The _institution_ of Penance contained within it the four practices of _Sorrow_ for the sins committed (_contritio_); the _Confession_ of these sins to the priest; _Satisfaction_, or the due manifestation of sorrow in the ways prescribed by the Church through the command of the confessor; and the _Pardon_ (_absolutio_) pronounced by the priest in God’s name. The pardon followed the _satisfaction_. But when the _institution_ became the _Sacrament of Penance_, the order was changed: absolution followed confession and came before satisfaction, which it had formerly followed. Satisfaction lost its old meaning. It was no longer the outward sign of sorrow and the necessary precedent of pardon or absolution. According to the new theory, the absolution which immediately followed confession had the effect of removing the whole guilt of the sins confessed, and with the guilt the whole of the eternal punishment due. This cancelling of guilt and of eternal punishment did not, however, forthwith open the gates of heaven to the pardoned sinner. It was felt that the justice of God could not permit the baptized sinner to escape from all punishment whatever. Hence it was said that although eternal punishment had disappeared with the absolution, there remained temporal punishment due for the sins, and that heaven could not be entered until this temporal punishment had been endured.(158) Temporal punishments might be of two kinds—those endured in this life, or those suffered in a place of punishment after death. The penance imposed by the priest, the satisfaction, now became the temporal punishment due for sins committed. If the priest had imposed the due amount, and if the penitent was able to perform all that had been imposed, the sins were expiated. But if the priest had imposed less than the justice of God actually demanded, then these temporal pains had to be completed in Purgatory. This gave rise to great uncertainty; for who could feel assured that the priest had calculated rightly, and had imposed satisfactions or temporal penalties which were of the precise amount demanded by the justice of God? Hence the pains of Purgatory threatened every man. It was here that the new idea of Indulgences came in to aid the faithful by securing him against the pains of Purgatory, which were not included in the absolution obtained in the _Sacrament of Penance_. Indulgences in the sense of relaxations of imposed penances went into the background, and the really valuable Indulgence was one which, because of the merits transferred from the storehouse of merits, was an equivalent in God’s sight for the temporal punishments due for sins. Thus, in the opinion of Alexander of Hales, of Bonaventura,(159) and, above all, of Thomas Aquinas, the real value of Indulgences was that they procured the remission of penalties due after absolution, whether these penalties were penances imposed by the priest or not; and when the uncertainty of the