penitency

Comineus, when he addressed the Christian princes after the overthrow of Charles of Burgundy, bade them “first pray with all submission and penitency, confess their sins, and then take physic.”

But when that we come to the whitt Our Darbies to behold, And for to take our penitency, And boose the water cold.

It was decreed that she who thus had been Parted from all earth's cares and sympathies, Wafted by prayer into a fairer scene, As one who in pure penitency dies, Thence drew new birthright from that air serene To ransom her from antenatal ties.

Penitency requires penalty; but they yet do worse than these, who reserve the animosity against their neighbour to the last gasp, having concealed it during their life; wherein they manifest little regard of their own honour, irritating the party offended in their memory; and less to their the power, even out of to make their malice die with them, but extending the life of their hatred even beyond their own.

On the contrary, if we but observe, we shall find, that he makes mouths at us in falling, and is so far from penitency, that he does not so much as repine at us; and we do him the kindest office of life, which is to make him die insensibly, and soon: we are afterwards to hide ourselves, and to shift and fly from the officers of justice, who pursue us, whilst he is at rest.