Treatise V: On Penance

1643. "Let us approach the work of expounding this Treatise ON THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE, to which indeed one must diligently apply oneself with every study before other matters, since in it is contained the sum of all moral theology and the questions more pertaining to practice; and therefore I have spared no labor, that I might satisfy the desire of readers, and that they might find here all things necessary to be known."¹² Thus St. Alphonsus.

That we may touch the principal things which pertain to this Treatise of greatest moment, we shall treat in a threefold dissertation: 1. on the nature of the Sacrament of Penance; 2. on the Subject; 3. on the Minister.