Neville's operational definition of repentance and the reason he calls it a test rather than a resolution. Repentance tests man's ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite: I am this, and I do not like it - can I persuade myself that I am exactly what I would like to be, which is opposed by what I seemingly am? That is what is being tested, the imagination's ability to do such a thing, and the answer is always the same - well, try it. It is the practical form of the doctrine of states, and it is why he insists repentance has nothing to do with remorse or regret but only with a radical change of attitude. The phrase occurs in about sixteen lectures, and it is one of the few places where he names the faculty being exercised as a capacity that can be strong or weak in a person rather than as a technique that works or fails.