Atkinson, The Passions and the Homilies from Leabhar Breac (1887) — translated from the Irish.

¹ Who first preached that penance should be done?

² Not hard. John the Baptist and Jesus Christ and Peter the apostle — it is those three who first ordained penance. John the Baptist, moreover, ordained that penance should be done in requital for the slaying of the holy prophets whom the Jewish people had slain — Daniel and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah and Manasseh son of Hezekiah son of Amos, and the other holy prophets besides; so that it was in requital of their slaying and their persecution that John preached penance to the people who had done those evils.

³ Christ himself, moreover, preached penance the second time upon Herod and upon the Jewish people in requital for the slaying of John the Baptist; for it was by Herod Tetrarcha, son of Herod son of Antipater son of Herod of Ascalon, that John was beheaded, and Christ suffered afterwards, and Peter was put into prison: that is the matter that is remembered here. In requital then for the slaying of John, Jesus Christ himself preached penance to every one, as he had said before. Now the apostle Peter, it was he who preached penance the third time upon the Jewish people in requital for the passion of Christ himself. For it is those three, the choice ones, who preached penance to every one, so that it is after their example that every church goes in which penance is preached from that time forth.

⁴ Now there are three divisions of the healing of every sin in man: martyrdom, and baptism, and penance. Now there are two parts that are due from every one when he does full penance: penance for every evil that he has done from small to great; and the other penance, for every good that he has not done though he was able to do it. For every evil that one does from small to great shall be forgiven through earnest penance, save only the denial of the Trinity; for it is vain for a man that any good he may do should avail him if he denies the Trinity. Now according to Jerome, this is the denial of the Trinity — to attribute the virtues and miracles of the Son of God to Beelzebub and to nothingness besides. According to Augustine, moreover, this is the denial of the Trinity — not to do any part of penance, or to have an unbelieving heart, and not to hope that the reward of God or his mercy will come to him, but to persist in his evil and to go into despair.

⁵ Now there are four divisions in full penance: the manner of the sin, and confession, and place, and time. Now this is the manner: a remorseful heart with bitter pain, with heavy tears, with a great beating of hands and a hair-shirt thereafter. Now there are two parts in confession: confession that is made to God, and confession that is made to men. For it is fitting for every one to make change of place when he does earnest penance for his sins, as Adam our first father did, and the apostle Peter our teacher. For it is out of Paradise that Adam was expelled, and he was cast out of the place of his transgression into another place, into the earth, to do penance. The apostle Peter, moreover, committed transgression in Jerusalem when he denied Jesus Christ thrice on the night of his passion, and among foreign peoples of the world he did penance for that sin.

⁶ It is after their example that penance is done by every one today: when a man sins in a certain place, it is fitting for him to avoid that place, and to go into another place to do penance for it, with confession of his sin first — the cause for which he sinned, and the place and the time in which he did it — and to do earnest penance thereafter.

⁷ There are four divisions in the penance with which God is not pleased, and which profit neither body nor soul: despairing penance, as Cain son of Adam did after the slaying of his brother Abel in fratricide; for he did no penance but went into despair, without hope that God’s mercy would come to him. And Judas the faithless did likewise after betraying Jesus Christ himself: he went into despair, and put a halter about his own neck, and hanged himself for his misdeeds, and went into perdition, so that it is his soul that is the first soul upon which hell was shut, after the treachery had been wrought against Christ the Son of God. And penance sluggish or late — that is, not to do it at once — that is the second part. And the fourth: to do penance from one evil into another evil, or into the same evil again; for unless a man avoids all evils when he does penance, it is vain for him to do penance.

⁸ Now the temptation of the devil is what causes a man not to do penance; for this is what he says to the man while tempting him to evil: “Do not penance now”, says the devil, “for your life will be long; for the evil you have done is little, and many have done evils greater than your”, says the devil; “for infinite is the measure of God’s mercy, and he will forgive every one his offences”, says he. So that it is through that temptation of the devil that every one does a thing now, and they do not earnest penance to God for the putting away of their sins.

⁹ Now David son of Jesse, the royal prophet, the best who ever trod the earth, it was of him that Christ himself said: “I have found a man after mine own heart in the earth”, says he; when therefore David committed transgression, and his own soldier was slain by him for his wife’s sake — when he did earnest penance for it, God the Father forgave him all his sins through the penitential psalm, Miserere mei, Deus. Now Hezekiah, the prophet, fifteen years were added to his life when he did earnest penance to God.

¹⁰ Good indeed is the reward which God gives to him who does earnest penance: length of life here, and the kingdom of heaven without end, and part in the delight of the one day of Paradise, and no anger of God against him in the day of doom, when he shall give his righteous judgements upon every one. Now shortness of life here, and hell there without end — that is the reward that awaits every one who does not earnest penance to God, etc.

¹¹ HERE FOLLOWS THE PRECEPT OF MACHA.