Second, [that] theologians do not mention terrors in their definition of repentance.
Second, [that] theologians do not mention terrors in their definition of repentance.
§ 46. (II) Bellarmine’s second argument, in which he tries to prove that the terror produced by the Law is not rightly included among the parts of repentance, is as follows: “Both the ancient and more recent theologians do not mention these terrors in their definitions of repentance, as these stand in Lombard (Sent., 4, dist. 14) and Gratian (De poenit., dist. 3).”
We respond. (1) We cannot make a conclusive argument negatively from human authority. Thomas ([ST,] part 1, q. 1, art. 8) writes: “Sacred doctrine, strictly speaking, employs the authority of the canonical Scripture as a necessary demonstration. I use the authority of other teachers of the church to argue probably, but not as if arguing from proper [authorities].”
(2) In its own place [§ 41] we have shown that clear mention of terrors is made in the statements of Scripture concerning repentance and the examples of the truly penitent. An utterly perfect mirror of true, salutary repentance is presented in David’s psalms. How will anyone be able to deny that they mention the terrors and torments of conscience?
(3) Nor have the ancients omitted them completely in their definitions. Tertullian writes (at the beginning of De poenit.): “Repentance is the suffering of the mind or grief over the wrong of an earlier act.” Lombard says that repentance is “weeping over past evils and not committing again what one would have to bemoan.” From Ambrose it is “to deplore sins before committing them and not to commit them.” From Gregory it is “punishment ever painful [poenitentem] over that which one is sorry to have done”; and from Augustine it is this beating of the breast, this weeping, this torment, which does not exclude but presupposes terrors inflicted from the Law. Gratian quotes the description of Ambrose: “Repentance is the grief of the heart and the bitterness of the soul because of the evils which anyone has committed or to which he has consented.”