child that is born to thee shall surely die. 2 Kings, xii. 13, 14. -So also when he sinned by numbering the people. 1 Chron. xxi.—These sufferings, it may be said, were inflicted; but not voluntarily chosen. Look then into the psalms of the royal prophet: I am wearied with groaning : every night will I wash my bed : I will water my couch with my tears. Psal. vi. 7.—The same penitential sentiments are unceasingly repeated.–At the preaching of Jonah, (c. iii.) the Ninivites proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least; the beasts also were made to fast. To this fact our Saviour refers : Matt. xii. 41. The men of Ninive shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it; because they did penance at the preaching of Jonah. Similar examples of voluntary chastisement may be read in other parts of the Scriptures—in the history of Manasseh, 2 Chron. xxxiii. and in that of the Jews with Judith in Bethulia, Judith iv.
In conformity with the order of divine justice, in these examples manifestly established, the Catholic Church has ever taught, that, after sin has been remitted, in the Sacrament of penance, by a hearty contrition and a sincere confession, penitential works must still be performed; and under this impression it was, that, in the primitive Church, the penitential canons, of which I have spoken, were established. These subsist no longer; but the ways of God are unchangeable, and, agreeably to those ways, the essential spirit of Christian discipline remains the same. In all this the object was, and is, that penitential exercises, while they served as a castigation for passed sins, might, at the same time, be a check to the repetition of the same, and strengthen the resolutions of amendment. The practice of virtues more directly opposed to the failings of the penitent, is enjoined, and the flight of dangerous occasions.
