3] And Peter, the prince of the apostles, recommending penitence to sinners who were about to be initiated by baptism, said. Do penance, and he baptized every one of you.[4] Nevertheless, neither before the coming of Christ was penitence a sacrament, nor is it such, since his coming, to any one previously to baptism. But the Lord then especially instituted the sacrament of penance, when, being raised from the dead, He breathed upon His disciples, saying, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins ye shall remit, they are remitted unto them, and whose sins ye shall retain, they are retained,[5] By which action so signal, and words so clear, the consent of all the fathers has ever understood, that the power of remitting and retaining sins was communicated to the apostles and their lawful successors, unto the reconciling of the faithful who have fallen after baptism. And the Novatians,[6] who of old pertinaciously denied the power of forgiving, the Catholic Church with great reason repudiated, and condemned as heretics ; wherefore this holy synod, approving and receiving as most true this meaning of those words of our Lord, condemns the laboured interpretations of those who,, contrary to the institution of this sacrament, falsely wrest those words to
