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Bible Dictionaries
Attrition
Charles Buck Theological Dictionary
or The casuists of the church of Rome have made a distinction between a perfect and an imperfect contrition. The latter they call attrition; which is the lowest degree of repentance, or a sorrow for sin arising from a sense of shame, or any temporal inconvenience attending the commission of it, or merely from fear of the punishment due to it, without any resolution to sin no more: in consequence of which doctrine, they teach that, after a wicked and flagitious course of life, a man may be reconciled to God, and his sins forgiven on his death-bed, by confessing them to the priest with this imperfect degree of sorrow and repentance. This distinction was settled by the council of Trent. It might, however, be easily shown that the mere sorrow for sin because of its consequences, and not on account of its evil nature, is no more acceptable to God than hypocrisy itself can be.
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Buck, Charles. Entry for 'Attrition'. Charles Buck Theological Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/cbd/a/attrition.html. 1802.
