United States or Bangladesh ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And so with the rest; as I have tried to show in my Preceptorium and my writings on the Decalogue. For they all are full of human inventions; and no wonder! They have taken everything they say out of a certain apocryphal and unlearned book called De vera et falsa poenitentia, which is widely circulated, and ascribed, by a lying title, to St. Augustine.
His. 4, 15; Suet. Calig. 44. Ni fuissent. Cf. Ni, 4, note. The ellipsis may be supplied thus: he meditated an invasion of Brit. and would have invaded it, had he not been velox ingenio, etc. But in idiomatic Eng. ni==but. Of course fuisset is to be supplied with velox ingenio and mobilis poenitentiae. Al. poenitentia. Gr. 211. Lit. of repentance easy to be moved. Render: fickle of purpose.
I remember, dear Father, that once, among those pleasant and wholesome talks of thine, with which the Lord Jesus ofttimes gives me wondrous consolation, the word poenitentia was mentioned. We were moved with pity for many consciences, and for those tormentors who teach, with rules innumerable and unbearable, what they call a modus confitendi.
At the Reformation, for example, when Latin was still more or less the language of theology, how earnest a controversy raged round the word in the Greek Testament which we have rendered 'repentance'; whether 'poenitentia' should be allowed to stand, hallowed by long usage as it was, or 'resipiscentia, as many of the Reformers preferred, should be substituted in its room; and how much on either side could be urged.
After this it came about that, by the grace of the learned men who dutifully teach us Greek and Hebrew, I learned that this word is in Greek metanoia and is derived from meta and noun, i. e., post and mentem, so that poenitentia or metanoia is a "coming to one's senses," and is a knowledge of one's own evil, gained after punishment has been accepted and error acknowledged; and this cannot possibly happen without a change in our heart and our love.
Habet enim eorum perfidia, et Paganissimus, animas nobilium hominum post mortem ingredi corpora nobilium bestiarum, et animas ignobilium corpora bestiarum ignobilium et vilium, ad luenda videlicet crimina, donec peracta poenitentia transeant in Paradisum: ideoque nutriunt, prout dicunt, has nobiliores bestias, siue bestiolas, quod a quibusdam nobilibus fundabatur in principio haec Abbatia.
But vengeance is in repentance formally, i.e., because regeneration itself occurs by a perpetual mortification of the oldness of life. The saying of Scotus may indeed be very beautiful, that poenitentia is so called because it is, as it were, poenae tenentia, holding to punishment. But of what punishment, of what vengeance, does Augustine speak?
Nihil per libertos servosque publicae rei: non studiis privatis nec ex commendatione aut precibus centurionum milites ascire, sed optimum quemque fidissimum putare: omnia scire, non omnia exsequi: parvis peccatis veniam, magnis severitatem commodare: nec poena semper, sed saepius poenitentia contentus esse: officiis et administrationibus potius non peccaturos praeponere, quam damnare, cum peccassent.
Word Of The Day