Certainly, Seneca, Plutarch and the Pythagoreans, who so highly commend the examen of conscience, but especially the first, who speaks so feelingly of the torment which interior remorse excites in the soul, must have understood that there was a repentance; and as for the sage Epictetus, he so well describes the way in which a man should reprehend himself that it could scarcely be better
expressed.
There is yet another penitence which is indeed moral, yet religious too, yea in some sort divine, proceeding from the natural knowledge which we have of our offending God by sin. For certainly many philosophers understood that to live virtuously was a thing agreeable to the divinity, and that consequently to live viciously was offensive to him. The good man Epictetus makes the wish to die a true Christian (as
it is very probable he did), and amongst other things he says he should be content if dying he could lift up his hands to God and say unto him: For my part I have not dishonoured Thee: and, further, he will have his philosopher to make an admirable oath to God never to be disobedient to his divine Majesty, nor to question or blame anything coming from him, nor in any sort to complain thereof; and in another place he teaches that God and our good angel are present during our actions. You see
clearly then, Theotimus, that this philosopher, while yet a pagan, knew that sin offended God, as virtue honoured him, and consequently he willed that it should be repented of, since he even ordained an examen of conscience at night, about which, with Pythagoras, he lays down this maxim
If thou hast ill done, chide thyself bitterly,
If thou hast well done, rest thee contentedly.
Now this kind of repentance joined to the knowledge and love of God which nature can give, was a dependence of moral religion. But as natural reason bestowed more knowledge than love upon the philosophers, who did not glorify God in proportion to the knowledge they had of him, so nature has furnished more light to understand how much God is offended by sin, than heat to excite the repentance necessary for the
reparation of the offence.
But although religious penitence may have been in some sort recognized by some of the philosophers, yet this has been so rarely and feebly, that those who were reputed the most virtuous amongst them, to wit the Stoics, maintained that the wise man was never grieved, whereupon they framed a maxim as contrary to reason, as the proposition on which it was grounded was contrary to experience, namely, that the wise
man sinned not.
