have recourse to this artifice and how to practise it safely. It is not
a thing to be trifled with. In only rare circumstances can it be
employed, and only few persons have the right to employ it.

CHAPTER XCIV.
RESTITUTION.

A PECULIAR feature attaches to the sins we have recently treated,
against the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth commandments. These
offenses differ from others in that they involve an injury, an
injustice to our fellow-man. Now, the condition of pardon for sin is
contrition; this contrition contains essentially a firm purpose that
looks to the future, and removes in a measure, the liability to fall
again. But with the sins here in question that firm purpose not only
looks forward, but backward as well, not only guarantees against future
ill-doing, but also repairs the wrong criminally effected in the past.
This is called restitution, the undoing of wrong suffered by our
neighbor through our own fault. The firm purpose to make restitution is
just as essential to contrition as the firm purpose to sin no more; in
fact, the former is only a form of the latter. It means that we will
not sin any more by prolonging a culpable injustice. And the person who
overlooks this feature when he seeks pardon has a moral constitution
and make-up that is sadly in need of repairs; and of such persons there
are not a few.

Justice that has failed to protect a man's right becomes restitution
when the deed of wrong is done. Restitution therefore that is based on
the natural right every man has to have and to hold what is his, to
recover it, its value or equivalent, when unduly dispossessed, supposes
an act of injustice, that is, the violation of a strict right. This
injustice, in turn, implies a moral fault, a moral responsibility,
direct or indirect; and the fault must be grievous in order to induce a
grave obligation. Now, it matters not in the least what we do, or how
we do it, if the neighbor suffer through a fault of ours. If any human
creature sustains a loss to life or limb, damage to his or her social
or financial standing, and such injury can be traced to a moral
delinquency on our part, we are in conscience bound to make good the
loss and repair the damage done. To do evil is bad; to perpetuate it is
immeasurably worse. To refuse to remove the evil is to refuse to remove
one's guilt; and as long as one persists in such a refusal, that one
remains under the wrath of God.

Restitution concerns itself wi