Chapter III
CHAPTER III: WHICH GIVES DESCRIPTIONS OF REPENTANCE
Descriptions of repentance.
§ 18. The existence of repentance has been demonstrated. The inquiry remains as to what it is. Lombard lists the different definitions of it from the fathers (Sent., 4, dist. 14, letter C), yet you would more accurately call them partial descriptions. As Ambrose says, “Repentance is bemoaning one’s wicked past and not committing the lamented things again.” Also Gregory: “Repentance is bemoaning sins done earlier and not committing things worth weeping over.” Tertullian (at the beginning of De poenit.): “Repentance is the suffering of the heart or the grief over the offense of an earlier deed.” Augustine (De vera et falsa poenit., ch. 8): “Repentance is the revenge which always punishes in oneself the thing that he is sorry to have committed.” Lactantius (Div. instit., bk. 6, ch. 13): “To repent is nothing else than to confess and affirm that one is not going to sin anymore.” Damascenus (De orth. fid., 2, ch. 30): “Repentance is the returning from the unnatural into the natural state, from the devil to God.”
We shall add a full definition when we first explain its nature and essential parts [§ 33]. Meanwhile, we bid you consider the description of repentance which is drawn from Acts 26:18 and 20. Repentance is a “turning from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, that we may receive the forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified through faith, doing works worthy of those who have come to their senses again.”