Treatise: On Penance

394. The fourth sacrament is Penance. - By the three prior sacraments we are born, strengthened, and nourished in the divine life of grace; these three are required of themselves. But the life of grace can be lost; then incidentally, not indeed for all but for those sinning, a sacramental remedy is necessary for recovering that life; and this is the sacrament of Penance. This sacrament has this as proper to it: that it is not confected from external matter which is applied to the subject, but is materially constituted from the very human acts of penitents. Whence by way of introduction one must speak of the act and virtue of Penance itself, "not only," as the Roman Catechism says, "because the faithful people ought to be instructed by pastors toward every kind of virtue, but also because the actions of this virtue furnish, as it were, the matter in which the sacrament of Penance is concerned; and unless first what the virtue of Penance is be rightly understood, it is also necessary that the force of the sacrament be unknown." Therefore let the discourse be made:

We shall speak in seven articles: 1. of the virtue of penance itself; 2. of its object; 3. of its distinction from other virtues; 4. of the acts of penance; 5. of its subject; 6. of its necessity; 7. of its relation with the sacrament.