After the Examination
Having discovered the different sorts of sins of which you have been guilty, together with their number, enormity, or such aggravating circumstances as may considerably increase their malice or change their nature, your next endeavour should be to excite in your breast a heart-felt sorrow for having committed them, and a sincere detestation of them. This being the most essential, as well as the most difficult, of all the dispositions requisite to a good confession, with what humility, fervour, and perseverance should you not importune Him who holds the hearts of men in his hands, to grant it you!
In the mean time, seriously meditate on those powerful motives for exciting contrition, which the church holds forth to her children; and in order to feel their force the more effectually, endeavour to enliven your faith, to strengthen your hope, and inflame your charity, by devoutly reciting the acts of the three theological virtues ( page 30). In the next place reflect on those motives which are most capable of alarming, and at the same time of melting your heart into compunction; such as the everlasting torments of hell; the eternal loss of God, and of the joys of heaven, the horror and filthiness of sin; the goodness of God in all he has done, and all he still does, and all he will do for us, if we continue to love and serve him; particularly that astonishing instance of his love and undeserved mercy, in forbearing to cut your slender thread of life, and to precipitate you into eternal torments in the very height of your rebellion against him. This consideration alone must necessarily engage you to cry out with ecstatic surprise and astonishment, “How good must God be in himself who has been so good to me, his faithless and ungrateful child!” He saw nothing in you deserving of his mercy; he saw every thing in you that merited his wrath and indignation. This last reflection on the infinite goodness of God, if dwelt on with due attention, cannot fail to inflame your heart with an unfeigned love of Him for his own sake, the purest and best of all motives . Whilst the heart is thus softened by divine love into compunction for your sins, form an unshaken resolution of never more offending him, of doing your utmost to amend your life, of satisfying for your sins, and of repairing any injury you may have done your neighbour, either in his character or property. If, with these sentiments glowing in your breast, you cast yourself at the feet of your confessor and reveal to him all the sins you can recollect, with tears of compunction, and in a truly penitential spirit, be assured you shall return with joy from the tribunal of confession, and feel realized in yourself the consoling promise of the Holy Spirit, that “They who sow in tears, shall reap in joy .” Psalm cxxv.