Scotus Academicus, Tomus quintus: De Creaturarum Corporalium et de Homine

ALTHOUGH these words evil, sin, and guilt are for the most part used interchangeably by the Holy Fathers and Theologians for one and the same thing: they nevertheless differ from one another according to a wider or stricter signification; for evil extends more broadly than sin; and sin designates more things than guilt. For evil signifies any defect found in any subject whatsoever: but sin denotes only a defect of operation: guilt, however, beyond the notion of sin, that is, of a depraved and evil human act, further requires that it be done with knowledge and liberty. Hence evil is found not only in human acts, but also in the affects of art and nature; but sin designates the exorbitant fruits both of art and of the human will: guilt, however, signifies only those acts which deviate from the eternal law and from the right dictate of reason. Hence every guilt is sin, and every sin is evil; yet not conversely is every evil a sin, nor is every sin a guilt. But here the discourse is made only of sin insofar as it designates the same thing as guilt.

Note 1. Sin, considered morally, has various, but chiefly seven respects, namely first to the subject in which it is, that is, the rational nature from which it obtains the notion of evil; since, as St. Augustine says in the Enchir. cap. 21., Sin most of all opposes the rational creature of nature, and is its first and greatest evil: for, as he says in book 3. De libero arbitrio, cap. 13., Every vice, by that very fact that it is vice, is against nature: since it formally opposes it, insofar as it is rational; for it is against the dictate of right reason, which is man's proper form, perfecting, integrating, and completing him. Second, sin has a respect to the end from which it is derived, since it declines from the rectitude which rational nature itself ought to regard in eliciting its acts, namely that they be right and honest, such as befit the rational nature operating. Third, it denotes a respect to the principle from which it is freely produced, namely to the will; for what is not free cannot have moral goodness or malice: by reason of which sin is called guilt, since indeed it is imputed to the one operating, because it depends upon his free operation: for to be blamed or praised is nothing other than to have the malice or goodness of an act imputed to another; but those things are imputed which depend upon free will. Fourth, it regards the law which it transgresses: (for sin, says St. Augustine in book 22. Contra Faustum, cap. 27., is a word, or deed, or desire against the eternal law; but the eternal law, he says there, is the divine reason, or the will of God, commanding that the natural order be preserved and forbidding that it be disturbed.) By reason of which sin is called transgression, injustice, iniquity, prevarication, disobedience, which immediately regards the law, but mediately the lawgiver. Fifth, it regards God whom it offends: inasmuch as it is a virtual contempt of Him, postponing Him to creatures, in which the sinner virtually and interpretatively constitutes for himself the last end, while for love of them he forsakes God as his last end, and turns himself to them: for, says St. Augustine in De Civitate Dei, cap. 26., Christ is proved to have preferred earthly and temporal things who, despising the salutary precepts, commits what is unlawful; by reason of which sin is called the offense and injury of God, impiety, hatred, contempt, and also enmity with God. Sixth, sin regards the punishment which it incurs, by reason of which it is called guilt [reatus], which formally is the ordination to punishment prescribed for man by the supreme Judge when he exorbitates and sins. Seventh and last, it denotes a respect to the reward of which it is deprived, by reason of which it is called demerit: for sin not only merits and procures punishment for us, but also demerits and turns away the reward which God was about to grant to those keeping His precepts.

Note 2. From the Seraphic Doctor in 2. d. 35. in the explication of the sixth doubt, that although sin can be considered variously: either formally insofar as it is a privation, or materially insofar as it connotes the human and physical act which is a deviation from the prescribed rectitude, it also obtains various definitions. For, taken formally, and insofar as it denotes privation, it is used in a threefold way: for it either denotes a withdrawal from good, or a withdrawal from the rectitude of nature, or from every complement and perfection of good. Taken in the first way it obtains a threefold definition from St. Augustine: The first indeed in the book De Civitate Dei, where he says: Sin is the absence of good where it ought to be: The second in the book De vera religione: Sin is not the appetite of evil natures, but the desertion of better things: The third in the book De Natura boni, cap. 31.: Sin is the corruption of mode, species, and order. In the second way, namely insofar as sin denotes a withdrawal from the rectitude of nature, three of its definitions are also set forth: The first from St. Damascene in book 2. De Fide, cap. 30. where he says: Sin is the aversion from the good which is according to nature to that which is against nature: The second from St. Anselm in the book De Conceptu virginali, cap. 6.: Sin is the lack of due justice: The third from Augustine: Sin is a defect which, following the leader of rectitude, does not destroy nature, but obscures it. In the third way indeed, insofar as it denotes a withdrawal from every complement and perfection of good, a threefold definition of the same is also reported, which differ only in the manner of speaking, the first of which is taken from Augustine in the book De Libero arbitrio, cap. 10.: The will is an aversion from the unchangeable good: another from the same in the book De vera religione: Sin is to lack the unchangeable goods in which one ought to rejoice: the third is taken from the same Augustine, Enchir. cap. 23.: Sin is intelligible darkness, inasmuch namely as it deprives of the vision of the eternal light. — Similarly sin considered materially, and insofar as it imports the deriving act, also obtains various definitions, according to the threefold consideration which it has either to God whom it offends, or to the virtue which it excludes, or to the good which it pretends. In comparison indeed to God whom it offends, it is said first by Augustine in the book De Fide contra Manicheos, cap. 8.: Sin is to err in the precepts of truth, or in truth itself. Second by Ambrose in the book De Paradiso, cap. 5.: Sin is the prevarication of the divine law, and the inconveniencing of the heavenly precepts. Third by the same Augustine in book 22. Contra Faustum, cap. 27.: Sin is a word, or deed, or desire against the law of God. But if it be compared to the virtue which it excludes, it is also defined in a threefold way. First indeed by St. Basil: Sin is a disposition of the soul holding itself contrary to virtue. Second by St. Augustine in the book De Duabus animabus: Sin is the will of receiving, or attaining what justice forbids; for there justice is taken generally insofar as it embraces every virtue. Third by the same Augustine in the book De vera religione: Sin is to desire what Christ despised, or to despise what Christ desired; since Christ the Lord was the mirror and exemplar of all virtue. Finally, if sin be considered by comparison to the good which it pretends, a threefold definition of it can also be set forth. The first indeed by Augustine in the book De Natura boni, cap. 31.: Sin is to use a good badly: the second indeed by the same in book 9. De Trinitate, cap. 8.: Sin is to use things to be enjoyed, and to enjoy things to be used: the third finally is that of the same Augustine in the book De Libero arbitrio: Sin is, the unchangeable good neglected, to cling to changeable things. But these eighteen definitions, which the Seraphic Doctor collects and sets forth, are evidently rather descriptions of sin than its genuine definitions.

Note 3. That guilt or sin generically is divided into the sin of Omission and of Commission, all Theologians agree: that the sin of Omission formally consists in some privation, that is, in the free omission of a due act; for to sin against the precept of worshipping God, honoring parents, giving alms, hearing the sacred [rites] on a feast day, is to omit knowingly and freely such acts at that time when they are due from the prescription of natural or positive law: which omission is privative both on the part of the act which ought not to be put forth, and on the part of the will which does not act when it ought to act. But whether there be a pure and free omission of the will without a positive act will be determined below. But as to the sin of Commission, which is an act prohibited by some law, whether natural or positive, the opinion of Authors is various and manifold as to wherein its formal ratio is to be constituted. For several things come to be distinguished in the act itself: First indeed, the prohibition of that act by some law. Second, the disformity both to the law by which it is prohibited, and to right reason against whose dictate that sinful act is elicited. Third, the privation of rectitude and the negation of virtue; for that act is neither right nor virtuous, otherwise it would not be called sinful. Fourth, liberty, without which the act would not be moral, nor consequently blameworthy in any way. Fifth, the merit of eternal punishment both of loss and of sense. Sixth, the privation of sanctifying grace and of all supernatural charisms. Seventh and last, the diminution of the virtuous habit; since every sin fights against some virtue, and since habits are diminished by contrary acts and at last perish, it follows that if anyone sins who has the virtue opposed to the sinful act, that virtue is diminished by that sinful act itself. — Since, I say, the consideration of sin can be various; hence the opinion of Authors concerning its formal and essential ratio is manifold, but chiefly threefold and capital. For some will that the formal ratio of sin be constituted in something positive; and that either in the act itself which is prohibited: or in that formal aspect of the act by reason of which it is prohibited: or from the fact that the act freely tends to an object which is proposed as prohibited to the one eliciting such an act. Some agree with the Ferrariense in the third [book] contra Centum haereses, cap. 9. that the formal ratio of sin consists at once in the positive act and in the negation of sanctifying grace or of due rectitude. But the more common opinion both of the Older and of the More Recent Theologians is, that that formal ratio of sin is to be placed in the sole negation or privation, either of the due perfection of the subject which that lack harms, as the Seraphic Doctor teaches in 2. d. 35. art. 1. or in the privation of a supernatural good, namely sanctifying grace, as the Angelic Doctor affirms in 1. 2. qu. 86. art. 1. and 2. or in the privation of acquired habits, namely of virtues, as some conjecture: or, as the Subtle Doctor seems to judge more rightly in 2. d. 33. num. 6. and seqq., in the privation of the rectitude and conformity to the divine or human law which prescribes or prohibits such an act. That the truth of this opinion may appear, let

First Conclusion. — THE FORMAL RATIO OF SIN IS TO BE CONSTITUTED IN THE LACK OF THAT CONFORMITY WHICH THE SINFUL ACT OUGHT TO HAVE, AND HAS NOT, TO THE DIVINE OR HUMAN LAW, AGAINST WHOSE PRESCRIPTION IT IS ELICITED OR OMITTED. This is the genuine opinion of the Subtle Doctor, in the place cited: where, having impugned the other opinions, he concludes: I grant therefore, according to the promised solution of the question, that sin is formally the corruption of rectitude in act, in act the second, not indeed that which inheres, but which ought to inhere.

Which he indeed proves thus: Free will, he says, owes it that it elicit every act of its own conformably to the superior rule, namely according to the divine prescription, and therefore when it acts discordantly from that rule, it lacks the actual justice due. This is the justice which ought to inhere in the act, and does not: and this lack, insofar as it is the act of the deficient will, is formally actual sin.

Proof 2. Sin consists formally in some privation: but it does not consist in any other than the assigned one: therefore, etc. The Doctor proves the major there num. 7. First indeed by the authority of St. Augustine in the book De duabus animabus, where he says: Sin is the will of pursuing, or retaining, what justice forbids, and from which it is free to abstain. But, says the Doctor, sin is to will the forbidden, such that the will itself is there material, and on that account the whole is imputed to the will, because the whole is in its power; but the forbidden or prohibited is there the formal, which signifies the discord from the superior rule. He confirms it from St. Ambrose in the book De Paradiso, cap. 8.: What is sin but the prevarication of the divine law, and the transgression of the heavenly commandments, etc. To which accords what St. Augustine said in book 12. De Civitate, cap. 8.: In this, he says, the will becomes evil, as if it would not become evil unless it willed; and therefore not necessary, but voluntary defects, just punishment follows. For it fails not to evils, but badly, that is, not to evil natures, but because against the order of natures from Him who is the highest, to that which is less, etc. As if he would say, says the Doctor, that positive act of willing the creature is not formally sin, but the lack of the due order in that act, by which the creature ought to be loved on account of the highest good, from which the will resting in a created good fails; and this defect is formally sin. Thus the Doctor.

Next, if sin were something positive, it would really be a created being, and would have some effective cause: but it is neither a created being, nor does it acknowledge any effective cause of itself: therefore etc. The major is evident; for every positive being is either the Creator or a creature: sin, as is evident, cannot be called something divine: and therefore it ought to be something created. But the minor is proved by the authority of St. Augustine, who teaches in many places that sin is not a being, but nothing; likewise that it is not an effect, but a disclosure, and has not an efficient but a deficient cause. Thus in the first treatise In Ioannem, expounding those words Without Him was made nothing, he says: Sin was not made through Him, because sin is nothing, and men become nothing when they sin. Hence in book 12. De Civitate, cap. 7.: Let no one, he says, therefore seek the efficient cause of the evil will: for it is not efficient, but deficient; because neither is that an effecting, but a defecting: for to defect from Him who is the highest to that which is less, this is to begin to have an evil will. He adds: Moreover, to wish to find causes of these defects, when they are not efficient, as I said, but deficient, is the same as if anyone wished to see darkness, or to hear silence; which nevertheless both are known to us, neither that except through the eyes, nor this except through the ears, not indeed in species, but in the privation of species. Thence he concludes: Let no one therefore seek from me to know what I know that I do not know, unless perhaps that he may learn not to know, what ought to be known as not able to be known: for those things which are known not in species, but in its privation, if it may be said so that it may be understood, are in a certain way known by not knowing: or are not known by knowing. For since the acuteness even of the bodily eye runs through corporeal species, it nowhere sees darkness, except where it begins not to see. Nothing more evident than these things could have been said for confirming our assertion.

Finally, almost all the Holy Fathers constantly teach that sin is nothing other than a privation: especially St. Dionysius in the book De Divinis Nominibus, cap. 4. where, speaking of the sin of the demons, he says: for neither is this, namely evil, an appetite, but a declination of the true appetite, and, to say it summarily, evil, we have often said in a certain way, is infirmity, weakness, privation, either of knowledge, or of faith, or of appetite, or of good altogether. St. Gregory of Nyssa subscribes in the Catechetical Oration cap. 3. 6. and 7. where he says: Every vice and wickedness has its form and character in the privation of good, since it is not of itself, nor is it considered in that in which it consists; for no evil is per se situated outside the election of free will: but it is denominated from the fact that it is not true. St. Basil consents in the Monastic Constitutions cap. 3. where he says: Vice is nothing other than the desertion of virtue: and Homily 6.: Evil, he says, is the privation of good. The Nazianzene assents in Orat. 8. where he calls Evil the privation of good, as darkness is the absence of light. Whence Elias of Crete in the Comment. on that same oration says: Vice is the privation of virtue, as the dimness is of light turned away. Finally St. Anselm in the book De praescientia, et praedestinatione, cap. 1. having proved that sin is nothing other than injustice, of which God cannot be the author; finally defines that malice and injustice thus: The absence of this true rectitude, of which I speak, which is injustice, is from nothing except the will of the rational creature, which ought always to have justice.

The Doctor proves the minor there: If sin formally consisted in some privation other than the assigned ones, especially either in the privation of some perfection of the subject in which it is, or in the privation of sanctifying grace, or finally in the privation of acquired habits: but neither can legitimately be affirmed. Not indeed in the privation of the perfection of the subject, because it would take away either the whole natural perfection of that subject, or only some. Not the first: for if sin took away the whole perfection of the subject in which it is, it would follow that it would at once be and not be in the subject: it would indeed be, because that privation is supposed to inhere in the subject: but it would not be, because it would destroy the whole natural perfection of the subject, and so the whole entity, and thus the whole subject. The second also cannot be said: both because if it took away some part of the natural perfection of the subject, especially of the will or of the soul, which certainly cannot be affirmed, since each is incorruptible, and also indivisible, and without parts: and because if by any sin whatever some part of the subject were destroyed, it could happen that at some time, from repeated sins, the whole subject would perish: for since that subject is finite, and since by the repeated taking away and subtraction of some finite good, at last that whole good is exhausted and consumed: it follows that that subject would at some time perish.

Neither does the formal ratio of sin consist in the privation of sanctifying grace. First because, says the Doctor, from this it would follow that a second sin would by no means be mortal, nor would it have the ratio of sin: since indeed it would elicit no privation of grace in the subject, seeing that through the preceding sin grace was already absent from the subject. Second, because grace is created: therefore it cannot be physically taken away by a sinful act, and consequently the sinful act does not denote a physical privation of grace. Third, since grace does not have a necessary connexion with the good act to which the evil act is opposed; therefore the evil act ought not necessarily take away grace. Fourth and finally, it would follow that sins would not be distinguished in species, inasmuch as grace is of the same species in all.

The third, finally, also cannot be affirmed, namely that sin is to be constituted formally in the privation of acquired habits: both because the privation of those habits can be in the just man as well as in the sinner: since indeed while some perverse and inveterate sinner is converted and justified, he truly becomes just; yet he has not the acquired habit of temperance, for example, if he was previously a drunkard; nor of chastity if he was previously a fornicator; therefore the formal ratio of sin is not to be constituted in the very privation of acquired habits. Next, those habits of acquired virtue do not have a necessary connexion with the good act: therefore they are not necessarily taken away by an evil and sinful act; nay, the habit mostly remains even after the sinful act opposed to them. For just as it is acquired successively through the repetition of acts, so too it ought to be destroyed through the frequentation of contrary acts, not however through a single opposed act. Then finally because even if those habits were incompossible, the act would no less be judged sinful and worthy of punishment if it were elicited against the prescription of divine or human law. Therefore in neither of the three aforementioned privations does the formal ratio of sin consist; and consequently it follows that it is to be constituted in the privation alone of conformity to the law.

Thirdly, finally, it cannot even be affirmed that sin is to be constituted formally in the privation of acquired habits: both because the privation of those habits can be as much in the just man as in the sinner: since while some perverse and inveterate sinner is converted and justified, he truly becomes just; yet he has not the acquired habit of temperance, for example, if he was before a drunkard; nor of chastity if he was previously a fornicator; therefore the formal ratio of sin is not to be constituted in the very privation of acquired habits. Then, those acquired habits of virtue have no necessary connection with the good act: therefore they are not necessarily removed by an evil and sinful act; nay, for the most part the habit remains even after the sinful act opposed to them. For as it is acquired successively by the repetition of acts, so also it ought to be destroyed by the frequentation of contrary acts, not however by a single opposite act. Finally also because even if those habits were incompossible, the acts would be judged no less

The Doctor confirms this same truth in the same place num. 3, in these words: the inferior agent is bound in acting to conform himself to the superior agent; which, if it be in his power to conform himself to him, not to conform himself to him is sin: therefore speaking of sin, whether against the divine law or against the human law, something is said to be sin because the sinner could have conformed himself to the law of the superior agent, and discord: therefore that act, which is in the power of the one in discord, and thereby voluntary, is not formally sin: because if it had been concordant with the superior rule, it would not be sin: therefore in that act the precise ratio of sin is the privation of that concord. — He adds num. 7 another reason, whereby, confirming the authorities of the SS. Fathers brought forward by him for the opinion of his assertion, he says: every sin is injustice formally, and such a sin such an injustice, and by consequence the privation of such justice; therefore actual sin is formally actual injustice; therefore also the privation of actual justice, namely of the justice which

All the aforesaid reasons are confirmed: Sin is formally transgression of the law: therefore the formal ratio of sin is to be constituted in the very transgression, or disconformity to the law: but this disconformity is nothing else than non-conformity, or the lack of conformity to the law, which prohibits or commands the act: therefore in that lack the formal ratio of sin is to be constituted. The major is plain from the Apostle Romans 4: Where there is no law, neither is there transgression: and so it is essential to every sin to be against some law, but especially against the eternal law of God, from which all laws hang, according to that of Prov. 8: By me kings reign, and the makers of laws decree just things. Which reason indeed St. Ambrose proves, book De Paradiso, cap. 8, saying: Sin would not stand, if there had been no interdiction: for what is sin, except the transgression of the divine law, and disobedience to the heavenly precepts? St. Augustine likewise confirms it: for weighing these words Ps. 118.: All prevaricators are reputed

This same truth is also urged by reason: for sin of whatsoever kind is moral evil: but any moral evil imports essentially disconformity and disagreement to right reason and the eternal law: for there is a twofold rule of human will in its genus: one proximate and homogeneous, namely human reason, or the dictate of reason, and that natural light signed upon our minds, according to Psalm 4: The light of thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us. Whence St. Ambrose, book 5 De Paradiso, cap. 11, says: This law is not inscribed, but innascitur: nor is it perceived by any reading, but is expressed in each one by a certain profitable fountain of nature. But the other rule of the human will is the eternal law itself, which is as it were the ratio of God, whereby he administers all things at his pleasure: since the law is nothing else than the dictate of practical reason existing in the Prince who rules and moderates some community, it follows that since God directs and administers by his providence the whole machine of the world,

The Angelic Doctor accords with the Subtle Doctor for the most part, 1 p., quaest. 48, art. 3, where he teaches that evil consists in the subtraction of the due operation, which in voluntary things has the ratio of fault. For this, he says, is imputed to anyone as a fault when it falls short of perfect action. And there ad 1: Not every lack of a good is an evil, but the lack of a good that ought to be had. In 1 2, q. 71, a. 6, in the body: A human act has that it is evil from this, that it lacks due commensuration. And quite distinctly he says: Augustine in the definition of sin put two things: one which pertains to the substance of the human act, which is quasi-material in sin, when he said word, or deed, or concupiscence; but the other which pertains to the ratio of evil, which is quasi-formal in sin, when he said against the eternal law. In 2 2, q. 118, a. 5, in the body thus: Every sin from the very fact that it is evil consists in a certain corruption or privation of some good. Which he explains there at the end of the body: Because corruption or privation of good formally

They object 1. The adversaries against the first assertion of our Conclusion, namely that sin formally consists in the privation of rectitude: The privation constituting sin formally in the state of fault must be culpable: therefore it must be the privation of something possible and morally due which one is bound to do and does not do: but in hatred of virtue and similar sins of commission intrinsically evil, moral rectitude is neither due nor possible: therefore the formal ratio of sin does not consist in the privation of rectitude due to them. The major is plain: for neither is he culpable who does not do that act right, which he ought not and cannot do right. But the minor is proved, because such acts are incapable of rectitude: since by a bad power it can come about that they be done rightly, and not be base, and unlike right reason, and therefore culpable and worthy of punishment if freely done: nor can any circumstances be applied by which they are rendered good. But what we say concerning acts simply and intri

The adversaries urge: Privation is the lack of the form due in a subject apt for the form: but no goodness is due to a human act generically considered. It is proved: if some rectitude and goodness were due to a human act considered according to its genus, then either all specific and numerical goodnesses, or only one determinate, or confusedly some this or that goodness would be due to it: but neither can be affirmed. Not indeed the first: otherwise in every sin of commission there would be innumerable malices: for in it are innumerable lacks of innumerable goodnesses, and all evil acts would be extensively at least equally evil with formal malice: because deprived of all rectitude, or lacking all goodness. Add that no other privation of rectitude ought to be found in an act than that which the operator ought to induce into his act: but the operator was not bound to induce every rectitude: therefore that act has not the privation of all conceivable rectitude. See also what must be answered: because there is no reason why this goodness rather should be due, than

I deny the minor, and to its proof I say that a human act generically considered is said to be deprived of rectitude, not indeed of every possible one, nor even of this or that confusedly and indeterminately: but of the rectitude which it ought respectively to have received from the law commanding or prohibiting such an act. Since however the divine or human law, prohibiting or commanding a human act, intends a special rectitude to be induced into the act elicited, or omitted, inasmuch namely as the will of the one eliciting will be conformable to that law and subservient to it: hence it comes about that when that act is elicited by the will of an enemy against the prescription of the law, it lacks that rectitude which it would have had, if in truth the will, conformably to the edict of the law, had posited or suspended the act. And this holds especially, as the Subtle Doctor said above, from the fact that every created will is bound to conform itself to the will of a superior in all acts. Whence every act of that will, by reason of that dependence and ordination to the rule, ought also to be conformed to the law

They insist: That a human act generically regarded ought to be elicited conformably to the law and the will of the superior, even generically regarded, is nothing else than that a created will ought to conform itself to the law, whether divine or human: therefore that lack of rectitude and conformation is to be referred not to the act elicited, but to the faculty eliciting: therefore if that act be said to be only deprived of the rectitude due to it according to its genus, that privation will have to be placed not in the act itself, but in the operator himself, and consequently it will not be a privation of rectitude which ought to inhere in the act.

I distinguish the antecedent: that the will itself ought to conform itself to the will and law of the superior, inasmuch as it is the faculty operating in act first, I deny: inasmuch as operating in act second, I concede: for the will indeed, inasmuch as it is considered in act first, has only the ratio of a faculty: but as operating in act second, it obtains not so much the ratio of a faculty as of an act, since as such it pours out its whole self into the act: but the law prohibiting or commanding is not directed to the will regarded in act first, but in act second: since it prohibits or commands not the will itself, but its act: and therefore that rectitude to be induced by conformity to the law is to be referred not into the will itself as a faculty, but into the very act.

They object 2. Various contexts of Scripture, in which sin is expounded by resistance, transgression, prevarication, and fornication: but all these are something positive: therefore sin truly is also something positive. The major is plain from that of John cap. 9: Who hath resisted me, and had peace? In Ecclesiasticus cap. 31 sin is expounded by positive transgression in these words: Eternal glory shall be his who could transgress and did not transgress, do evil and did not do it: and everywhere among the Prophets the same sin is expounded by prevarication and fornication, which are acts of the will freely turning itself away from God. Similarly St. Augustine, above by us once and again cited, defining sin, says it is a word, or deed, or concupiscence against the law of God: but to speak, to be silent, and to concupiscence is something positive: therefore sin formally is something positive. — I distinguish the minor: all these acts are something positive inasmuch as they are considered materially and entitatively, and

They object 3. That belongs to the formal ratio of sin, by which sin is formally distinguished: but sins are distinguished by various conversion to creatures: therefore those conversions are of their formal ratio: but those conversions are positive acts: therefore etc. It is confirmed from St. Augustine, book 12. Confessionum, c. 11, where speaking to God he says: this alone is not of thee, what is not, and the motion of the will from thee who art, to that which is less, because such a motion is offense and sin: therefore Augustine holds sin to be something positive, namely a motion of the will. — I distinguish the minor: Sins are distinguished by the diverse conversion materially considered, and inasmuch as it is a motion of the human will, I deny: formally considered, and inasmuch namely as that motion lacks rectitude and conformity to the law commanding or prohibiting, I concede; but as such it is not something positive. By similar reason the authority of St. Augustine must be solved, or negat

You will object 4. Sin is a privation insofar as it is the corruption of a good due to the subject: but it does not appear of what good sin can be the corruption: therefore it cannot be such; and consequently neither privation.

I deny the minor, says the Doctor in the same place: for it is the corruption of that rectitude which ought to inhere in the act and does not: whence, he says, it follows indeed that that rectitude is not corrupted by a corruption whereby there is a change from being to not-being: but it is corrupted formally by this, that its privation inheres, and not itself; as original sin corrupts original justice by depriving one of it, yet not as previously inexisting, and so corrupts it formally.

They object 5. Against the second part of the conclusion, namely that that lack of rectitude is the privation of conformity to the law: A certain human act can be sinful although it were not prohibited: therefore the formal ratio of sin does not consist in that lack of conformity to the prohibiting law. The antecedent is plain: hatred of God, and blasphemy, for example, whether prohibited or not, always has the ratio of evil and of sin: therefore its malice does not depend necessarily on disconformity with the prohibiting law. — I distinguish the antecedent: a human act can be evil and sinful formally and completely although it be not prohibited, I deny: materially and initiatively, I concede. A human act therefore can be considered in two ways: either inasmuch as it is opposed to some divine perfection, as hatred to divine goodness, lying to supreme truth etc., and as such they have a certain initiative malice, inasmuch namely as they repugn to some one of the divine perfections of the supreme being

Corollarium. — ON THE DEFINITION OF PERSONAL SIN. — From these the definition of personal sin must be gathered, which I judge to be thus framed, that it may be legitimate: Personal sin is a voluntary action or omission, transient or subsistent, morally an offense of God, inasmuch as it is against the divine law. The truth of which definition indeed will stand from the declaration of each of its parts.

First therefore it is called action or omission: for St. Augustine says in the book De perfectione iustitiae, cap. 5: Every sin is committed either by doing what is prohibited, or by omitting what is commanded. Whence he adds that all divine precepts are to be reduced to these two: Thou shalt love, and thou shalt not concupiscence: For whatsoever we are prohibited and whatsoever we are commanded to do in the law of God, we are prohibited and commanded for this end, that we fulfill these. And perhaps the general prohibition is thou shalt not concupiscence, and the general command thou shalt love. Hence briefly the Apostle Paul embraces both in a certain place namely Romans 12: first there is the prohibition: Be not conformed to this world: but the command: But be renewed in the newness of your mind. That pertains to not concupiscencing, this to loving; that to continency, this to justice; that to declining from evil, this to doing good: for by not concupiscencing injustice is stripped off, and by loving we are clothed with unity.

Secondly is added voluntary: for St. Augustine says book 3 De libero arbitrio, cap. 19: Unless properly sin, which is committed by free will and knowingly. But he speaks generally of sin properly so called: for he adds there, that from such a sin punishment necessarily follows; sometimes even that is called sin, but improperly. Hence in the book De vera religione, cap. 14 he pronounces expressly: Sin is so much a voluntary evil, that in no way is it sin if it be not voluntary: and this indeed is so manifest, that hence no multitude of the learned, none crowd of the unlearned dissents. Wherefore either sin must be denied to be committed, or it must be confessed to be committed voluntarily; nor does he rightly deny that the soul has sinned who both attempts to correct her by punishing her, and that pardon is given to the penitent, and that she persevering in sins is condemned by the just law of God. Lastly if we do not will, we do not do ill, no one is altogether to be reproved or moved; which things removed, the Christian law and discipline wo

There is added thirdly transient or subsistent, by which is comprehended sin as well actual as habitual; for actual is an operation or omission transient: habitual however the same action or omission morally persevering, as will appear below.

Fourthly is subjoined, offense of God: for every sin is an offense of God, not that it effectively harms him: for, as Job says cap. 35: If thou sin, what shalt thou hurt him? and if thy iniquities be multiplied, what shalt thou do against him? but because it harms him in the affection of the sinner: everyone inasmuch as in him lies inflicts on him the greatest injury: for he who knowingly and willingly transgresses a law prescribed by anyone truly offends the Lawgiver himself; because he contradicts his will, and denies him due subjection and obedience. Nor that only, but he also offends him as a just judge, making light of the penalties threatened by him and the redoubled torments: as witness, neither reverencing nor attending to his presence: as supreme and highest Lord, denying him due servitude: as friend and benefactor, showing himself his adversary and ungrateful: as first cause and first principle, abusing his concurrence for breaking his law: finally as highest good Finally it is said against the divine law; for every sin is transgression of the divine law, as we said above: For, as St. Ambrose says book 1 De Paradiso, cap. 8, sin would not stand if there had been no interdiction; for what is sin, except transgression of the divine law, and disobedience to the heavenly precepts?

Finally it is said against the divine law; for every sin is transgression of the divine law, as we said above: For, as St. Ambrose says book 1 De Paradiso, cap. 8, sin would not stand if there had been no interdiction; for what is sin, except transgression of the divine law, and disobedience to the heavenly precepts?

Although sin, considered formally, is a pure and bare privation, and therefore has neither species nor any form by reason of which it could be distinguished, and one sin be per se severed from another; nevertheless the Theologians assign various species of sin, according to its various consideration.

First, then, sin by reason of the principle from which it flows as from a vitiated fountain is distributed into original and personal. Original is that which is committed by another's will through natural propagation of communion in Pasch. Hence against the preceptive law one sins by omission of the act enjoined; against the prohibitive law one sins by commission of the act forbidden. For, says St. Augustine, book De perfectione Iustitiae, chapter 3, Sin is acknowledged to exist in two ways: either those things are done which are forbidden, or those things are not done which are commanded. Of this division into commission and omission St. Augustine, among others, makes mention, q. 20. in Levit., expounding that word of Leviticus 7: As a sacrifice is offered for sin, so also for a trespass. There he holds that by "sin" commission is to be understood; by "trespass," omission. For as, he says, in the praiseworthy rite it is one thing to decline from evil, and another to do the good to which we are admonished, Scripture saying: Decline from evil, and do good: so in the damnable it is one thing to decline from good, and another to do evil: and that is the trespass, this the sin. For what else does "trespass" signify but a thing forsaken? — Fifth, by reason of the affection and object, into carnal and spiritual: which division the Apostle indicates, 2. ad Corinth. 7. Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit. Those sins are called carnal which are committed about sensible objects, and have attached a delectation of flesh and sense; thus gluttony and luxury are called carnal sins, because they are consummated in the delectation of foods and venereal acts. Spiritual, however, are those which are occupied about spiritual objects, and have attached a spiritual delectation: thus pride, envy, and the like, which are consummated in the mere apprehension of some thing desired beyond measure and prescription, or possessed to one's wish. Hence St. Gregory, book 31. Moral. chapter 31, teaches that of the seven capital sins two are chiefly carnal, namely gluttony and luxury; the other five, however, spiritual. Carnal sins have more of conversion to the creature than of aversion from God; spiritual sins, on the contrary, more of aversion than of conversion: whence these are graver as regards guilt, those greater as regards adherence; or, as St. Gregory says, carnal sins are of less guilt and of greater infamy: because carnal sins have less attached reason and discourse and light, and less deliberation and liberty, forasmuch as they are about the delectations of touch and taste, which are common to us and to brutes. Hence by carnal sins man is made like to brutes; but by spiritual sins he becomes like to the devil. — Sixth, the division of sin is made by reason of the object into those sins which are committed against God, neighbor, and self: for sin is an inordinate act dissolving the order established by divine Providence: but a threefold order is chiefly distinguished in man: one indeed by comparison to God, whom he ought in all things to obey, and to whose divine law, as the supreme rule of his actions, he ought to be conformed; another by comparison to the rule of reason, inasmuch as all actions and motions both of mind and of body ought to be elicited according to the dictate of reason. Finally, since man is a political animal and capable of society, he has a third order toward those men with whom he ought to live and converse. Hence when man departs from the first order, and withdraws the love and service due to God, he is said to sin against God, as the sacrilegious, the heretic, the blasphemer, etc.; when he exorbitates from the second order, and follows not the dictate of reason, he is said to sin against himself, as the avaricious, the gluttonous, the luxurious, etc.; but when he falls short of the third order, and offends human society which he is naturally bound to preserve, then he is said to sin against his neighbor, as thieves, homicides, adulterers. — The seventh division is made by reason of the faculties from which sins proceed, into sins of the mouth, of the heart, and of deed. Which division can be regarded in two ways; namely either by reason of the faculty eliciting the act, or by reason of the degree of the same sin. In the first manner, sin of the heart is called that which by its nature is consummated in the heart; as heresy, despair, hatred. Sin of the mouth, that which is consummated in the mouth, as detraction, perjury, blasphemy. Finally, sin of deed, that which is consummated in the deed, as theft, homicide, etc. Secondly, that three degrees of the same sin may be distinguished, which is consummated in the deed, v. g. in the first there is consent in the heart, then incentive words in the mouth, finally the dishonest deed: which are parts integrating one morally complete act; for otherwise it is only inchoate and incomplete; or, as St. Gregory says, book 4. Moral., chapter 27, in another way those degrees of sins are distinguished; for sin, he says, is conceived by suggestion, nursed by delectation, consummated by consent: suggestion is made by the adversary, delectation by the flesh, consent by the spirit. — The eighth division, by reason of the manner in which one sins, is made into sin from ignorance, from passion or infirmity, and from malice. Sin from ignorance is called that which proceeds from culpable and vincible ignorance, and therefore leaving sufficient voluntariness for the ratio of sin; for invincible ignorance, since it altogether removes the ratio of voluntariness, also excuses from sin, whether it be of fact or of natural law; since, as St. Augustine says, book De libero arbitrio, chapter 19, That which you know against your will is not imputed to you as guilt, but that you neglect to seek what you know not. Sin from infirmity or passion is called that which proceeds from some grave temptation, and motion of the sensitive appetite drawing the will to consent, and therefore diminishing the voluntariness of liberty; as when one sins from the agitation of anger, of grave sadness, or of motions of concupiscence. Sin from malice is called that which is perpetrated without such ignorance or passion, and therefore from perfect liberty. Hence sin from malice obtains the gravest place, from passion the less, from ignorance truly the least. Or, as St. Gregory says, book 15. Moral., chapter 16, Graver indeed through infirmity than through ignorance, but far graver through study than through infirmity is one lost. — Although however every sin is generally against God thrice-one [trinum et unum], nevertheless appropriately certain sins are said to be against the Father, others against the Son, others against the Holy Spirit: for, says St. Bonaventure in the Centiloquium 1. p. sect. 25, Against the Father, to whom power is attributed, one is said to sin, when one sins from infirmity: against the Son, to whom Wisdom is attributed, who sins from ignorance: against the Holy Spirit, to whom Goodness is attributed, who sins by reason of the subject sin is divided into proper and alien: proper is called that which is committed by the sinner himself; alien truly that which, though perpetrated by another, is nevertheless imputed to us by reason of counsel, prescription, persuasion, flattery, protection, or on account of the defect of fraternal correction.

These things thus premised, three things chiefly occur here in the Question to be resolved: First, what is habitual sin. Second, what is sin of commission and omission. Third, what is venial sin, and how it is distinguished from mortal. That these may be the more easily resolved and made apparent, it pleases to propose this Question distributed under divers Paragraphs, with as many titles and conclusions.

§ I. IN WHICH IS SITUATED THE FORMAL RATIO OF HABITUAL SIN.

IT MUST BE NOTED that from past actual sin there remains in the soul of the sinner a certain stain, by reason of which the sinner is said to be defiled, unclean, unseen of God, and odious, as sacred Scripture signifies in many places; thus Eccli. 31. Blessed is the man who is not found without stain. Jerem. 2. Thou art stained in thy iniquity before me. Ezech. 36. I will pour upon you clean water, and you shall be cleansed from all your defilements; and often elsewhere. Similarly Scripture frequently asserts that, actual sin having passed, man is still denominated a sinner, and remains in the state of sin, until it be forgiven him, as Rom. 5. When as yet we were sinners, and elsewhere most frequently. And Trent, session 6. chapter 7. teaches, that in justification man is made from unjust just, and from enemy friend.

Now that by which, actual sin having passed, man is denominated a sinner, is rightly called the stain of sin, in similitude namely of the stain found in bodily things: for as a body is said to be stained, when from the contact and commixture of another it not only loses its native first splendor or luster, but is also defiled and polluted with a certain foulness; so the soul contracts a spiritual stain, while adhering to a creature by the inordinate affection of the will, which is as it were a certain touch of the soul, it loses the luster and splendor which it obtained from the presence of sanctifying grace. For the soul, says St. Augustine, midway between God and creatures, by conversion to God is illuminated, bettered, and perfected: but by conversion to creatures, is darkened, worsened, and corrupted. Now this stain remains in man so long as sin has not been remitted, nor the pristine splendor of the soul restored by the infusion of sanctifying grace. Whence this stain stands in the manner of a habit, and signifies the same among Theologians as habitual sin; yet with this difference, that habitual sin more clearly designates man offended of God and ungrateful; but the stain better expresses him himself as polluted and unclean before God. In what, however, the ratio of this stain, or of habitual sin, is to be placed, the Authors do not agree among themselves; but what has seemed truer in so doubtful and various a sentiment of the Authors will be made plain below.

First Conclusion. — The formal ratio of habitual sin does not consist in the privation of the luster of sanctifying grace, nor in the sole reatus of punishment, or destination of the sinning man to punishment: but it is the very past actual sin morally persevering in the will of the sinner, by reason of which he is deprived of grace and ordered to punishment, until the sin be washed away and forgiven. This Conclusion consists of three parts: the First of which the Doctor proves in 4. d. 1t. q. 1. n. 3. where he first subtly premonishes, namely that there is a twofold justice: habitual, he says, namely grace and charity; and actual, namely the rectitude born to inhere in the elicited act, because the act is born to be elicited conformably to its rule, and in that conformity its rectitude consists: so, since opposites are said in as many ways, there will be a twofold injustice: habitual, namely the privation of grace in him in whom it ought to inhere, and actual, namely the privation of that rectitude in the act in which it ought to inhere. But after the intrinsec and extrinsec act passing away, there remains a certain habitual injustice. » These things premised, he proves that the ratio of that habitual sin is not to be placed in the sole privation of grace: otherwise, he says, he who had committed two mortal sins, and he who one, would be equally sinners intensive and extensive: because in them there is as much grace as to intension, and the sole itself is deprived as to extension, as much in him who committed one, as in him who two thousand: and therefore one is not said less a sinner after the passing act than another. The antecedent is proved: Because in every mortal sin the privation of grace is so made that nothing of it remains, and consequently by no succeeding sin can that privation be made more intense, nor more extensive, speaking of privation so habitual: because it deprives only one habit; as it is not born to inhere except as sole [unicus]. » Thus the Doctor: by which he openly demonstrates that habitual sin does not consist in the sole privation of grace; for thence it would follow that he who admitted more sins, after the first sin, would contract no iniquity and malice; since he would not incur a new privation of grace; for grace by the first sin is altogether supposed extinct; and therefore no privation of it can be induced by subsequent sins.

— Second, venial sin also leaves after itself a certain stain; and therefore can have even the ratio of habitual sin: and yet it does not deprive of grace, neither wholly nor in part: and therefore the ratio of habitual sin does not consist in the very privation of grace. The minor is plain, because venial sin is opposed to grace neither formally, nor effectively, nor meritoriously, as I suppose from what is to be said and from the common sentiment of Theologians: and consequently it does not induce a privation of grace. The major also stands: for venial sin remains habitually until it be remitted; for it is subjected to the sacrament of Penance through confession, and other remedies instituted by Christ the Lord: and of it that is true which is said 1 John 3. The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin: and that of Ephesians 5. Lutans it with the washing of water in the word of life, that he might present to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle: and consequently habitual sin, at least taken generally, inasmuch as it embraces both mortal and venial, is not formally a privation of grace. — Third, there can be a persevering privation of grace without any sin whatsoever: therefore in it is not to be placed the formal ratio of persevering sin. The antecedent is plain; both because in the state of pure nature there would be sin, and the stain of sin; and yet in that state there would be no privation of grace, inasmuch as that state is nowise ordered to supernatural being; and because, speaking absolutely, there could be mortal sin and yet grace not destroyed, as I suppose from what is said in the Treatise on Penance, because mortal sin being admitted God is not absolutely necessitated to take away grace from him who sins: nor is grace otherwise taken away by the sole evil act, or by the omission of an act of precept, than because God, on whom it physically depends, ceases to conserve it: and therefore if God did not cease to conserve it, grace would subsist with sin not forgiven; and conversely sin could be forgiven, and therefore its stain blotted out without any restitution of grace: consequently sin does not consist in its [grace's] privation: finally because one could have the due of having grace, and conserving it for one year only, and within that year sin mortally: but the year elapsed, the due of having grace would cease, and consequently the privation of grace would cease, and yet for all that habitual mortal sin would not cease until it were remitted: therefore habitual mortal sin is not the very privation of grace. The supposition laid down in the major is plain; for it does not imply God ordering anyone to sanctifying grace within some time beyond which he would not will to conserve it, whether meanwhile that man sin or not, nor further ordering him to that grace.

The second part also is proved, namely that habitual sin formally does not consist in the sole ordination to punishment: both because the ordination to punishment comes from the divine will, and therefore is not morally evil, nor offends God: but habitual sin is neither from God, nor a thing morally good, but is a certain turpitude and offense of God: therefore it is not to be placed in the sole ordination to punishment: and because it often happens that the sinner is efficaciously and absolutely ordered to undergoing temporal punishment, even the mortal and venial sin being remitted, as is evinced by very many texts of sacred Scripture; and the Council of Trent teaches, session 11. chapter 8. Therefore in that ordination to punishment does not consist the formal ratio of persevering and habitual sin. The consequence is plain, because the sin being remitted through contrition, or through the Sacrament, there usually remains in man, though justified and cleansed from all guilt, an obligation and ordination to some punishment, to be paid either in this life or in Purgatory: therefore etc. Finally because even if God had ordained no punishment, man could sin, and would remain and persevere in the state of sin and of the contracted stain, until it were remitted; but in that hypothesis he would not be ordered to punishment, consequently habitual sin does not consist in that ordination to punishment.

Finally the third part is proved, namely that habitual sin is nothing else than the very actual sin morally persevering, until it be remitted, or a condign satisfaction be exhibited and accepted. Both because besides that past sin so morally permanent nothing apter and more convenient can be assigned whereby man may be esteemed and denominated a sinner: therefore the formal ratio of habitual sin is truly held to be placed in it. The antecedent is plain from the disproof of the other sentiments: the consequence also is evident: for as from an act existing man is denominated an actual sinner; so from the same morally and habitually persevering he ought to be denominated a sinner by habit, or reatus. And because if anything stood in the way of the formal ratio of sin being placed in actual sin morally persevering, chiefly this, that the act physically passes away, and therefore cannot morally persevere: but this reason is none. Which I thus prove: for although many human acts do not physically subsist any longer, nevertheless they persevere morally in order, either to some denomination, or to obligation and moral effects, as is plain in contracts, which persevere so long as they are not dissolved; likewise in vows, which subsist until they be either fulfilled or relaxed by dispensation, even should the man repent of the beginning of the contract, or of the vow elicited, or however much he revoke and retract the very act by a contrary will. The same holds in the offense and injury inflicted upon another man; for although this has physically vanished, nevertheless it so long morally remains, until either full satisfaction be made, or the injury be gratuitously remitted: therefore similarly the offense of God is held to remain habitually in order to staining the soul and conferring the denomination of sinner, until God forgive the offense, or liberally accept satisfaction: therefore the whole deformity of habitual sin consists in the past act morally persevering in order to the hatred and aversion of God, grave or light, from which follows the ordination to the punishment to be undergone. Finally because this very thing St. August. teaches, book 1. De Nuptiis et Concup. c. 26. where he thus says: This is not to have sin, not to be guilty of sin: for if anyone v. g. commit adultery, even though he never do it thereafter, he is guilty of adultery until his reatus be remitted. He has therefore sin, although that which he committed no longer is, because with the time in which it was done it has passed away. For if to desist from sin were this, not to have it? They remain if they are past, except that they have passed away in act; they remain however in reatus? That is, as he explains book 6. Ad Iulianum, chapter 19, They remain in memory, under the hidden laws of God, which are written after a manner in the minds of Angels, that no iniquity go unpunished except that which the blood of the Mediator shall have expiated.

You will say 1. This sentiment openly contradicts the Subtle Doctor: therefore it is less rightly assigned and proved by us. The antecedent is plain from the passage above cited by us num. 6. where, having impugned the sentiment of St. Thomas affirming habitual sin to consist in the privation of grace, and that of the Master of the Sentences constituting it in the dissimilitude of the soul to God which remains from actual sin, he concludes: There is not therefore anything absolute, or relative positive, or privative there, whence the sinner is called sinner from the time of the cessation of the act until penance: but only a certain relation of reason inasmuch as it is the object of the intellect or will of God: because after he has committed it, the will of God orders him to the punishment corresponding to the sin: and then the intellect foreknows it, and for every time, until the due punishment be paid. And he confirms this both by the authorities of St. August. and from the fact that after meritorious acts which did not augment grace, there remains in the justified only a relation of reason, inasmuch namely as he is ordered through the divine will to such or such glory on account of those merits: therefore the Subtle Doctor holds habitual sin to consist in the sole ordination to punishment.

I deny the antecedent: for although this may seem the sentiment of many disciples of the Subtle Doctor, nevertheless, as the most learned of his scholiasts, Cavellus, rightly admonishes, such was not the mind of the Subtle Doctor himself; he does indeed will that nothing medium be given between the act of sin and the obligation to punishment, whereby one is called a sinner; yet he does not say that relation to be habitual sin: nay rather he holds it itself to be the past act remaining virtually and morally, as is to be gathered from what he brings forth both here and elsewhere; for in the passage soon cited n. 5. he infers it absurd that a real relation should be that whereby one is a sinner, because this relation would be from God: but a real relation to punishment would also be from God: therefore he does not hold habitual sin to be formally placed in it. Moreover dist. 21. q. 1. he says: According to the holy Fathers the remission of guilt is distinguished from the remission of punishment. Therefore he distinguishes the persevering reatus of guilt from the obligation to punishment. Moreover in the same place he takes habitual sin and unremitted mortal sin for the same. Therefore when here he says habitual sin consists in the relation to punishment, he is to be understood not formally but effectively; so that his mind was that the ratio of habitual sin is not to be formally placed in the very ordination to punishment, but only that this ordination proceeds from the very sinful act morally persevering.

You will say 2: Habitual sin is the effect of actual sin: therefore it is not the very actual sin morally persevering; for nothing is the effect of itself. — I answer, habitual sin can be considered in two ways, namely either physically, according to the real inclination which man, repeating sins, contracts toward committing others more easily and proneously, in that manner namely in which habits are generated through repeated acts; or morally, and under the formal ratio of sin, inasmuch namely as it is a certain stain in the soul persevering after the admitted actual sin. These things premised, I distinguish the antecedent; habitual sin considered physically is the effect of actual sin, I concede; for a vicious habit is generated only through vicious acts: considered morally is the effect of actual sin, I deny: for thus it is the very actual sin persevering, until it be altogether forgiven of God.

You will say 3: If habitual sin were the very actual sin unforgiven, it would follow that for God to forgive sin would be to will efficaciously that that sin be forgiven, and therefore that divine forgiveness would have itself for object, which is ridiculous. — I answer, the object of forgiveness is not the very forgiveness itself; but that right which God had of hating and punishing the sinner, which right indeed God relaxes when He remits the sin, and consequently brings it about that that sin no longer morally remains, nor does God have any longer the right and occasion of hating and punishing the very sinner: for as the act of the divine will, whereby God rationally hated the sinner and decreed to punish him, had for object the right to that hatred, and likewise to the punishment rationally to be inflicted: so the efficacious will of not retaining, or that forgiveness of sin, has for object the same right, to relax it; for diverse acts of the will can be occupied about the same thing, willing and nilling.

§ II. — WHETHER SIN OF OMISSION CAN BE WITHOUT ANY POSITIVE ACT OF THE WILL.

IT MUST BE NOTED that it is evident from the preceding Question that sin of commission is an act of free will elicited against the precept of law: but there remains a great difficulty to be solved concerning sin of omission; namely whether it has some act joined to it, by reason of which the omission of the will is held sinful. It is certain indeed that no culpable omission is given without some positive act of the intellect; for omission cannot be culpable unless it be voluntary, nor voluntary without cognition: for voluntary is that which proceeds from a principle freely with cognition: yet that cognition is not held to be the cause of omission, nay rather it often recalls from it, putatively when the intellect dictates to the will that it is fitting to hear Mass on Sunday, and make the annual confession, that satisfaction be made to the prescriptions of the Church. Whether however for that culpable omission there is required also some act of the will, whereby namely man positively wills to omit the prescribed act: or whether culpable omission can be given altogether without every act of the will, is variously controverted among Theologians: but what seems to us truer to be said, will open

Second Conclusion. — It is more probable that sin of culpable omission can come to be without any positive act of the will which should be its cause.

It is proved first: to sin by sin of omission is not to posit the due act: but the will can freely not posit the due act without exercising any positive act, but only foreseeing that it ought to exercise that act: therefore also it can sin by sin of omission without utterly any positive act which should be the cause of that omission. The major stands.

But the minor is plain from Aristotle 5. Ethic. chapter 3. teaching that not to act is no less in the power of the will than to act, since each depends upon its liberty: therefore since for contracting the malice of sin there is not required a positive act whereby that malice be intended, but it suffices that it be foreseen, and foreseen not be impeded, the will will also be able without any contradiction culpably to omit the due act, exercising no positive act, but only foreseeing the obligation of the instant precept, and then ceasing from every act.

Then, the will, with precedent cognition necessary for operating freely, and all else prerequisite for acting, is free to operate or not operate, both per se and through another inferior power subordinated to it: therefore it can abstain from every act, both its own and of another power; and consequently just as under urgency of the precept of loving God v. g. or honoring parents, it can love and honor them without any precedent act whereby it wills this; otherwise there would have to be a process into infinity in acts of the will, if it could not will without another precedent act of volition: so similarly it can without any elicited act cease from every act of love or honor, in which it will sin by not positing the due act.

Finally, if it could not omit the due act without some positive elicited act; this chiefly either because that act of the will is free, or because it is sinful, or because such a positively elicited act would necessarily be prerequired from elsewhere: but from neither head can the necessity of that elicited act be claimed. Not indeed from the ratio of sin: for it is manifest that sin comes to be as often as something is omitted which can be done and ought to be done: and therefore that omission of the due act will always be sinful, whether it presuppose a positive act or not. Nor does it arise from the ratio of the voluntary and free; for in order that something be voluntary and free, it is not necessary that the will operate about it; but it suffices that it be in the power of the will to do or not do a thing: therefore as the first willing can be free and voluntary without every other act, so also the not-willing, or abstaining from every act of willing, can be voluntary and free, without every other act; and consequently omission can be voluntary and free, without utterly any positive act. — It is confirmed, every free act ought to be in the power and dominion of the will: but if free omission cannot be given without every presupposed act, no act will be in the power and dominion of the will: therefore if pure free omission cannot be given, no act will be free. The major is certain; otherwise there would be no discrimination between necessary and free causes. But the minor is proved: if pure free omission cannot be given without every act, no act will be in the power of the will so as to be or not be, because that act is in the power and dominion of the will which it can posse or not posse at its arbitrament; for the digestion of food taken is not in the power of the will, because after the food is taken, will it or nil it, the food is digested: likewise when sound is made and the ears open, the hearing of the sound is not in our dominion, for we can indeed hear, but we cannot not hear: but if the will cannot omit any act except by positing another imperant act, whereby the omitted act be impeded, there will be utterly no act which the will can posse and not posse at its arbitrament, because if we have power and dominion actual over one act through another imperant act, I ask, whether we have dominion over the very imperant act per se alone? if we have over it per se alone, and without another act; therefore some act is given which we can freely omit and suspend without another act: if we have it not per se and immediately: therefore we have it through a third act, and over the third through a fourth imperant, and so into infinity. But it implies us to have dominion over something through that over which we have no dominion, whereas necessarily there must be given something over which per se and by reason of itself we have dominion: therefore it implies that we have through some act actual dominion over one act over which per se and by reason of itself we have no dominion: therefore either necessarily our acts are not in our power, which is to deny liberty, or it must be confessed that we have the power of positing and not positing free acts per se and by reason of themselves, and without another act.

You will say 1: By experiment it has been found that there is no omission of the due act, whether interior or exterior, without some act which be the cause or occasion of it: therefore it is false that pure omission can be given utterly without another positive act. The antecedent is plain: first indeed concerning the omission of what is precepted, v. g. of hearing Mass, unless man either will expressly to omit that assistance, or voluntarily do something whereby he is impeded and recalled from hearing mass; for therefore someone does not hear Mass on a holy day either because he writes, or walks, or executes something else, nor can any external omission be assigned whose cause was not some exterior occupation, or some act which conflicts with the observation of the precept. The same must be said of the omission of an interior act; for therefore the will omits to elicit the due act because it is detained by another act; for it is always occupied in the love of some object; as the intellect in the cognition of some object. — I answer to the first; with Martinus and the other assertors of our sentiment, that omission of an act, or quasi-external act indeed cannot be given without another act or quasi-external act; yet that it can proceed from the will through the pure omission of an internal act; for if anyone v. g. sit at home already long, or study, he can, the time of hearing the Sacred pressing, omit hearing the Sacred by this alone, that he have no will of leaving that place or study; nor is it necessary that the will here and now positively will to sit or study, but it suffices that it not will to command the external powers the motion and egress necessary for the execution of the precept. To the second I say it is false that the will is always detained in the actual love of some object; and although it should so happen, thence it would not follow that that love is necessarily the cause of the omission; for it is not necessary that the will not will, or not love one object, because it is occupied in the love of another: but from its mere liberty it can omit the love of any sufficiently proposed object; for the reason of not doing something can be other than the lovableness of some other object, v. g. the irksomeness of the enjoined work, the difficulty of going to the Sacred in rainy season, etc.

They object 2. Sin cannot be given without the exercise of liberty: but liberty cannot be exercised through the pure omission of an act: therefore pure omission, excluding whatever act of the will preceding or concomitant, cannot be sin. The major is plain. The minor is proved: the exercise of the will, as free, ought to be vital: for the will, as free, is a vital power: therefore its exercise as free is an exercise of life, and consequently vital: but pure omission and negation of act cannot be vital; for to live in second act is to move oneself from within [ab intrinseco], but the will does not move itself through negation of action and motion, and therefore the pure omission of an act is not an act of life: therefore liberty cannot be exercised through pure omission and negation of act. — I deny the minor, and to its proof I say, for life in second act no positive motion is required, but the voluntary negation of motion suffices, whereby namely, all things prerequisite for acting being posited, namely sufficient cognition of the precept obliging to the act, and likewise the others desired for operating, the will at its arbitrament purely does not will that which it is bound to will here and now; for this voluntary negation of act, since it proceeds from the will freely omitting the act, can as much be held an indication of life as the positing of an act; since the will is of itself indifferent to acting or not acting, it is evident that when it determines itself to either part of contradiction this determination is some at least interpretative exercise of life and liberty; for everything to which the power of free will extends is held to be its exercise. This negation of act equally suffices for sin; for as the will is held to sin when it freely elicits or commands a prohibited act, so must it be said to sin whenever it freely omits a precepted act.

They insist: The will then only sins when it determines itself voluntarily to the other part of contradiction against the prohibitive precept, or imperative of act: but it cannot thus determine itself without some positive act: therefore etc. The minor is proved: the will cannot determine itself unless it pass from the state of first act to the state of second act: but this passage cannot come to be without some positive act. That this may be understood more evidently, let two instants be conceived, in the prior of which the will be in first act, and indifferent to determining itself, not yet having any act; in the posterior truly let it also lack every act; I ask what more it will have in the posterior than in the prior? certainly nothing; inasmuch as it has no positive act, and consequently it is no more to be held determined in the posterior instant than in the prior: therefore neither more to be held to sin. It is confirmed: that is absolutely necessary for the will to be held to pass from first act to second act, besides which all other things can competently belong to it in the state of first act: but all other things which concur to sin can belong to the will in the state of first act, except the very physical act, therefore without that positive physical act it can neither determine itself nor sin. The minor is proved: besides the physical act there can be considered in the will only the precept with sufficient cognition of its obligation, and likewise the lack of operation: but advertency to the precept befits the will in the state of first act; the lack of operation also befits it; for while it is in first act, it does not operate: therefore every other thing besides the positive physical act befits the will in the state of indifference and first act. It is confirmed again: sufficient cognition of the obligation of the precept being posited in the intellect for weighing down the will and inclining it to the act, either it sins by not willing the elicition of the act, or it sins not: if the first, therefore it sins before every determination: if the second, therefore something has come to it in the state of second act which it had not had in the state of first act: but this is nothing else besides the positive act: therefore etc. — I deny the minor, for the determination of the will can well enough be understood from this, that the will freely abstain from the act which it could elicit if it would: for since the indifference of liberty is to acting or not acting, all things desired for operation being posited, by this very thing that being able to act it does not act, it determines itself to the other part of contradiction, and passes from the state of first act to the state of second act; not indeed by the positing of an act, but by its free omission: for since that omission hangs upon the very liberty of the will, when it omits to act, which it could execute if it would, it is held interpretatively to will not to act, and to be in that state as if it so decreed, I will not act: and therefore it is equally held to pass from the state of first act to the state of second act. Nor are two instants to be conceived, in one of which the will be indifferent in first act, and in the other lack act, as two instants of duration successively corresponding to each other; but it is only to be understood that in the very instant in which the will freely omits to operate, that omission hangs upon its liberty, so that it can will to elicit the act or not will it: therefore when it omits the act, it omits it because interpretatively it wills not to posit it. To the confirmation likewise I say, indeed the will in first act can have advertency to the obligation of the precept, and in that state not sin, but remain in indifference and suspension: but to be reduced to second act through that interpretative non-volition, and therefore to sin: namely because sufficient cognition for operating being posited in the intellect, and the others prerequisite for acting, the will purely does not will that which it is bound to will here and now. Whence it does not follow that it sins before every determination: for by this, that the will able to act and not act does not act, it is virtually or interpretatively held to will not to act, and consequently sufficiently to determine itself to not acting: for everything to which the power of free will immediately extends is held to be its exercise and determination.

They urge: That interpretative volition suffices neither for the determination of the will nor for sin: therefore in very truth for determination and sin a positive volition is desired. The antecedent is proved: for the ratio of determination and sin it is required that there be something in the very determiner and sinner: but the interpretative volition is not in the will itself a parte rei, but in the intellect alone interpreting that omission as an actual volition: therefore by that interpretative volition the will cannot be held to determine and sin. — I deny the antecedent, and to its proof I distinguish the major: it is required that there be something by way of positive act formally and actually, I deny: fundamentally and virtually, I concede. Therefore that interpretative volition is indeed formally and actually in the intellect interpreting and judging that omission to be voluntary and sinful, but fundamentally and virtually it is in the will itself, inasmuch namely as it can will the elicition of the due act, and yet at its liberty does not will to elicit or command that act.

They object 3. Everything voluntary ought to proceed from the inclination of the will about the proposed object, and likewise from the motion and influx of the specificative object: but that inclination of the will and motion of the object cannot come to be without some positive and physical act: therefore there cannot be a pure voluntary omission. The minor is proved: to omit from an attracting motive is to omit from love of that motive; v. g. to abstain from sin from the attracting motive of pleasing God is to abstain from love and desire of His divine good-pleasure; as to abstain from sin from a deterring motive, because it displeases God, is to abstain from fear of displeasing God: but love and fear are positive acts of the will; therefore in such omissions some positive act of the will always concurs. — I deny the minor; and to its proof I say, that omission of an act can be given without any motive retracting or removing the will to operate.

They insist: Something must be given whereby the will passes from the state of indifference, in which it could omit the act or not omit it, to the determined state, in which it truly omits it: but in pure omission nothing of the sort is given: therefore it remains in the state of indifference. — I answer: I distinguish the major: something real and positive must always be given, I deny the major; something at least negative and interpretative must be given, I concede the major. I distinguish likewise the minor, and deny the consequence: for something indeed is given in the intellect, namely the cognition of good or evil, but in the will something positive is not always required, because as the indifference of the will to acting positively is determined and removed through the very act which it posits, nor is another act required, otherwise an act would be given to the act, so it is determined to omitting through the non-act, or through the interpretative act, which is also called negative, by this very thing that such omission, or such negative act, is in its power.

You will object 1. It is impossible that the will omit freely unless it be moved by some amiable good, or averted from some evil, because while the motive moves the will, the will is moved: but for the will to be moved is to pass from non-act to positive act: therefore such motion cannot be without some positive act. — I answer: I distinguish the major: unless it be moved positively, I deny the major: interpretatively, I concede the major. I distinguish likewise the minor and the proof: for the will to be moved positively is for it to elicit some positive act on account of the reason of good or evil proposed: but the will to be moved interpretatively is for it to have in its power to act or not act: and yet not to act, and to suspend every act about the object and positive motive: for as when the motive moves to a positive act it effects nothing immediately in the will, because the motive is only in the intellect; so when the motive moves to pure omission it effects nothing in the will, nor does it elicit any act in it; for the will determines itself, both to its acts and to the omission of acts; but it is not intrinsece determined by objects; otherwise it would be no more free than the appetite of brutes.

You will insist: Omission ought to be posited by virtue of a motive: but omission posited by virtue of a motive either is only the motive being in the mind, and the omission in the thing: or not. Neither can be said; because if it is only the motive being in the mind, and the omission in the thing: the omission will not hang upon the motive: therefore it will have no motive, and thence will not be free. But if it is something else, it can be nothing but a positive act: therefore either it will not be free, or a positive act will inhere in it: — I answer: I concede the major; to the minor I say, three things are required that omission be posited completely by virtue of a motive: namely 1. there must be a motive in the mind, 2. there must be omission in the will, and 3. there must be no act which prohibits the omission; because by this very thing that a motive is sufficiently applied in the mind, and there is no other act prohibiting the omission, by that very thing it is in the power of the will to omit or not omit, because the will, all requisites being posited, always has of itself the power of suspending every act. Hence if Peter be in bed on Sunday, on which the Sacred is to be heard, and three motives of omitting the Sacred offer themselves; namely first he think it sweet to rest softly in bed; second he think it pleasant to converse in bed with a friend present; third he think it troublesome to be in the temple amid summer heats with a numerous people: then if he omit on account of each singly, there will be a threefold free omission, not one; because three times it will be in the power of the will to omit or not omit the Sacred. — But if the adversaries suppose the three motives to be apprehended at once by the intellect, and that threefold evil, or threefold disconvenience, to be proposed at once to the will, so that it freely omit the Sacred, then the omission hangs upon that threefold motive, nor does he omit the Sacred from one motive only, but from three partial ones. — But if they say the omission ought to be ordered to the motive, that it hang upon the motive; I shall answer, that it is proper to reason to order, not to the will; because the will (st is a faculty which neither orders nor refers one thing to another. Then, that the motive be the cause of suspending and omitting the act is nothing else; as the motive of a positive act is nothing else than its being the cause why a positive act is posited, nor is another act required whereby the first act be referred to the motive; otherwise a process would be given into infinity.

But on the contrary. THEY URGE: When three motives are proposed at once for doing something positively, putatively for hearing the Sacred, I can positively will to hear the Sacred on account of one only of the three motives, not on account of the other two, putatively for obtaining rain, not for obtaining knowledge, nor for converting sinners: therefore by parity, if pure free omission can be given, and three motives of omitting be proposed at once, he will be able to omit on account of one of the three, not on account of the other two; but this cannot be said; therefore it cannot be explained whereby the omission hangs upon one motive and not upon another. — I answer: It must be supposed that those three motives are apt, and each sufficient to move to omission; otherwise this hypothesis would be useless, and then I concede the antecedent; I distinguish the consequent: he will be able to omit on account of one, not on account of the other two, if he positively reject those two, I concede the consequence: if he do not positively reject them, I deny the consequence: as if he positively will to hear the Sacred on account of one only of the three; putatively for obtaining knowledge, then either he must positively reject the other motives, saying, I do not will to hear the Sacred for obtaining rain; or at least he must suspend the act of the will about those motives for whose sake he does not hear the Sacred. In like manner he will be able to omit on account of one only if he positively say, I do not will to omit the Sacred, neither on account of the troublesome heat, nor on account of the sweet softness of the bed; but unless he positively reject those two, he cannot omit on account of one but on account of all at once; because, as was said, the three together make one total cause why he omits: therefore on account of those together it is in the power of the will of positing or not positing the omission of the Sacred.

You ask: Whether, and how, every act conjoined with a culpable omission, and incompossible with the observance of an affirmative precept, is a sin?

I ANSWER that a positive act which is the direct cause of a culpable omission is a sin by reason of that omission, even if from its own species and object it were otherwise good: whereas an act that in no way influences the omission, but stands related to it merely per accidens and only concomitantly, unless it be otherwise evil, is not vitiated by the omission with which it is joined.

The first part of this answer is common among Doctors, and so certain that it seems to need only explanation. Assume, then, that someone out of an excessive desire for studying or playing omits hearing Mass on a feast day, so that by study and play he is hindered from hearing Mass: that study is truly evil; for it is the cause of an evil omission — just as almsgiving, although good and honorable of itself, would be vicious and contaminating if it moved a man to theft, whence he might have something to distribute to the poor; for what is of itself the cause of evil is evil. Yet that study has no other malice than that of the sin of omission; hence he who would omit Mass on account of study does not sin more than he would sin if he remained idle during all that time in which the precept of hearing Mass binds; for if that study were of itself evil for some other reason, chiefly because he would sin against the rules and rectitude of the virtue of studiousness — but it is not so; for one who hears Mass on a feast day out of a motive of vanity, e.g., loses the hearing of Mass by the rectitude of religion, which such a motive vitiates; yet neither is the hearing of Mass against religion, nor against the Church's precept; otherwise one thus hearing Mass would violate that precept, and consequently would sin mortally, not only against humility by reason of vanity, but also against religion by reason of the same vanity — which no Theologian admits: therefore from the fact that that study causing the omission lacks the moral honesty of the virtue of studiousness, it is not rightly inferred to be against that virtue, and to contract a twofold distinct malice, one against religion, another against studiousness.

You will say: He who omits Mass by reason of avidity for study sins directly against the virtue of studiousness, both because he studies at an unseasonable time, and because he performs it from an immoderate and excessive affection: but the virtue of studiousness ought to moderate and amend both: therefore he who omits Mass on account of study sins not only against the virtue of religion, but also against studiousness; and therefore contracts a twofold malice specifically diverse: one against religion, another against studiousness. — I deny the antecedent, and to its proof I say, first, that he who studies while the precept of hearing Mass urges, does not study at an unseasonable time by the precise rules of studiousness, but only unseasonably by reason of another precept intervening; for studiousness, as much as lies in itself, has only this to regulate, that it moderate the excessive affection toward its proper object, namely by hindering anyone from studying prohibited or vain things, or from applying himself to studies for a longer time whereby his health and life are ruined; wherefore this rule being kept, if one contravene another precept then to be observed, he is not judged to sin against studiousness, but against another virtue, which commands the act that is omitted: that study indeed lacks the honesty of studiousness; yet it has not the dishonesty opposed to studiousness, but is vitiated from the circumstance of another precept, whose transgression it entails.

You will urge: He who on account of study omits hearing Mass establishes in study the ratio of the ultimate end, loving study indeed more than God, who is the author of the precept concerning hearing Mass: but thus to love study or any other creature is not only against the virtues of studiousness and religion, but even against charity, which commands the love of God above all things: therefore in that act there is manifold malice, one against religion, another against charity. — I deny the minor: since aversion from God as ultimate end accompanies utterly all mortal sins, it does not import a special malice against charity unless it be expressly and directly willed by the sinner; which scarcely, or rarely happens. Add, moreover, that they do not seem rather to establish their study as their ultimate end, nor consequently to sin more than he who omits Mass in order to remain at home doing nothing else, but remaining idle; yet all confess that this latter man does not seem to establish the ratio of ultimate end in remaining at home, nor to love it more than God; and consequently nor to contract any special sin: therefore neither ought the former to be judged, on account of study at an unseasonable time, to contract any special sin.

The second part of the answer is also evident, namely that an act which stands related to the omission only concomitantly and per accidens is in no way vicious. E.g., if someone resolve truly indeed to hear Mass, yet not meanwhile to remain idle, wishing to devote himself to studies, etc., if however from this it should happen that he thinks of hearing Mass only after midday, when he no longer has the faculty of hearing it, I say that that study is not vitiated, because in no way is it the cause of that omission: otherwise, if every act concomitant with an omission were vitiated by it, it would follow that he who resolves not to hear Mass ought then to suspend every other act however honest, and remain idle; for if he exercised any act, he would be judged to sin in the very act — which no Theologian would admit: therefore an occasional and per accidens cause can derive no malice into a work that is not ordered to it, as to an end. Hence neither does it stand in the way that such acts are incompossible with the observance of the precept: for from this it does not follow that they are the cause why the precept is not fulfilled, namely because they have not a free will joined for omitting the precept: for the adequate cause of a sinful omission is to be unwilling to approach Mass, or to lack the will of approaching: but it is per accidens that meanwhile a man remains at home, or studies; for equally would he omit Mass even if he were not at home, nor applied to study.

§ III. — How venial sin is distinguished from mortal.

It must be noted that it is of faith that not all sins which men commit in this mortal life are mortal, nor do they wholly take away sanctifying grace and justice from the soul; which Sacred Scripture indeed plainly sufficiently designates, indeed by various Oracles, but especially by that of Prov. 21: For a just man shall fall seven times, and shall rise again: but the wicked shall fall down into evil. It is also established from the Council of Milevis, at which St. Aug. was present; for it is defined in Can. 3: Item placuit ut quicumque dixerit... It has likewise pleased that whosoever shall say that in the Lord's Prayer the saints say the same, forgive us our debts, so that they say it not for themselves, because that petition is no longer necessary in them, but for others who are sinners in his people; and that each one of the Saints says not the same, forgive me my debts, but: forgive us our debts: so that it be understood that he asks this rather for others than for himself — let him be anathema. By which words it is signified that there are certain sins which do not take away charity and sanctifying grace from those who commit them: and consequently do not inflict upon them the death of the soul. Which indeed the African Council declared more expressly, as is evident from its Epistle 95 among the Epistles of St. Aug.; for at its end we read that many are the faithful who after their conversion to God live through the whole time of life without complaint: that is, says the Council, without crime, yet nevertheless are not without daily and light offenses. But this truth Trent defined, Sess. 6. chap. 11, in these words: Although in this mortal life, however holy and just men may at times fall even into light and daily sins, which are called venial, they do not on that account cease to be Just: for that voice of the Just is humble and true, forgive us our debts. — But whether, and how, venial sin differs from mortal by its intrinsic reason remains chiefly for us to fight with the heretics of this time: for John Wyclif taught that all sins are inductions of eternal death, yet de facto induce it only in the reprobate, and accordingly all the sins of the foreknown are mortal: but all the sins of the predestined are venial. Similarly Calvin, lib. 3. Inst. c. 4, says: The sins of the faithful are venial: not because they do not merit death, but because by the mercy of God they are not imputed, because they are granted pardon. Luther likewise taught that every sin is mortal by its nature; but becomes venial in believers.

Third Conclusion. — Venial sin is distinguished from mortal by its own nature, and not only from imputation, or non-imputation on the part of God.

It is proved, first indeed from Sacred Scripture; and that from Matt. 5: Whosoever is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Racca, shall be in danger of the council: and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. From which divine oracle I argue thus: manifest reviling constitutes one in danger of hell fire, and by that fact is mortal sin: anger expressed by the sound of the voice, but not reaching to evil reviling, makes one in danger of the council, that is, it is uncertain whether he merits hell, or whether he is worthy of it or of a lesser punishment: therefore there are found certain sins which are lighter than to merit hell fire. For to what end would the Council be forced to discern whether some fault was to be punished by hell fire, if all faults merited hell fire? Therefore there are faults which by divine judgment are to be mulcted with temporal punishment alone. Again, anger which has burst forth entirely without any external sign does not make one in danger of the council, but of the judgment; that is, it is uncertain whether he merit some punishment, or none; from which it follows that he merit none eternal: since it is a lighter fault than that about which it could be doubted whether temporal punishment, or eternal, were merited. — Again, Luke 6, Christ the Lord addressing the hypocrite: And why seest thou the mote in thy brother's eye, but the beam that is in thy own eye thou considerest not? But motes cannot of themselves blind the eye in which they are: therefore there are certain light sins which not only actually do not extinguish grace, the light of the soul, as mortal sins do, which are designated by the beam; but which cannot extinguish it: and consequently by their intrinsic levity they are venial from their nature, and distinct from mortal.

To confirm the same truth St. Amb. serm. 20. on Ps. 118, August. lib. 21. De Civit. Dei, cap. 26, and others bring forward that saying of Paul, 1. ad Corinth. 3: If any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones: wood, hay, stubble, etc., he shall be saved, yet so as by fire. By which things the Apostle compares venial sins with things most light by nature, namely wood, hay, stubble; for as by gold, silver, and precious stones he signifies works perfect and laudable, which examined in the judgment of God merit nothing but reward; so by wood, hay, and stubble he designates works useless and worthy of reprehension, but venial, which indeed bring detriment, and need purgation, yet do not cause one to fall from salvation: but nowhere would St. Paul have compared venial sins to hay and stubble, unless they were truly sins minute and most light, as St. Gregory says, lib. 1. Dialog., cap. 30: Minute sins, by their nature mortal, would rather be compared to iron, or leaden bronze.

Such is the concordant sentiment of all the Holy Fathers, whom Vasquez disp. 147, and Suarez lib. 1. De Statu Peccati. cap. 10 bring forward. One alone, however, suffices to confirm it, Augustine, who teaches in several places, especially lib. De Natura, et Gratia, cap. 36, that there are certain sins which do not take away sanctifying grace: For, he says, excepting the Virgin Mary, if we could gather together all the holy men and holy women living here, and ask them whether they were without sin: whatever excellence of holiness they had been endowed with, if they could be thus questioned; if we should say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

You will object 1. Many testimonies of Scripture, by which they strive to evince that every sin is mortal from its nature, seeing that concerning sin generically Scripture pronounces Deuteron. 27: Cursed be everyone that hath not persevered in all things that are written in the book of this law. Ezekielis 18: The soul that sinneth, the same shall die. Rom. 6: The wages of sin is death. Iacobi 2: Whosoever shall offend in one point is become guilty of all: therefore etc. — I answer, these texts of Sacred Scripture are not to be understood of sins generically, but only of mortal ones; for if it denoted all sins whatsoever, even venial, it would follow that a just man could not only possibly, but even truly fall from the true life of grace, or be cursed of God, or be presently excluded from the inheritance of the kingdom of Heaven, or become guilty of the whole violated divine law: therefore those words are not to be taken of venial offenses, but of crimes only.

You will object 2. The Holy Fathers: first indeed Basil, in the Questions briefly expounded, question 4, where he says: it is said of every sin that it is the goad of death. And quest. 293: The difference, he says, between great and small sins in the New Testament it is not given to discern. Moreover St. August. teaches in several places that many venials gathered together condemn a man, especially tractate 11. in Ioan.: How, he says, do minute sins, if neglected, kill? Minute are the drops that fill the rivers: minute are the grains of sand: but if much sand be heaped on, it presses and crushes. Neglected bilge-water does this, which the onrushing wave enters little by little: but by entering long, and never being bailed out, it sinks the ship: therefore he truly holds that even the smallest sins can inflict eternal death. — I deny the consequence, and to St. Basil I say that he called venial sins the goad of death, not because they inflict it in reality, but because they dispose to it, inasmuch as venials dispose to mortals, especially when they are admitted more frequently. To the second I say that perhaps Basil alludes to the pharisaical difference between grave and minimal commandments reprehended by Christ; for they so expounded the precept concerning adultery, homicide, and love of neighbor as to say that the external work indeed was prohibited, but not the internal motions of the soul, of anger, concupiscence, etc.; similarly that friends indeed were to be loved, not so enemies: which difference Christ the Lord censures, Matthew cap. 5. For St. Basil cannot deny that in the New Testament the difference between the greatest and light sins is manifest, as is evident from the texts lauded above. — To St. August. I say that he is to be thus interpreted, as wishing that if venials be despised and neglected, they gradually dispose and lead a man to mortal crime; just as a curable wound, if more negligently cared for, gradually begets a deadly abscess, and in that way inflicts death. Which St. Greg. openly confesses, lib. 10. Moralia, cap. 14: If, he says, we neglect to cure small things, insensibly seduced we shall boldly perpetrate even greater ones.

You will object 3. Every offense is infinite of itself, and from its nature, and merits punishment infinite according to duration: but venial sin, since it is an offense of God, who is infinite, is held to be infinite; for the offense grows according to the dignity of the person offended: therefore it merits eternal punishment by its nature; and consequently it has not from its intrinsic levity that it is venial; but only from the mercy of God benignly remitting such punishment for some sins. — I deny the minor; for although venial sin be an offense of the infinite God, yet it is not infinite, as mortal sin is; because namely it does not turn man away from God as from the ultimate end, so as to convert him to a creature; but only diminishes the fervor of the same dilection and love; and therefore not into the infinite, in that manner in which mortal sin, which includes contempt of God, contracts from that contempt the malice of the infinite Divine Majesty, as it were morally infinite. From these things it is established that venial sin is rightly defined by the Seraphic Doctor in the Centiloquium part one, cap. 6.

Venial sin, he says, is concupiscence, or love of pleasure in a creature short of God. He adds in the same place that venial sin is distinguished threefold: for one is venial from surreption, and therefore it is venial, because it cannot then be avoided: and because it is committed beside reason, it is always venial. One is venial from thought without consent: and therefore venial, because it is not fully consented to, as in thought and delectation about a woman, short of consent in the delectation: and therefore venial it becomes mortal by complacency and consent. One is venial with delectation; and consent: and therefore it is venial, because it is not a deordination against a precept, as drunkenness and jocose lying: and this, although it be venial on account of the delectation, which is short of God, yet can become mortal on account of excessive concupiscence and contempt. Yet it is not to be understood that any venial sin by its essence becomes mortal; but because from a venial there is made a transit to a mortal by complacency and consent, or by concupiscence and contempt. But venial sin is cured by acts in which there is some humiliation and devotion, which acts indeed informed by grace are repugnant to the venial: and thus to the act of cure and the delectation of venials, grace gratum faciens they aid and invigorate. Things of this kind are contained in these verses:

Confiteor, tunndo, respergo, conteror, oro, Signor, edo, dono, per quae venialia pono, Unctio, poena lenis, compassio, quae fit egenis.

For here the remedies are: 1. general confession, 2. beating of the breast, 3. sprinkling of blessed water, and contrition of heart, 4. the Lord's Prayer, 5. Signation by the Bishop, 6. reception of the Eucharist, 7. forgiveness of the oblation, 8. Extreme Unction, 9. light penance, 10. fraternal compassion.

You ask 1. In what manner is venial sin severed from mortal?

The Doctor answers in 2. dist. 21. n. 3. that

mortal sin is not distinguished from venial in this, that one is with respect to the end, as mortal, and the other those things that are toward the end, as venial; but either can be, both about those things that are toward the end, and about the end: but they are distinguished in this, that mortal sin is a deordination opposed to ordination, without which the end cannot in any way follow; which ordination indeed has a precept, against which the deordination is made: and > therefore every deordination falling under a precept turns away from the end necessarily. But another is the ordination which can be with respect to following the end, which is not necessary, but useful, which is not of precept, but rather of counsel: and the deordination opposed to this is venial sin, nor does it make one fall from the end necessarily; but it makes that the act proceed not in the better manner in which it can.

It must be observed, first, that the Doctor does not intend that every act elicited against some evangelical counsel is venial sin; for we have the counsel of giving alms, or of doing always what is more perfect when we can; yet it is not venial sin to be unwilling to give alms, or to do at some time what is less perfect, or to act indifferently. Therefore although every venial sin be against a counsel, yet not everything against a counsel is venial sin.

It must be observed, secondly, that when the Doctor says mortal sin is against a precept; venial indeed against a counsel; he does not take "precept" for everything that induces any obligation, whether grave or light, and whose transgression is imputed to some fault; for it is certain that venial sin even by this reason is against a precept. But there he takes "precept" in the manner of speaking of Sacred Scripture, and also of the Holy Fathers saying that the plenitude of the law, that is, the observance of the commandments and precepts, consists in the love of God and neighbor; whence it comes about that he who offends in one commandment becomes guilty of all: from which manner of speaking it seems to be gathered that nothing is against the commandment except what takes away the love of God and neighbor; and consequently by this reason venial sin cannot be held to be against the commandment and precept; seeing that it does not extinguish the love of God; but only diminishes its fervor. Similarly, while he says venial is against a counsel, by the name of counsel he does not understand a persuasion, or induction to do something short of entire obligation: for thus venial would not be against a counsel only; seeing that there is some obligation of avoiding it, otherwise it would not be held to be sin; but by the name of counsel the Doctor understands a persuasion of doing something, either without obligation, or with a light obligation not inferring perpetual separation from God.

From which it follows that the genuine and true distinction of venial sin from mortal is to be sought chiefly from this, that mortal is a grave offense and injury and grave transgression; venial, however, only light and imperfect.

You ask 2. Does venial sin differ specifically from mortal?

I answer, that they do not differ physically, and according to the entity of the act: for as the grave precept and the light precept about the same matter do not differ according to essence, but according to intension; so in like manner thus do not differ offenses in matter of the same species, grave or light; because they are committed against the precept of God, grave or light: therefore the theft of one farthing, and the theft of a hundred thousand do not differ in physical species; because they turn about the same matter, and against the same precept, Thou shalt not steal. Yet they differ in moral species, because one from its nature is separative from God, the other is not; and as that which is evil from its moral nature is constituted in a diverse species of moral malice, by this that it is prohibited by another prohibition; so also although the sin which is called venial, and that which is called mortal of itself, the prohibition under such a penalty being set aside, would be of the same species; yet by an accidental prohibition they could be constituted in a diverse moral species, about which, however, there can be no other difficulty than about the name. It is confirmed: because if it did not befit the mortal, from its specific moral nature, to separate from God, but from some accidental difference, of greater intension e.g., it could not be shown how many venial sins could not separate from God: but it is certain that they do not separate, however much they be multiplied: therefore it befits the mortal thus to separate not from greater intension, but from its specific moral nature.

You ask 3. Can venial sin become mortal?

The Seraphic Doctor answers lib. 3. Compendii Theologicae veritatis cap. 12. that venial sin, considered under the formal ratio of venial sin, can nowhere become mortal, neither as to the act, nor as to the stain; because no thing can change its species: but venial sin and mortal are diverse species of sin. — He answers, secondly, that an act which of itself is of the venial genus can become mortal in four ways:

First from conscience: because whatever is done against conscience builds up unto hell, even if it be against an erroneous one; and this is the reason: because since in sin there are two things, namely aversion, and conversion, sin is judged according to the first; since aversion from God is as it were the formal; and conversion to creatures the material. Therefore although to lift up a mote, or a straw, from the right may seem light, and indifferent, yet when it is done against conscience, it is mortal sin; because the incommutable good is spurned; and thus aversion is made from the Creator. Secondly from complacency: whence Aug. no sin is so venial that it does not become mortal, while it pleases. Thirdly from disposition, because frequently by a lapse into venials a man is disposed to mortals, and this according to that saying of Gregory: Thou hast escaped great rocks, beware lest thou be overwhelmed by sand: and he says the same thing, because often from the least sins one comes to great ones, as from a little spark sometimes arises a great fire: He that despiseth small things shall little by little fall away. Fourthly from progress, because when a venial arises, if it be not prohibited, it could progress even unto a mortal: not because the venial itself in substance could become mortal, but because from it occasionally there would be made a progress to the mortal: and this is evident in the first motions, which are reckoned among venials; but when the delectation grows strong to such a degree that consent occurs, already the sin is mortal.

You ask 4. By what marks chiefly are mortal and venial sin discerned?

I answer, that these four following rules are to be attended to, that such a discretion be made: The first is that for mortal sin the gravity of the divine precept is to be attended to, which is made known either from Scripture, or divine tradition, or reason. For those things which in Scripture are prohibited under penalty of death, execration, abomination, and exclusion from the kingdom of Heaven, or similar interminations, are to be understood to be gravely forbidden; such is that of the first to the Corinthians 6: Do not err: neither fornicators, nor serving idols, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God.¹ — But the gravity of the precept is discerned by reason, by regarding the dignity of the nature of the matter, to which God is to be judged to accommodate himself according to his benignity, and the sweet administration of his providence, so that he be held to have prescribed light things lightly, grave things gravely; unless elsewhere there be joined an intermination of most grave penalty: for it can happen that upon light matter, or even of itself indifferent, a grave precept be laid, sufficient for mortal sin, if that precept be violated with entire liberty; such was the precept given to the first Parent, Gen. 2: for it was concerning a thing of itself light and indifferent: nevertheless the commandment was grave, sufficient for mortal sin, inasmuch as enjoined under penalty of death in these words: In what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death. — The second rule is, that although the precept be grave, nevertheless the transgression can be light, if namely it be committed not from full and sufficient deliberation; but from surreption, and indeliberation of the will. Since indeed every sin ought to be voluntary, that is to be held the graver or lighter which is consummated with greater or less deliberation of the will. — The third is also helpful to observe, whether the sinful act be immediately against a divine precept, or immediately against a human one, and only mediately, and consequently against the divine: for indeed by this latter reason the gravity of the sin is much diminished: since the power granted to men is not simply supreme, nor without restriction, but ordered to an end, and tempered to it, from this it comes that neither can small goods be so severely commanded by men, nor small evils prohibited by men with the greatest penalty, that their grave commandment always suffice for mortal sin: the reason of which is that a lesser evil is not well nor usefully redeemed by a greater evil. But it is a greater evil that there be danger of sinning mortally, than that a small good be omitted, and by this reason a small evil admitted: therefore since men have not the power of commanding or prohibiting except unto edification, but not unto destruction, as St. Paul says of the Apostolic power granted to himself, second to the Corinthians 13: from this it comes that they cannot concerning small and light things constitute a grave commandment, whose transgression be mortal sin.

But you will say, the supreme Pontiffs sometimes gravely command certain light things concerning the manner of administering the Sacraments e.g. of celebrating Mass. — I answer, that this is not light, but grave, that the sacrifice be celebrated in a becoming order, and the Sacraments administered with congruous rite, especially since these regard the glory of God, and the reverence of the sacred thing.

Fourthly, finally, in human precepts it does not suffice for mortal sin that the thing be grave, but it is also required that the legislator intend gravely to command it; whence Sanchez rightly observes, lib. in Decalog. cap. 1. and with him Martinonus Disp. 18. Sect. 5. that not whatsoever the Pontiff forbids or commands, although he say that from affection of the divine Name he firmly commands or forbids them, do they therefore bind under mortal: but this is to be deduced from the gravity or necessity of the matter commanded, and from the penalties established for transgressors.

Notandum 1. Sins can be considered either materially, and physically according to the entity of the act, or of a quasi-vicious act: or formally, and morally according to their deformity, and disconformity to the object, the precept, the end, the circumstances, and the rules of acting well and properly. It is certain, moreover, that sins viewed in the former manner are sometimes distinguished in species from one another; for sins of commission differ from sins of omission: likewise internal sins, which are perpetrated by purely internal acts, differ from those which are completed by an external work; for it is one thing to look upon a woman so as to covet her, and another to commit adultery with her: whence there remains here only to be examined from what source the specific and numerical distinction of sins ought chiefly to be sought according to their moral being: namely, whether from the circumstances with which they are affected, or from the precepts against which they fight, or from the objects about which they are occupied.

Notandum 2. The distinction of precepts can be considered in two ways: namely, either on the part of the one commanding, or on the part of the thing commanded. In the former way it is one thing that a precept be natural, that is, instilled into each man by the very guidance and light of nature, and another that it be positive, prescribed and laid down by edict and law from a superior. Further, the positive precept is divided into divine and human: human, moreover, into ecclesiastical and civil. In the latter way precepts are distinguished according to the diversity of the virtues which they command, or of the vices which they forbid. Now since every virtue has several acts specifically diverse, and diverse rules of acting by which it ought to be regulated, whereby it comes about that one can sin against it in many ways; thus, because the virtue of temperance, for example, is concerned with moderation in food, drink, play, and the pleasures of the body, thence it comes about that one can sin against it variously, namely by gluttony, by drunkenness, by fornication, etc.; hence it is that the same virtue can be commanded by various precepts. Indeed it even sometimes happens that one and the same act of virtue can be illicit, or necessary, by many precepts; for example, the sin of usury is prohibited by the law of nature, and also by positive divine, ecclesiastical, and civil law. Similarly the same act can be contrary to several virtues; thus theft of a sacred thing, or striking a Clerk, is at once repugnant to justice and to religion, or the reverence owed to things and persons dedicated to God, and also to obedience toward God and superiors, by whom these sins are forbidden.

Notandum 3. That as superiors who give commands have diverse rights by which they can command their inferiors, so inferiors contract various and distinct obligations of obeying them: whence it happens that when the title by which we are bound to obey them is specifically diverse, the disobedience also, which is committed against their precepts, is specifically diverse. Thus, because the right of Prelates Regular of commanding their religious is something religious arising from the vow of obedience, the question is raised whether disobedience committed against them is a sin against the virtue of religion specifically diverse from the disobedience which would be shown toward another superior; or whether he who does not obey sins more gravely against the commanding authority — having indeed one obligation against the virtue whose rectitude is commanded, and within whose species the thing commanded is constituted, and another against the religion of the vow.

These matters thus briefly premised, three points occur here to be determined: First, whether the specific distinction of sins is sometimes sought from the circumstances with which acts are affected: Second, whether from the objects about which they are occupied: Third, whether from the precepts in which they militate.

First Conclusion. — The specific distinction of sins is sometimes sought from circumstances specifically different. This is common among Theologians, against Durandus in 2. d. 38. qu. 1., where he teaches that no circumstance bestows upon a human act any goodness or malice, because, he says, when it bestows that, it passes into the reason of object, and ceases to be a circumstance. He holds, indeed, that some circumstances are moral in order to the physical entity of the act to which they accrue, but not in order to the act as moral; for thus, he says, circumstances take on the reason of object.

The conclusion is therefore proved: a sin is said to be specifically distinguished by that from which it has a new and specifically distinct disconformity with reason and the rules of right living: but it sometimes has this from the circumstances accompanying the act; therefore sins take on a diverse species from them. The major stands. The minor is proved: First, from the Council of Trent, Session 14, Canon 5, where it defines that in confession those circumstances are to be disclosed which change the species of the sin: the same Council teaches in cap. 5 of the same session in these words: it is gathered, furthermore, that those circumstances also are to be explained in confession which change the species of the sin. It holds, then, that some circumstances introduce a new species of sin into the act. Second, the same minor stands from the doctrine of the Holy Fathers, who in wondrous manner exaggerate the malice and deformity which sinful and evil acts take on from the circumstance of person, or place, or time. Thus St. Isidore, lib. Sententiarum, cap. 18, teaches that sin is aggravated by the condition of the person; Sins, he says, which are light in beginners are accounted grave in perfect men; for a sin is recognized as the graver, the greater he is held to be who sins. For the accumulation of offense grows according to the order of merits, and often what is forgiven to the lesser is imputed to the greater. Hence Salvian, lib. 4 De Providentia, demonstrates that Christians sin more gravely than infidels in committing the same vicious act. For every fault, he says, of Christians is an injury to the Divinity; more atrociously do we sin under the profession of the holy name; the very religion which we profess accuses our errors. Similarly, from the sanctity of a place vitiated and profaned by sin, the Holy Fathers sometimes gather the diversity and gravity of sins: thus St. Jerome rebukes Sabinianus the Deacon because he solicited a certain consecrated Virgin from the Monastery of Bethlehem unto defilement and flight; and he explains the enormity of this crime from the circumstance of the sacred place in which it had been committed, in these words: Most wretched of mortals, you — that cavern in which the Son of God was born, and the Truth sprang out of the earth, and the earth gave her Fruit — are you about to enter to plot defilement? Do you not fear lest the infant cry out from the manger, lest the Virgin in childbirth laugh at you, lest the Mother of the Lord behold? Angels cry out, shepherds run, the star glows above, Magi adore, Herod is terrified, Jerusalem is confounded — and do you creep into the chamber of the Virgin to deceive a virgin? "I yield," says the wretch, "and I shudder as much in mind as in body; I cannot go further; tears burst forth before words, and in indignation together with grief the breath is choked in the very passage of his throat." — Finally, the Holy Fathers gather even the enormity of sin from the circumstance of time. Thus St. Leo, Sermon 5 on the Passion, exaggerates the gravity of the crime of the Jews from the fact that they killed Christ on the feast of Pascha. When, he says, they who ought to have adorned the temple, cleansed what had been defiled, provided victims, and shown a holier diligence in the legitimate purifications, having conceived the fury of a parricidal hatred, rush to one work, in one crime they conspire with like cruelty.

You will say 1: That anything should confer malice upon human acts, it must be willed: but everything that is willed is an object of volition, just as everything known is an object of the intellect: therefore sins take their species and gravity not from a circumstance, but from an object. — I distinguish the major: it must always be willed per se primarily, and directly, I deny; secondarily, and indirectly, I concede. And similarly distinguishing the minor, I deny the consequence. For although only the object specifying the act essentially is willed directly and primarily, nevertheless circumstances are willed secondarily and indirectly, on account of the close connection which they have with the object specifying the act; for since the will is a spiritual power not tied to an organ, it can reflect upon itself, and tend voluntarily not only toward the specifying object, but also toward the circumstances accompanying the act, or toward the very act itself, though attended by such and such a circumstance.

You will say 2: Moral goodness, or malice, is something intrinsic to the human act; circumstances, however, are something extrinsic to it: but nothing intrinsic can be derived from the extrinsic; for nothing is denominated intrinsically from a form which does not inhere in it: therefore a human act cannot be, nor be denominated, vicious from circumstances. — I distinguish the minor: nothing intrinsic can be physically and entitatively denominated from the extrinsic, I concede; nothing intrinsic can be morally denominated from something physically extrinsic, I deny. Otherwise it would follow that the object would not give to the human act any intrinsic moral goodness or malice; for the object is as extrinsic as the very circumstances. Therefore, by the same reason by which human acts derive from the object an intrinsic, specific, and essential goodness or malice, on account of the transcendental and intrinsic order which the very act has toward that object agreeing or disagreeing with the rules of right living, with equal right they borrow their moral goodness or malice from extrinsic circumstances, on account of the similar order which the human act has toward those circumstances. Consult what we said above concerning this Doctor, Tract. De Angelis, pag. 101.

Second Conclusion. — The specific distinction of sins is not derived from the object considered entitatively, much less insofar as those material objects bear a diverse disconformity with the rules of right living, and diversely deprive of the rectitude which ought to inhere in acts. This is the doctrine of the Doctor in 2. d. 37. num. 9., where, after he had said that privations are distinguished in species by the specific distinction of habits, and in number by the numerical distinction of habits, he adds:

sins, which are certain privations, namely of rectitudes which ought to inhere in acts, are formally distinguished by the distinction of such rectitudes, so that when diverse rectitudes in species ought to be had, there are deficiencies diverse in species. And so sins are not distinguished by comparison to objects, which are not evil except materially: but the formal reason in them is distinguished in comparison to one rectitude and another in species, which ought to inhere.

The truth of this conclusion is evident with regard to both parts: for the entitative diversity of objects can sometimes be attained by one and the same sinful act: for theft can tend toward things specifically diverse, for instance toward bread, money, clothes, etc., nor does it take on specific diversity from them, unless in those material objects there appears a diverse and dissimilar indecency and dissonance with the rules of right living: thus the taking away of life, honor, and worldly goods import a diverse malice of sin in species, and constitute a diverse species of sinful act, namely homicide, detraction, and theft: for the reason that those takings-away of diverse things confer a diverse indecency and dissonance with respect to the rules of right living. — But in order that an object may confer special formal goodness or malice upon a human act, it is not necessary that that objective malice be known and willed directly, or per se, but it suffices that it be known and willed indirectly: for the difference between good and evil acts on the part of cognition and volition can be affirmed thus, that for formal goodness to be attributed to the act, the will must will the good and honest because it is good: but for malice it suffices to will the evil on account of something else, and not abstain from it, so that we do that which pleases from elsewhere, or omit that which displeases from elsewhere; for, says Martinonus, Disputation 10, Section 2: he who prays in a sacred place does not give special goodness to his act from that circumstance unless reverence for the sacred place moves him to pray there, and he prays in the sacred place because it is sacred. But if he kill in a sacred place, he contracts from it the malice of sacrilege, although he does not kill in that place because it is sacred: for it suffices that he do not abstain from perpetrating homicide on account of the reverence of the place, which he owes it, and that he wish to satisfy his hatred notwithstanding the reverence of the sacred place. The general reason is, because it is base and unseemly for rational nature to will or accept evil, not only directly and for its own sake (and indeed it is impossible per se purely and precisely to will or accept it), but also on account of something else: and those are condemned in Scripture who say: Let us do evil, that good may come. Rom. 3, verse 8. For the will by which one wills evil, that is, the dishonest, is by that very fact evil, from whatever motive he wills it, because by that very fact he postpones honesty to baseness against right reason, and against what he ought to do. So that if anyone should sin formally with the sin of theft, it is not necessary that he commit adultery; he does not cease to be a thief properly and formally, although he be moved to theft by the affection of another sin.

Third Conclusion. — The specific distinction of sins is not rightly sought from the diversity of precepts which come from superiors commanding the same thing within the same species of virtue, or with the same motive: but it is so sought if they regard diverse virtues, and have a diverse formal motive. This conclusion has two parts, of which

The first is evident of itself: for the diversity of sins must be weighed from the object which is forbidden, not on the part of the commander, or legislator, who stands in the manner of an extrinsic cause: now several extrinsic causes concurring to the same effect do not vary its formal reason: therefore neither does the diversity of those commanding, or forbidding, the same act effect its specific diversity. It is confirmed: theft, for example, is forbidden in fact by the divine law, which is the act of God, and by human law, which is the act of man; yet on that account it is not held to be a multiple sin, when the same act of stealing is exercised about the same object and with the same motive: therefore the diversity of commanders does not effect a diversity of sin.

The second part is also evident, because as often as a precept is specifically diverse, so often the sins opposed to it have a distinct object and motive; for so often one sins against a diverse title and diverse rule of acting according to the dictate of right reason; but every virtue has precepts specifically diverse, or diverse rules of acting: for it is one thing the precept by which temperance commands moderation in jests, games, and the pleasures of the body, against which one sins by scurrility, luxury, and other vices: and another, by which it commands moderation in food and drink, against which one sins by drunkenness, gluttony: therefore since sins are specified and distinguished from objects and motives, the consequence is that precepts so distinguished import a specific distinction of sins.

From these gather, that a violent striking of a Clerk, for example, takes on two species of malice, namely injustice and sacrilege, because an act of this sort is prohibited by natural and positive law from two motives specifically diverse, namely from the motive of justice proceeding from natural law, and from the motive of religion from positive law. But it must be said otherwise of him who breaks the fast on a vigil falling within the Ember days, or omits Mass on a feast day which falls on a Sunday: for although a twofold precept of fasting on that same day concurs, one indeed by reason of the vigil, another by reason of the Ember days, nevertheless because in both cases there is the same intrinsic end, and the matter of the same virtue, namely abstinence, is immediately regarded, thence it comes about that the transgression of that precept is a single sin. The same must be said of the omission of Mass on a feast day falling on Sunday. Whoever desires more, let him consult our Academic Philosophical [course], Disp. de bonitate et malitia actuum humanorum.

Although sin has no efficient cause properly so called, as St. Augustine subtly warns, lib. 12. De Civit. Dei, cap. 7, saying: No one seeks an efficient cause of an evil will; for it is not efficient, but deficient, because neither is that an effecting, but a defecting; for to defect from Him who supremely is, to that which is less, this is to begin to have an evil will. Moreover, to wish to find causes of these defections when they are not efficient, as I said, but deficient, is like wishing to see darkness, or hear silence. Although, I say, sin acknowledges no efficient cause properly so called; nevertheless certain quasi-causes of it are wont to be assigned: and these twofold in kind: some indeed interior, residing in the very sinner himself; others, however, exterior, and subsisting outside him. Of the former kind three are commonly enumerated; namely ignorance on the part of the intellect; concupiscence on the part of the appetite, and malice on the part of the will. Of the latter kind likewise three are assigned: namely the devil by suggestion and temptation. Adam by traduction and propagation, as well as any sinner whatsoever by scandal, counsel, impulse, etc. Finally, heretics assign God Himself as the efficient cause of sin, not only insofar as He concurs to the entity of the sinful act: but also insofar as He commands that act, and induces the human will by His command and impulse to elicit it. In the present Question there will be discourse of the intrinsic causes of sin: in the following, of the extrinsic causes.

Notandum 1. That THREE modes of sinning are generally distinguished: the first indeed from ignorance of the intellect: the second from passion or weakness of the appetite: the third from the malice and liberty of the will, by which the will, at its pleasure, with no preceding ignorance, nor inciting passion, wills sin under some reason of useful or delectable good. For since the will has no necessity of embracing that which the intellect shows to be honest, but can be borne spontaneously and by its own motion toward that which is worse, even against the dictate of reason: thence it comes about that it can sin, not only from ignorance, or from a defect of cognition which, were it present, would hold back from sin, nor only from concupiscence, which moves and allures the will to obey it; but it can also sin from malice: namely when knowingly, and freely, and spontaneously, of its own accord, nod, and mere motion, it lapses into sin; for which reason Adam is held to have sinned: inasmuch as he sinned not moved by concupiscence, which he then lacked, nor induced by ignorance or error, because he was not seduced in the transgression, 1 Timoth. 2. Now these three genera of sins are gathered from Sacred Scripture: for of sins from ignorance David speaks, Psal. 21, praying God thus: The offenses of my youth, and my ignorances, remember not, O Lord. And the Apostle, 1 Timoth. 1: I obtained the mercy of the Lord, because acting ignorantly I did it in unbelief. Of sins of concupiscence Daniel speaks, cap. 23: Beauty deceived you, and concupiscence subverted your heart.

Similarly St. James, cap. 1: Every one is tempted by his own concupiscence etc. But of sins from malice there is discourse John 31 [sic], as of one who of set purpose departed from God, and would not understand all His ways. The same three genera of sins the Holy Fathers acknowledge, especially St. Augustine, who, lib. 83 qq., question 26, says:

Other sins are of weakness, others of inexperience, others of malice. Weakness is contrary to virtue; inexperience is contrary to wisdom; malice is contrary to goodness.

A similar sentiment of St. Gregory the Great Gratian reports, distinction 2 De Poenitentia cap. 22, in these words:

it must be known, that sin is committed in three ways; for it is perpetrated either through ignorance, or through weakness, or through deliberate purpose. And indeed more gravely from weakness than from ignorance; but far more gravely is one sinned from deliberate purpose than from weakness.

But since sin from malice is especially said to war against the Holy Spirit, therefore there will be for us a special discourse of this genus of sin, when we shall treat of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Here, therefore, there remains only to be determined how ignorance and concupiscence can be culpable, and inducive to sin.

Notandum 2. That concupiscence is a cause of sin; for, says St. James, chapter 1: Every one is tempted by his own concupiscence, drawn away and allured: then concupiscence, when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin, but sin, when it is completed, begetteth death. The same St. Paul teaches ad Rom. 7, saying: I delight in the law of God according to the inward man: but I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin which is in my members. And although this vice resides in the inferior part of man, which is called sensuality, and is borne impotently toward sensible and delectable goods, especially of taste and touch, for which reason the Apostle, Romans 7, calls concupiscence the law of the members; and dwelling in the flesh wandering astray: nevertheless in the will itself some similar vice resides: for the will, or the superior part of man, is prone to covet useful and delectable goods repugnant to the honest, and that even with the dictate of reason resisting, and most frequently either forestalling it, or, what is worse, overcoming it. Whence the Apostle, ad Galatas 5, after he had said that the flesh concupisceth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, enumerates among the works of the concupiscence of the flesh not only those things which pertain to sensuality, such as fornication, uncleanness etc., but also those which regard the superior part of man, or both parts, namely servitude of idols, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, etc. All which he calls works of the flesh, understanding by the flesh the whole man insofar as he lives carnally, not according to God, but according to himself. But since we have already several times treated of concupiscence, both in Disp. de statu naturae purae, and in the preceding Article, where we showed that it is not sin properly so called; therefore here there is need to treat only of ignorance. Wherefore

Notandum 3. From the Seraphic Doctor in Centiloquio 1 p. Sectione 5, that ignorance can be distinguished of manifold kind. First, indeed by reason of form, either absent or present; One thing, he says, is ignorance of negation, another of privation, another of depraved disposition. Ignorance of negation is in little children, which is neither fault nor punishment until the predetermined time. Ignorance of privation is in adults, who at the determinate time are ignorant of what they can know, or forget what they once learned. Ignorance of depraved disposition is that whereby one holds opinions contrary to faith, which can be called erroneous, and it is in heretics. Second, by reason of object it is divided into speculative and practical. The former is opposed positively, or privatively, to speculative cognition: the latter truly to practical cognition. Likewise one is ignorance of fact, another of law. Of law, either of natural law, and this does not excuse, since it is written in the heart of man: or of divine law, as of the Law, the Prophets, the Gospel, and Apostolic doctrine; and this he accuses as of a great and mortal delict in Prelates, especially Bishops and Metropolitans, who are bound to render a reason of faith and hope. But he accuses as venial simple and unlettered Clerics, who when they could have learned, would not. Laymen, however, he accuses in no wise, because it does not pertain to them, provided they do not despise it. If it is of positive law, as of laws and decrees, he accuses judges alone. If it is ignorance of law containing moral ecclesiastical constitutions for discerning sins, he accuses Priests and Confessors.

But if it is ignorance of fact, or of indifferent things, thus it sufficiently excuses, whether of things necessary for salvation, and thus either cannot be avoided, as in a madman, who from birth lacked the judgment of reason, and this excuses: or can be avoided, as in Jews and Pagans, who could have known that Christ suffered for the salvation of men, and this does not excuse. Third, by reason of intellect and will, one ignorance is known, and a certain one not known: another voluntary, and a certain one involuntary: another culpable, and a certain one inculpable. For it is not the same thing for ignorance to be voluntary and for it to be culpable: for that it may be culpable, it must be against duty; but any voluntary ignorance whatsoever is not against duty, because it is lawful for us, nay expedient, to be ignorant of many things. Again, ignorance of will is twofold: one is called affected, which is directly willed: another crass or supine: not affected indeed, but not attempted with all due diligence, but with some negligence. But this negligence has various degrees: for when someone does not sufficiently avoid and repel ignorance, it proceeds sometimes from weakness, because in repelling it itself there is tedium and annoyance: sometimes from mere liberty: sometimes truly from defect of intelligence: because namely the ignorance itself, or the duty of knowing, does not become known so perfectly as is needed. Fourth, with respect and in comparison to acts of the will, a certain ignorance is called antecedent, a certain subsequent, and a certain concomitant. The first is the cause of the act, insofar as without it that which is done would not be done, as when a hunter kills a man thinking him to be a beast: for in truth he would not slay him, if he knew him to be a man. The second is that of which the will is somehow the cause, as when a hunter, doubting whether that which he discerns moving among thickets, brambles, or woods, be a man or a beast, neglects to inquire more diligently, and meanwhile brandishes his weapon. The third is not the cause of the act, but is only with the act, which would no less be done if it were absent, as if the hunter thinks indeed that it is a beast at which he hurls his weapon, although it be a man, nevertheless he would no less have killed, even if he had known him to be a man: but there is no doubt that this ignorance is a cause of sin, since altogether voluntarily it leads to homicide. Fifth, by reason of subject, one ignorance is vincible, another invincible. That is called invincible when it is not in anyone's power to know that which he ignores, or when he cannot with all human diligence applied conquer and repel from himself his ignorance; such is the ignorance of the mysteries of faith in those infidels who have heard nothing of the Gospel, nor could hear, no one preaching the Gospel among them, who on that account are called infidels negatively. Vincible is that by which, with moral diligence applied, it can be overcome, and that in two ways; for, says the Seraphic Doctor, one can be removed with great difficulty, such as is in the very dull-witted, and this excuses from so much, but not from the whole guilt of fault, if it concerns things necessary for salvation: another can be removed with facility, as in the ingenious; but this does not excuse. Similarly invincible by nature, as in a child who does not use reason, and in a decrepit old man who does not discern, and in one born insane; this excuses from the whole. Another is invincible through fault, as in one who through fault becomes furious; and this, says the Seraphic Doctor, according to some does not excuse from the whole. — Again, invincible ignorance is twofold: one indeed of fact, another truly of law. The former is that whereby some fact is ignored and cannot be known unless another teach and disclose it: such was the ignorance of Abimelech, who had taken Sara as wife not knowing her to be the spouse of Abraham: whence when he was accused of this fact by God, he answered deservedly: Lord, wilt thou slay a nation that is ignorant and just? Did not he himself say to me, She is my sister, etc. And God said to him: I know that thou didst it in the simplicity of thy heart. The latter truly is ignorance of some law. And this again is twofold: one indeed is invincible ignorance of the natural law, for instance ignorance of that precept, God is to be worshipped, parents are to be honored, one must not do to another what one would not have done to oneself: the other truly of positive law, such as for example ignorance of that Evangelic law prescribing the necessity of baptism for obtaining salvation, Unless one be born again of water, etc. But since all the aforesaid species of ignorance are reduced chiefly to the vincible and invincible: therefore there will be discourse of these principally in the following Conclusions, of which the first treats whether those things which are done from ignorance are sins. The second, whether ignorance itself is a special sin distinct from others, under the formal aspect of ignorance. The third finally, whether those things which are done from invincible ignorance are imputed to fault, as certain more recent heretics contend, affirming that things done from invincible ignorance of fact, or of positive law, are not held culpable; otherwise, however, of those things which are done from invincible ignorance of natural law.

First Conclusion. — INVINCIBLE IGNORANCE IS HENCE A CAUSE OF SIN: NOT DIRECT, BUT INDIRECT.

This Conclusion consists of three parts: of which

The first is evident from various texts of Scripture, in which man is said to sin through ignorance: thus Leviticus 4, If the princes shall sin through ignorance; and again: If a soul shall sin through ignorance: and cap. 5 sacrifices are appointed to be offered for those who shall have sinned from ignorance. Similarly ad Hebraeos 9 the Apostle affirms that once each year the high priest of the Jews entered not without blood into the Holy of Holies, whom he offered, he says, for his own and the people's ignorance, that is, for his own and the people's sins committed from ignorance. Finally Osee, cap. 4, adducing the cause of vices inundating the land, assigns ignorance alone, or defect of the knowledge of God. There is, he says, no truth, there is no knowledge of God in the land: Malediction, lying, and homicide, and adultery have overflowed, and blood hath touched blood.

This same truth St. Bernard excellently demonstrates, Epist. 77, ad Hugonem de Sancto Victore, which now holds the place of special Treatises in tome 4 of his works, where, refuting the error of those denying that sin occurs through ignorance, after he had cited the aforesaid texts of Scripture, thence he gathers thus:

If ignorance, he says, were never sin, why was it said in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that into the second tabernacle the high priest alone entered once a year, not without blood, which he offered for his own and the people's ignorance? If the sin of ignorance is none, then Saul did not sin when he persecuted the Church of God, since indeed he did this while remaining in unbelief. He was therefore doing well in that he was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and an injurious man, when he was breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, being therein abundantly a zealous imitator of his fathers' traditions. Therefore he ought not to have said, I obtained mercy, but rather I received my reward, since ignorance rendered him immune from sin, and zeal besides judged him worthy of reward. If, I say, one never sins through ignorance, what then do the Apostles allege against those who slew them, since they not only did not know it was evil to kill them, but moreover thought that in so doing they were rendering obedience to God? But also in vain did the Savior pray upon the Cross for His crucifiers, since, as He Himself bears witness, they knew not what they did, and by no means sinned in such wise. For it is not lawful even to suspect that the Lord Jesus lied, when He openly declared that they knew not what they did. And if perhaps anyone doubt of the Apostle that, emulating his own flesh like a man, he could have lied where he says: For if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; does it not appear from these things in how great shadows of ignorance he lies who denies that one can sometimes sin through ignorance?

This very thing the Subtle Doctor teaches in book 2, d. 43, n. 2, where he explains how sin from passion is against the Father, from ignorance against the Son, from malice or from full liberty against the Holy Spirit. The will, he says, because it is joined to the sensitive appetite, is apt to take delight along with it; and therefore, sinning occasionally from the inclination of the sensitive appetite toward its own pleasurable object, one sins from passion, which is called sin from weakness or from impotence, and is appropriated to the Father, to whom power is attributed. It also acts through intellectual cognition; and therefore when reason errs, it does not rightly will, and its sin arising from an error of reason is called sin from ignorance, and is against the Son, to whom wisdom is attributed. Thirdly there would be the will's sin according to itself, from its own liberty, neither taking delight with the sensitive appetite nor arising from an error of reason; and this is properly from malice, and is appropriated against the Holy Spirit, to whom goodness is appropriated. The Doctor therefore holds that in very truth one can sin through ignorance.

The second part is also evident, namely, that ignorance is not of itself and directly the cause of sin: for since ignorance is the privation and lack of necessary cognition, it cannot have any positive influence directly upon the sinful act; for privation, since it is a non-being, can be endowed with no activity whatsoever, with no influx whatever. Yet it concurs in the sinful act indirectly and per accidens, inasmuch as it removes that which would forbid sin, namely by taking away the science and knowledge which, if present, would impede sin: in the same manner as one who removes the walls sustaining the roof of a house is said to be the cause of the fall of that roof; not because he directly casts down and overthrows the roof itself, but because he takes away the support upon which it rested and leaned. — This however must be understood of every kind of ignorance whatsoever that can concur in some evil being done which would not be done without it, according to the disposition of the affection of the agent, who is so disposed in his will that if he adverted that what he does is evil, he would not do it; for example, if he knew this to be a Cleric, he would not strike him; if he knew that what stirs among the brambles is a man, he would not brandish his spear at him nor slay him.

Second Conclusion. — IGNORANCE IS NOT A SPECIAL SIN DISTINCT FROM THE SIN OF MALICE FROM THE SIN COMMITTED BY REASON OF IT.

It is proved: To that extent only would that ignorance, considered in itself, be a special sin, inasmuch as it would be opposed to some particular virtue distinct from other virtues; or at least inasmuch as it would be opposed to other virtues in a special manner: but no particular virtue can be assigned to which this ignorance is opposed; for ignorance is not opposed per se except to the virtue of studiousness; but this virtue does not import an obligation to know all things, and to fortify all one's acts with due knowledge beforehand; but only prescribes rules and manner in acquiring science; and therefore the ignorance which accompanies sinful acts is not held to be opposed to this virtue.

Proved 2. No reason can be assigned why there should be any ratio of evil in invincible ignorance, or in negligence of setting it aside, rather than in any other ignorance whatsoever, unless inasmuch as some superior specially forbids that ignorance, or inasmuch as by it one is exposed to the danger of committing some other sin: but even vincible ignorance, suppose of philosophical things, of itself is not sin, unless it be specially forbidden by a superior, or there would follow from it danger of committing some other sin: therefore, by the same reasoning that invincible ignorance is not of itself a special sin, but only somewhat insofar as it is against the precept of a superior forbidding such ignorance; by the same reason vincible ignorance can only be sin to that extent, inasmuch as it opposes the will of the superior forbidding it; and thus it is held to be nothing else than sin, than disobedience; seeing that it is evil precisely because it opposes the will of the superior.

Proved 3. and the preceding reasons are confirmed: Ignorance is evil only insofar as it is unseemly and against duty: but insofar as it is the cause of sin it is not against a duty special and distinct from that sinful act of which it is held to be the cause: therefore, etc. The minor is proved: ignorance can be understood to be against duty in two ways: first, by reason of itself, if indeed there be a duty of knowing something per se, namely by reason of studiousness, or by reason of supernatural faith: but by this reason it is not held to be a special sin, inasmuch as it is ignorance precisely and directly, but only inasmuch as it takes on the character of the vices and defects opposed to those virtues themselves; and therefore it cannot be a special sin distinct from others, under the formal character of ignorance. Then secondly, ignorance is held to be evil, not indeed by reason of itself, but by reason of the peril or evil to follow from it. Now in this way ignorance likewise cannot be a special sin distinct from that peril and voluntary evil: for the whole guilt of the one who sins through ignorance concerns the evil known in that ignorance, on account of which the ignorance itself is to be avoided: but this ignorance is not a special sin distinct from that deed which by reason of it is admitted; for according to the diversity of that evil which may be, there is a different character of the ignorance; for if it be a peril of injustice, that ignorance takes on the character of injustice; if however it be a peril of intemperance, or of another sinful act, there is also a different malice in that ignorance; and therefore it must not be held to be of itself a distinct and special sin.

You will say 1: Whoever assumes the charge of Preacher or Confessor or Rector of souls, by that very fact is held to sin, if he vincibly ignores what he ought to teach, even though no other sin would follow from this: therefore vincible ignorance is a special sin. —

I deny the consequence, for to that extent he would be held to sin, inasmuch as he would sin either against obedience, if he had assumed the charge of teaching from precept; or against justice, if he received a stipend by reason of this teaching; or against charity, if indeed by reason of that ignorance some harm would follow to his neighbor, especially in spiritual things, and in those that pertain to salvation: and therefore in that case the ignorance would not be a special sin distinct from disobedience, or injustice, or defect of charity.

You will say 2: Every Christian is bound to know the articles of faith, the precepts of the Decalogue, and of the universal Church, just as the Religious has a duty of knowing the precepts of his rule, and likewise the Priest the rite of saying the Office and of celebrating: therefore vincible ignorance of these will be sinful: but no malice of another sin can be assigned which belongs to that ignorance itself: therefore this, precisely by reason of itself, and insofar as it is ignorance, is held to be evil; and therefore it has a special malice distinct from other sins. —

I deny the subsumption: for by the same precept by which the Christian is bound to observe the commandments, the Religious to fulfill his rule, and the Priest duly to celebrate and recite the Office, they are also bound to the knowledge desired for this end; and consequently, if they culpably ignore what they ought to know, they will indeed sin against such precepts enjoined upon them, but they will not be affected with a special sin by reason of that ignorance alone.

Third Conclusion. — INVINCIBLE IGNORANCE, EVEN THAT WHICH CONCERNS THE NATURAL LAW, EXCUSES FROM SIN.

This is common among the Theologians against the Recent heretics, the followers of Luther and Calvin, who teach that invincible ignorance of fact and of positive law indeed excuses from sin; but not so invincible ignorance of the natural law.

But the conclusion is proved by as many as have fought most keenly against the Innovators, most especially Antonius Deschamps, lib. 3 De Haeresi Ianseniana, disp. 1; Martinonus in Antiiansenio, disp. 18; and they prove it, I say, First indeed from Sacred Scripture, but most of all from John 15, where Christ, speaking of the Jews refusing to give Him the faith and veneration due to Him as Messiah and Son of God, says thus: If I had not done works which no other man hath done, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin; clearly affirming that they were to be excused from sin if they had been ignorant that He was such, and unless He had sufficiently proved by wondrous works that He was such. But if (as certain learned men of recent times rightly argue) invincible ignorance of an obligation excuses from guilt those who do not acknowledge God speaking to them personally in Christ, equal is the reason that it should excuse those who do not acknowledge Him through, as it were, another mouth, by the dictate of reason and the natural law commanding. —

Similarly St. Paul, Romans 1, says the Gentiles are therefore inexcusable because, having known God through His visible works, they glorified Him not as God, signifying that they would be excusable had they not known God at least in such a way, and had not labored under total and invincible ignorance of Him; but if such ignorance excused from guilt those who glorify not God, to whom certainly glory and adoration are due by natural law, and that most especially, equal is the reason that it should excuse concerning other things due by the same natural law.

The same truth is urged from the holy Fathers, but most of all from St. Augustine, upon whose authority the Adversaries seem chiefly to rely. This, I say, most holy Doctor, lib. 3 De libero arbitrio, cap. 19, discoursing of that ignorance which arises from Adam's sin, and which the Adversaries say is of the natural law, affirms that all that is done through it are not sins except improperly and metonymically; since indeed they are effects of original sin, just as speech is called tongue because it is made by the tongue: and writing is called hand, because it is done by the hand:

That, he says, which everyone through ignorance does not do rightly, and which, willing rightly, he cannot do, are called sins because they draw their origin from that sin of the free will of our first Parent: for that preceding sin merited these following ones. For as we call tongue, not only the member we move in our mouth while speaking, but also that which follows upon the motion of this member, namely, the form and tenor of the words; so we call sin not only that which is properly called sin, for it is committed by free will, and by one who knows: but also that which necessarily follows from its punishment.

And in the same chapter, to those murmuring and complaining of the ignorance and blindness contracted from Adam's sin, he answers with this general assertion: There is not imputed to thee as fault that thou art ignorant unwillingly, but that thou neglectest to seek what thou dost not know. And he repeats and confirms the same, lib. De Natura et Gratia, cap. 67, and lib. 1 Retractationum, cap. 9, and likewise lib. 22 Contra Faustum, cap. 17, where he teaches that the incest of drunken Loth was not guilty or imputable to him, because he did it in ignorance: but that only his drunkenness was to be blamed in him, which he knowingly admitted; and therefore he was not to be punished except so far as drunkenness deserved. — The same do all the other Fathers teach: Chrysostom, Homily 15 on the Epistle to the Romans: No one, he says, sinned ignorantly... for if they sinned ignorantly, they were surely unworthy that punishments should be given them. Likewise they reject all those testimonies by which it was proved in the first Question that sin must necessarily be voluntary, that is, committed knowingly and freely.

The conclusion is proved likewise by theological reason, First indeed: that ignorance excuses from all sin which takes away every character of voluntariness; since, as we have said, natural reason itself urges that sin is so far voluntary that it is in no way held to be sin if it be not voluntary: but invincible ignorance takes away from the act every character of voluntariness, since it removes from the intellect the cognition without which it cannot be voluntary, according to the definition received by all from Aristotle: voluntary is that which is from a knowing principle, etc.: therefore invincible ignorance is not the cause of sin, but excuses from it. — Secondly, God does not constrain man to impossibilities: but He would command impossibilities if invincible ignorance did not excuse from sin. Proof: our will, since it is a blind potency, and cannot tend toward the unknown, is held to have in its power only that which is shown it by the intellect to be done or omitted: but invincible ignorance takes away all advertence and cognition of the intellect concerning the thing to be done or omitted; and therefore that ignorance impedes the thing's being in the power of the will to be done or omitted: and consequently, if man were bound to fulfill the precepts of the natural or positive law which he invincibly ignores, he would be held to be bound to impossibilities. — Thirdly finally, the same truth is proved by dissolving the principal foundation of the Adversaries. Wherefore invincible ignorance of the natural law would be culpable, but not ignorance of positive law or of fact, because, they say, knowledge of the natural law is connatural to human nature, and naturally due to it, and all men would have been endowed with it in the state of innocence had it persevered; and therefore its ignorance is vicious, nor could it have been inflicted except in punishment of sin: otherwise is it with cognition of deeds, or of positive law, even divine; for since God's positive law hangs upon His free will, which can enact so many and such laws, at such time and place and occasion, as ... [truncated]

All ignorance of those things which one is bound to know is sin; because it fights against the law by which one is commanded to know it: whether thou canst already know it, or whether thou canst not. That thou now canst not, was brought about by Adam's sin, which is also thine, because in it all have sinned. Wherefore the Scholastics err, when they excuse such ignorance, which they call invincible, from sin because it is invincible, as they speak:

Although we can also demonstrate that it is not simply invincible, since it has followed upon Adam's voluntary sin. — But this argument is null; first, for it is false that is said, that invincible ignorance of the natural law does not excuse from sin, because it is a punishment of original sin; for from that it would follow that madness, fury, and frenzy would not excuse from sin, because these too are punishments of sin, as the Adversaries concede. Similarly it would follow that a man blind from birth, who through that blindness committed something amiss — suppose he killed an infant while striving to drive off a barking dog — would not be excused from sin, because the blindness which he could plead is a punishment of sin: which certainly no one of sound mind can admit. Equally false is what they say, that ignorance of positive law excuses from sin because it was not inflicted in punishment of sin; for ignorance of the Gospel in infidels, e.g., who have heard nothing of Christ, is a punishment of original sin: and the same ignorance is ignorance of divine positive law, as the Adversaries concede. Ergo ignorance of divine positive law is a punishment of original sin. The major is proved: every effect of reprobation, according to the opinion of the Adversaries, proceeds from the judgment of God punishing and reproving on account of original sin: yet ignorance of the Gospel in infidels is an effect of reprobation; because, they say, it is the dereliction or desertion by which God has not mercy upon them: ergo ignorance of the Gospel in infidels, according to the opinion of the Adversaries, proceeds from the judgment of God punishing and reproving them on account of original sin: and consequently it is a punishment of original sin; and straightway false is what they bring forth, namely, that ignorance of positive law is not culpable, because it is not inflicted in punishment of original sin.

The Adversaries object: various texts of Sacred Scripture, by which they strive to prove that certain deeds done from invincible ignorance are called and held sins: thus Gen. 20, the act of King Abimelech taking Sara in marriage, whom he invincibly ignored to be the wife of Abraham, is called sin. And 1 Kings 14, Jonathan is condemned to death because he had tasted honey contrary to the command of his father unknown to himself. And Luke 12, it is said that the servant who knows not the will of his lord, and does not do it, shall be beaten with few stripes, in comparison with him who knowing the will did it not. And Acts 3, St. Peter reprehends the Jews because they had killed the Author of life: although they did this ignorantly; For if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory, says the Apostle, 1 ad Corinthians 2. Ergo truly invincible ignorance of the natural law must be held culpable. —

I deny the consequence, for nearly all those texts signify ignorance either of fact, or of positive law, which the Adversaries concede excuses from sin; for in the first text the discourse is of the ignorance of Abimelech, who did not know Sara to be the wife of Abraham, which certainly was ignorance of fact. To the condemnation of Jonathan I say it was unjust; for Saul sinned in establishing that precept of so severe a fast under threat of death, but Jonathan did not sin in tasting a little honey in grave necessity, especially since he ignored his father's precept: which even if he had known, nevertheless his fault would have been slight or none, on account of the smallness of the matter, and the grave necessity of eating by which he was pressed, his strength already failing through weariness. Nor does it matter that God, as the same chapter relates, was unwilling to answer as if angry on account of the deed of Jonathan: for God willed by this silence to have Jonathan sought out and betrayed, that he might by openly disclosing to all his ignorance of the precept excuse himself, lest God or Saul seem accepters of persons. Add that that ignorance was of the law laid down by Saul, not of the natural law. As to the third, I say the discourse there is of a servant not wholly ignorant of the precept of his lord, but not equally knowing it, and not sinning from certain science and full advertence; and therefore sinning from vincible ignorance. To the last, I say its sense is that if the Jews had believed in Christ, and had fully acknowledged His Divinity, they would not have committed so great a crime: but their ignorance of this was not invincible, but vincible, and affected and voluntary, as is evident from that John 15: If I had not done works in them which no other man hath done, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.

They object 2. St. Augustine contends keenly against the Pelagians that ignorance is evil, and that things done from it are sins: but he is not speaking of vincible ignorance: since he says the Pelagians often confess that vincible ignorance does not excuse from sin: much less does he treat of invincible ignorance of fact, or of positive law; since elsewhere he teaches that such invincible ignorance wipes away all guilt: therefore St. Augustine must be understood to speak only of ignorance of the natural law whenever he contends keenly against the Pelagians. They prove the major from texts of St. Augustine, most of all from Epistle 15 to Sixtus, where after he had premised: Human pride, as presuming upon the powers of free will, thinks itself excused when it is of ignorance, not of will, that it sins: finally concerning ignorance whether voluntary or necessary, that is, whether vincible or invincible, he concludes thus: wherefore every sinner is inexcusable, either by the guilt of origin, or by the addition also of his own will, whether he knows, or whether he knows not, whether he judges, or whether he judges not: because ignorance itself, in those who would not understand, is without doubt sin; in those however who could not, it is the punishment of sin: therefore in both there is not a just excuse, but a just damnation. Behold, he says every sinner is inexcusable, and his damnation just, whether he sinned because he would not know what the law commands, or because he could not know. They confirm 1. from the fact that the Synod of Palestine condemned this proposition of Caelestius, Oblivion and ignorance do not lie under sin, because they happen not according to will, but according to necessity. But Caelestius, they say, spoke of ignorance of the natural law alone: therefore the Synod holds that ignorance culpable.

They confirm 2. from the fact that St. Jerome, who wrote after that Synod the Dialogue between the Catholic under the name of Atticus, and the Pelagian under the name of Critobulus, confirms by many texts of Scripture the condemnation of that proposition of Caelestius, as legitimately done by the Council; and Critobulus asking whether by this men seemed to accuse human nature, and to cast envy upon God because He fashioned men such that they cannot be free from the sin of oblivion and ignorance, Atticus replies nothing else than that it is written: Seek not the things that are higher than thee, etc., and O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! By which he signifies that the discourse there is of ignorance of the natural law. —

I answer first, that from all these nothing whatever can be gathered against the truth of the Conclusion. For in order that anything might press, it would be necessary to demonstrate: First, that the Pelagians had spoken only of invincible ignorance. Secondly, since invincible ignorance can be threefold, one of fact, another of positive law, a third of natural law, it would be needful also to demonstrate that Pelagius had spoken only of ignorance of the natural law. But neither of these can be gathered, neither from St. Augustine, nor from St. Jerome, nor from the Synod of Palestine. Not indeed from St. Augustine, since he affirms generally against the Pelagians that all ignorance is evil, even ignorance of fact and of positive law, which he luminously teaches lib. 3 Contra Iulianum, c. 19, where, accusing him because he said that ignorance is justice, and proving it by the example of Abimelech to whom God said, I knew that thou didst this with a simple mind: thus does St. Augustine carp at him: Thou attendest not, O man, who seest not that by divine judgment anyone can be chastised not for his own, but for others' sins, how it could have come about that Abimelech sinned, although neither did he sin with adulterous heart, and God held his sin however small in the women pertaining to him. St. Augustine therefore holds that ignorance of fact, such as was that ignorance of Abimelech, even appears evil; since he calls it sin however small; and therefore it is false that St. Augustine said only invincible ignorance of the natural law is evil.

Then St. Augustine says that ignorance is evil which the Pelagians said were the beginnings, not punishments, of nature: but they affirmed this of all invincible ignorance, both of positive law and of natural law. For the Pelagians wished that ignorance and concupiscence were not the punishment of sin, but the beginnings of nature: as St. Augustine testifies, lib. De Dono perseverantiae, cap. 11. They say, he says, the Pelagians that ignorance and difficulty (that is, concupiscence), without which no man is born, are the beginnings, not punishments, of nature. Nay more, they asserted that perfect ignorance, that is, total and invincible, is good, and is called justice: as is to be seen concerning Julian in Augustine, lib. 3 Contra eundem, cap. 19, who to prove this adduced that Gen. 20: Lord, wilt thou kill a just and ignorant nation? And a little after, verse 6: I know that thou didst it in the simplicity of thy heart, and therefore did I keep thee, that thou shouldst not sin against me. And he added: from this it must be understood that perfect ignorance is named justice: because God said to Abimelech, who was about to lie with Sara, ignorant that she was the wife of another: And I knew that thou didst it with a simple mind. Which senseless opinion Augustine refutes both in the same book and in many other places, proving that ignorance and concupiscence are evil because they are appendices of original sin. Nor was he affirming this of ignorance of the natural law alone, seen in adults, but of that ignorance also with which a little child fresh from his mother's womb is overwhelmed: Not knowing where he is, what is done, by whom created, from whom he came, already guilty of offense, not yet capable of precept, wrapped and pressed in so deep a darkness of ignorance that at length he cannot even be roused from sleep, etc. Thus does he describe the ignorance of infants in the lib. De peccatorum meritis, cap. 36, and thus proves it to be the punishment of sin: If it is the nature of man thus to begin, and that nature is no longer vicious: why was not Adam created such? Why was he capable of precept? Therefore St. Augustine does not will, as the Adversaries contend, ig... [truncated]

To the confirmations I say, that the proposition condemned in the Synod of Palestine was general, and comprehended all invincible ignorance, both of fact or of positive law, and of natural law; and therefore if that condemnation presses anything, it militates even against the Adversaries themselves; since they will that invincible ignorance of positive law and of fact is not culpable. Which Antonius Deschamps subtly proves in the book praised above, cap. 2, from the very assertion of the Adversaries; for they affirm, he says, that those words of Caelestius were condemned in that sense which they set forth, because they were not discussed by the Bishops with more accurate examination, but as soon as they were proposed together with others of the same sort, without awaiting even Pelagius' response, the Bishops cried out: This the holy Synod rejects, and the holy Catholic Church of God. Therefore since that sentence of Caelestius speaks universally of every ignorance whatsoever which happens according to necessity, whether it be of fact or of law, it was proscribed also in this sense. —

It is confirmed: if the Fathers of the Synod of Palestine condemned Caelestius' proposition only insofar as it regarded ignorance of the natural law, why do they not note this? Why does St. Augustine, who described the acts of that Synod so as diligently and lucidly to explain each of the frauds of Pelagius by which he mocked the visiting Bishops — why, I say, does he not warn even by a word that Caelestius' proposition is true and Catholic if the discourse be of ignorance of fact or of positive law, but false and heretical if it speaks of ignorance of the natural law? Why finally is that sentence proscribed universally, which, since it has a threefold sense, is true in two, and false only in one? I add that it seems more probable that the Council proscribed rather ignorance of fact and of positive law than of natural law, as is evident both from its own words: for it adds, Since in the Law sacrifices are offered for ignorance as for sin: then from St. Jerome, lib. 1 Dialog. adversus Pelagianos, where, convicting the false dogma of Pelagius, and confirming the sentence of the Synod of Palestine by many testimonies of Scripture, he brings forth almost none other than those which speak of ignorance of fact or of positive law: as that Num. 35, verse 22, where he who kills by chance — suppose one who kills a man believing him to be a beast (which is ignorance of fact) — is commanded to flee to the Cities of Refuge, and there to abide until the High Priest die. And that Levit. 5, verse 2, where he who touches anything unclean which it is not lawful to touch, and it be done to him through ignorance (namely not knowing it to be unclean, which ignorance is of fact, or ignorant of the positive law against touching) and afterward learns of it, shall declare his sin, in which he perceives himself to have sinned. And what he adds from Levit. c. 22, that concerning similar ignorance it is plainly to be understood, if a man eat of the sanctified things through ignorance, iniquity and trespass are imputed to him. And from 1 Kings 12 he adduces to the same end what is said of Jonathan, where the discourse is of ignorance of positive law, namely of the royal precept. Ergo the Synod of Palestine... [truncated]

But invincible ignorance is called sin by Augustine, by the Synod, and by Jerome, not because it is sin properly so called, but in that manner namely in which concupiscence is called sin by the Apostle: namely because concupiscence as well as ignorance are effects of original sin, and lead to sin: but they do not hold that ignorance to be sin as though it were imputed to fault; for St. Augustine confesses that even that ignorance perseveres in the baptized, lib. 16 Contra Iulian., c. 16, speaking of one baptized: He is devoid of every sin, not of every evil. Which is put more plainly thus: He is devoid of every guilt of all evils, not of all evils... Does he lack the evil of ignorance, through which innumerable evils are perpetrated by those who know not? He adds: or is ignorance a small evil, through which man perceiveth not the things that are of the Spirit of God? speaking of course of the baptized, of whom the Apostle said: The sensual man perceiveth not the things that are of the Spirit of God: for it is foolishness unto him. Then he concludes: therefore they had not lacked so great an evil of ignorance in the laver of regeneration, where nevertheless they had without doubt lacked all sins. From which it is evident that the ignorance of which Augustine speaks is not held to be sin properly so called, as the Adversaries wish, since it is not washed away by baptism.

Notandum 1. The exterior cause of sin can be distinguished into a twofold one, namely direct and indirect. The direct is that by which there concurs immediately to sin together with the will of the sinner. The indirect is that which merely allures, persuades, and instigates to sin. Exterior causes can be indirect: extrinsic objects, insofar as they allure to sin; the devil, and man, insofar as they persuade and instigate to sin, by proposing objects, persuading with reasons, commanding, threatening, altering the interior phantasm. But no created thing can be the direct exterior cause of sin; because no creature can concur immediately with the very will of the sinner to the act of sin, except God alone, and therefore concerning Him alone is the present Question moved.

Notandum 2. That God is the cause of sin can be understood in various ways: namely, either insofar as He Himself is the cause of the sinning will; or insofar as He does not impede sin, although He could impede it; or insofar as He Himself would be the total productive cause of sin; or insofar as He would concur immediately with His positive concurrence to the entity and formality of sin; or finally insofar as He Himself would impel the created will to sin, either by His preventing and determining decree; or by concurring to the sinful act in the same manner in which He concurs to good and meritorious acts, by reason of which concurrence He is called the maker and cause of our good works. — But it is certain that God is the cause and maker of the created sinning will, which assuredly, if He did not produce it, sin would not come to be: and accordingly by this reason He could be accounted the maker of sin. It is likewise certain that, by His nod and command over creatures, He could impede all sins, if He so decreed and willed: namely, either by annihilating the will prepared for sin, or by not concurring with the intellect to the cognition and proposition of the object alluring to sin; or by denying His very concurrence to the will, lest it break out into act; or finally by bestowing grace so abundant and efficacious that the will would not only be recalled from the sinful act, but would even tend into the opposite good act. It is certain also that God has never been said by any man to be the total cause of sin; otherwise the created will would be guilty of no sin; since the sinful act would have to be imputed to God alone, in that very manner in which the infusion of grace is attributed not to the created will receiving the grace, but to God alone as its bestower. Likewise, no one doubts that God does not concur directly and immediately to the very formality of the sinful act: especially in the opinion of those who hold with us that the formal reason of sin consists in the simple and bare privation of rectitude: and almost all Theologians confess, against Durandus, that God concurs with a positive concurrence to the physical entity of the sinful act: which opinion Albertus Magnus in 2. dist. 35. art. 1. holds to be so certain that he asserts the opposite was proscribed in his time as heretical; This, he says, namely the opinion by which it is denied that evil acts, insofar as they are acts and entities, are from God as from the first moving and concurring cause, which had prevailed among many of the ancients, has almost withdrawn from the court, and is held heretical by many of the moderns. — Hence especially the present difficulty is moved, whether God can be called the author of sin, insofar as by some special concurrence or impulse He induces the created will to sin.

Notandum 3. Various heretics, and above all the Cerdonians, Marcionites, Priscillianists, and Albigenses, fell into this blasphemous opinion, that with sacrilegious mouth, together with the Manichaeans, they posited two supreme Principles of all things: one indeed good, which was the maker of virtues and good works: the other evil, from whom all evils, both of fault and of punishment, flowed forth. But the heretics of our own time appear so much the worse than these, in that with greater impiety they refer all sins not to an evil god, as those ancient Heresiarchs, but to the good, true, and only God. The author of this execrable assertion was a certain Florinus, by the testimony of S. Irenaeus cited by Bellarmine, lib. 2. De statu peccati, c. 1.; and this diabolical doctrine, long since buried in hell, was recalled by Calvin, the renovator of all heresies. For although he does not openly put forward that God is the author of sin, yet he expressly teaches the thing; for he asserts that all the sins of men come to pass not only with God permitting, but also willing, commanding, instigating, and predeficient from eternity. Hence in lib. 1. Institutionum, cap. 18., mocking the common distinction of Theologians between doing and permitting, he says,

It seems absurd that a man should be blinded by the willing and commanding God, who soon after is to pay the penalties for his own deeds: and so by tergiversation they flee to the mere permission, and not also the will, of God that this be done.

And num. 2. he says: The will of God is so the cause of all things, and His providence the moderator in all the counsels and works of men, that He exercises it not only with His own in the elect, but also compels the reprobate into obedience. And lib. 2. cap. 1. num. 3. he distinctly affirms that God destines Satan, the minister of His wrath, and the counsels of the impious, to the executing of His judgments, whereby it comes to pass both to excite the will and to firm the endeavors. And lib. 3. cap. 23. num. 8. he says: Man therefore falls by the providence of God so ordering. And num. 9. he adds, That the necessity of sinning is inflicted by the ordination of God. Against which blasphemy let there be

The single Conclusion. — GOD IS IN NO WISE TO BE CALLED THE AUTHOR AND CAUSE OF SIN.

This Conclusion is of faith, and Catholics prove it against the Heretics

First, by various oracles of Sacred Scripture, in which it is openly said that God does not will, but hates sins, nor commands them, but forbids them, nor impels men to the perpetration of them, but repels them: thus Psalm 5. Not thou, O God, who dost cherish iniquity. Ezekiel 18. Is it my will that is the death of the impious? Habakkuk 1. Thine eyes are pure, so as not to behold evil, and thou canst not look upon iniquity. But how could He be said not to will iniquity, not to look upon evil, if He willed it, decreed it, commanded it, ordered its execution? Wisdom 11. Thou hatest none of the things which thou hast made. And 11. The impious man and his impiety are an abomination to God. But in what way would impiety be hateful, if He so greatly procured that it be put in execution? Or in what way would God not be said to hate those, and to have willed their death, whom from Himself, independently of their wills, He had by His eternal, predeterminative decree destined to sins, for which He had prepared various modes and means, whereby He would impel men? Moreover Ecclesiasticus 15. He commanded no man to do wickedly. Jeremiah 19. They have built the high places of Baalim, which I commanded not: neither did I speak, nor did they come up into my heart. Where, that he may show how alien it is from the will of God to will sins, the Prophet not only says that God does not command them, but that He does not even know them. For God says of Himself that He is ignorant of them, as S. Jerome says on this passage, because He accounts them great things for His knowledge to esteem, according to that of Luke 12. I know you not, depart from me, ye workers of iniquity. But if God accounts sins unworthy of His knowledge, by what reason could He will them of Himself? James 1. Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted of God; for God is not a tempter of evils: but He Himself tempteth no man. Ecclesiasticus 15. Say not: He hath entangled me. But what greater entanglement than to predestine men to sins, to which He would impel and necessitate them? — But that all sins whatsoever come to pass not with God impelling, nor decreeing, but only permitting, is most clearly defined, first indeed in the Council of Orange, cap. 23., where the Fathers decree,

We do not believe that some are predestinated to evil by the divine will; and if there be anyone who so believes, with every detestation we pronounce anathema against him.

And most clearly in the Council of Trent, Sess. 6. Canon 6. If anyone shall say that it is not in the power of man to make his ways evil, but that the evil works, as well as the good, God worketh; not permissively only, but properly and of Himself, so that His own work it is, no less the betrayal of Judas than the calling of Paul: let him be anathema.

But lest the heretics thrust upon us the assertion that this doctrine of the Council of Trent, whereby the divine permission is distinguished from the will, is a recent dogma of the Schoolmen, it is pleasing to confirm this very distinction by the Oracles of the SS. Fathers. First of all, therefore, Tertullian against Hermogenes,

Now therefore, he says, evil is from Him who is the author of evil; if not the author, because not the effecter, certainly the permittor, because the dominator.

Chrysostom, Homil. 8. on the second Epistle to Timothy, in the 2. part of the Moralia. Know this only, he says, that God provideth all things, that we are made of free will, that He worketh some things indeed, but permitteth others, that He willeth nothing evil to be done: that not all things are done from His will alone, but from ours also; all evils from ours only: all goods from our will and His assistance. Augustine, lib. 13. De Trinitate, cap. 12. But that mode, he says, whereby man was delivered into the power of the devil, ought not to be understood as if God had done this, or commanded it to be done; but only permitted it. Fulgentius, lib. 8. ad Monimum, cap. 13. Any sin, he says, could be from the predestination of God, if any of men could justly sin; but none of men sins justly, although God justly permits him to sin. Damascene, lib. 2. De Fide, cap. 29. Therefore the first preceding will, and acceptance, is said to exist from Himself: but the second following will, and permission, to exist on account of us. And a little after: Evils, he says, He neither wills antecedently, nor consequently wills; yet He leaves the free choice open to them.

This truth very many Theologians prove in the usual way with many reasons, several of which the Doctor rejects and impugns as invalid and insufficient in 1. dist. 37. qu. 1. and 2., and adds that this truth is sufficiently proved by the following reason: Whenever two partial causes concur to some effect that is deficient, that defect can be from one of those causes, without its proceeding from the other. Thus, for example, since, as very many hold, the cognition of the intellect concurs with the will to the eliciting of a volition physically, there can be a defect in the very volition on the part of the will, without its being attributed to the intellect. For indeed even with the intellect rightly persuading, the will at its own choice can either suspend the acts, or command the intellect to turn itself to the opposite object:

So therefore, says the Doctor, qu. 2. num. 17, by parity, if two wills concur to the willing of a created volition, namely the created and the divine will: there can be a defect in the very willing from the defect of the other cause, and this, because that cause could give rectitude to the act, which it is bound to give, and yet does not give it: the other, indeed, although it is not bound to give it, nevertheless as far as in itself lies, would give it, if the created will cooperated. For universally whatever God gives antecedently, He would give consequently as far as in itself lies, unless there were an impediment: but in giving a free will, He gave antecedently the right works, which are in the power of the will, and therefore as far as His part is concerned, He gives rectitude to every act of the will, and He would give it consequently to the will, if the will rightly elicited whatever act from its own part. Therefore the defect in the effect of two causes is not on account of the defect of the superior cause, but of the inferior; not because the superior cause causes rectitude in the effect, and the inferior obliquity: but because the superior cause as far as in itself lies would cause it, if the inferior cause caused according to its own causality, and therefore rectitude is not caused for this reason, because the second, as far as pertains to itself, does not cause.

By which the Doctor expressly explains that although God concurs positively to the physical entity of the sinful act, nevertheless the defect and privation of rectitude of that act ought not to be ascribed to Him, but to the created will, because He does not concur to the act as a determinative particular cause, but as born to concur through the created will.

This proof is confirmed, and at the same time the preceding reason is strengthened: That anyone be truly and properly accounted to sin, three things are required in his act: First, that his action be repugnant to the law, because sin is nothing else than the transgression of the law, and it is beyond controversy that the action is not evil which is repugnant to no law: but by law we understand not only the written law, but also that inscribed naturally and eternal. The second is, that the action be done by a free cause. For this reason brute animals, children, fools, and those asleep do not sin, although they do those things which seem to be shameful, and conflict with the rule of right reason, as parrots which utter blasphemy. The third, that he who does the shameful action do it not only freely, but as a particular cause; for the universal cause, since it is indifferent to this action and to that, cannot be said to be that from which the action is specially, but only from the particular, from which it proceeds, although the universal concurs. Therefore since the deformity which is seen in sin follows upon the particular action, it cannot be referred to the universal cause, but properly to the particular. And certainly when monsters arise, no one says that the cause ought to be referred to Heaven, or to the sun; but only to the proximate cause: for the universal cause no more infuses the effect into this one than into that one; but only the particular. Therefore just as the sin of nature is attributed to the proximate cause — for by Heaven it did not stand, but that perfect man should be produced, but the impediment existed in the proximate cause — so although God concurs with man to any action whatsoever, as the universal cause, always holding Himself in the same manner as immutable and unchangeable, it can easily be understood how He is the cause of the action, and yet is not the cause of the sin. For He is truly the cause of the action, because He truly concurs to its entity; nevertheless He is not to be called the cause of the sin, because He concurs to that action only with a universal concurrence, which does not determine the created will to that evil action, but rather is determined by it.

Answer. the created will cannot be accounted determinative of the divine will to the sinful act: for it would determine either by its entity, or by its activity and its concurrence: but neither can be affirmed. Not indeed the first: for if the created will determined the divine will to the physical and material entity of the sinful act by its entity, the consequence would be that a good act could nowhere be made. For indeed the very entity of the will, of itself tending to the sinful act, would always determine to the same concurrence of the divine will. The second also cannot be said; for the created will cannot be accounted to determine the divine by its activity and its concurrence, unless the concurrence of that created will be accounted prior to the concurrence of the divine will; but this no Theologian nor Philosopher will admit: otherwise God would not be the first cause: wherefore the created will is by no means accounted determinative of the divine will to the sinful act, and accordingly the preceding reason of the Subtle Doctor appears void. — But truly I answer, that nothing is inferred thence against the truth of the aforesaid reason, nor is its force broken; for the created will is said to determine the divine will to the entity of the evil act only to this extent, not that it truly determines it, as indifferent to that act, by an exigency and influx proceeding from its entity or activity, whereby it would move it: for this implies a contradiction: but God is said to be determined by the created will to concur to the eliciting of the entity of the evil act for this reason, because indeed in those circumstances in which the evil act is elicited, He foresees that the created will, if it could act without any divine concurrence, and were of itself the total cause of its own act, would elicit that sinful act. Whence, since He Himself is the universal cause, upon whom it lies to supply every actual concurrence to causes prepared for acting, hence it comes to pass that He supplies that concurrence to the created will for eliciting the evil act, as often as He sees it will be of itself determined to that act, such circumstances being posited; and consequently that determination is rather to be referred back to the created than to the divine will.

It is proved 2. To this extent could God be called the cause of sin, insofar as He either necessitated the will physically or morally to the eliciting of the sinful act: or induced it to the same by praises and precepts: or finally because He counseled that act: but neither of these can be affirmed. Not indeed the first; both because if He thus necessitated the created will to the sinful act, that act would no longer be accounted free, and therefore not morally evil either; and because He does not thus necessitate to the good act: but it is absurd that God, infinitely good, should more necessitate to evil than to good; and finally because sin supremely displeases God: therefore He induces to it neither physically nor morally; for it seems absurd from the very terms that supreme goodness should determine morally or physically to that which supremely displeases it, and which it forbids to be done. The second and third also cannot be said. For it is certain from Scripture and the Oracles of the SS. Fathers praised above, that God forbids and dissuades sin, even under the gravest penalties: therefore He neither commands nor counsels it, otherwise He would command and not command, persuade and not persuade. Next, if God commanded or persuaded sin, it would be good, and would not be sin; which is repugnant: because without doubt, he who does what God commands or forbids, does well; nor can any safer rule of acting well be shown, than that the thing to be done be commanded or counseled by God: just as no better rule of doing evil can be shown, than that the action to be done be forbidden, or dissuaded by God. Finally, third: if God induced man to sin, He would do this either willing or unwilling: not unwilling, because He does nothing against His will, but worketh all things according to the counsel of His own will; nor yet willing: Because, as the Royal Prophet says, not thou, O God, willing iniquity: therefore by no reason does He induce man to sin. It is confirmed; if God were the author or cause of sin, it would follow that He would will man to will that which He would not will him to will. He would indeed will it, if He ordained him to sin, and induced him to sin. But He would not will it, because He forbids sin to be done: therefore He would at once will the same thing and not will it; which implies a contradiction. Finally, if God induced the created will to sin, it would follow that it was at once just and unjust. Just indeed, because, as S. Anselm says, lib. De libero arbitrio, cap. 8., just is the will of man by which he wills that which God wills him to will; unjust on the contrary, by which he wills that which God does not will him to will: but that the will be at once just and unjust with respect to the same thing implies a contradiction: therefore it is equally repugnant that God induce the created will to sin.

The Heretics object 1. with various texts of Scripture, by which certain sins are attributed to God as to a cause, and thus argue: he is truly to be accounted the author and cause of sin, not only physical but also moral, who decrees, commands, orders, and counsels sin to be done: but God performs all these things: therefore he is truly to be accounted the author of sin. This major stands from what has been said: they prove the minor: first indeed that God decrees sin, appears from Genesis 15., where Joseph says to his brethren, by whom he had been treacherously sold: Not by your counsel, but by the will of God, was I sent hither. And cap. 49., addressing the same, he says: Will you fear? can we resist the will of God? by which words he signifies that the crime of his brethren was to be excused; because that selling had been decreed and ordained by God. The same they confirm from Acts 2., where S. Peter, addressing the Jews who had crucified Christ, says He was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God: and again cap. 4.¹ They were gathered together in this city against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the peoples of Israel, to do what thy hand and thy counsel decreed to be done. But that God sometimes commands sin, is urged from 2. Kings, cap. 16., where David says of Semei cursing him: The Lord commanded him to curse David: but that cursing, which he there calls most wicked, was without doubt a sin; and accordingly God commands sin. Moreover in 3. Kings, in the last chapter, we read that when the Lord inquired: Who shall deceive Achab? the devil offered himself, and said: I shall deceive… and I shall be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his Prophets: to whom the Lord said, Thou shalt deceive, and shalt prevail: go forth, and do so. Finally, that God orders and counsels sin, Sacred Scripture itself indicates, especially from Psalm 104. He converted their heart, that they should hate his people. And Psalm 118. Incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness. Moreover God is said to blind men, harden, deceive, deliver up to a reprobate sense. Thus Exodus 7. The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh. Isaiah 63. Why hast thou made us to err from thy ways? Thou hast hardened our heart, that we should not fear thee. John 12. Therefore they could not believe, because Isaias said again; He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart: therefore God is truly to be accounted the maker of sin. — I deny the minor: and to its first proof I say, that in these and similar works of God two things are especially to be considered: namely, the end which God intends, and the means by which He commits the intended end to execution. Thus in the selling of Joseph, and the death of Christ, the proximate end was the exaltation of Joseph, and the redemption of the human race: but the means were the very selling of Joseph, and the crucifixion of Christ. The first God intends per se, and predefined by His eternal decree independently of the will of men; because indeed that is per se good: the second, however, was only permitted on account of the foreknowledge of the future sin: for the wicked future will having been foreseen, both of the brethren of Joseph selling him, and of the Jews crucifying Christ, God decreed to permit both this and that sinful action for the greater glory of Christ Himself and of Joseph: which indeed S. Leo excellently declares, Serm. 16. De Passione Domini, where, having said: Is the iniquity of the persecutors of Christ arisen from the counsel of God? He answers:

This plainly is not to be thought of the supreme justice, because that is very diverse, and very contrary, which was foreknown in the malice of the Jews, and which was disposed in the Passion of Christ. Thence came not the will of killing, whence came the dying; nor did the atrocity of the crime and the patience of the Redeemer arise from one spirit: for the Lord did not commit the impious hands of the raging unto Himself, but admitted them: nor by foreknowing > what was to be done doth He compel it to be done, although He had taken flesh for this end, that it should be done.

To the second I say, that this is the manner of Scripture, that it sometimes signifies that God does and commands that which He merely permits and allows, as appears from the law of divorce given to the Jews, Deuteronomy 24.; for that law, which Christ calls a simple permission, Matthew 19. Because Moses, he says, by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: the same he calls a precept, Mark 10. For Christ, addressing the Pharisees, says: What did Moses command you? And when they said: Moses permitted a bill of divorce: Christ answering said: By reason of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept: from which it appears that the same dismissal of a wife is called both a permission and a precept. But God is therefore sometimes said to command the same, because in the permission of evil God always intends some good: for, as Augustine says in the Enchiridion, cap. 100: the good would not permit evils to be done, unless the Omnipotent were able even from evil to do good: making good use of evils also, as supremely good, for the damnation of those whom He has justly predestinated to punishment: and for the salvation of those whom He has benignly predestinated to glory. Hence S. Basil says in the Homily in which he shows that God is not the author of sins: As a physician uses poison to kill a beast, which he himself did not make, so God uses the malice of man, of which nevertheless He Himself is not the author. Whence S. Augustine on Psalm 61. Think not that the evil are in this world in vain, and that God does nothing good by them: for every evil man lives either for this, that he may be corrected, or for this, that the good may be exercised by him. From these things all those texts are easily solved, in which God is said to order sin: for He orders it only to this extent, that He permits those things to be done, and deduces from them some good. To the last I say, that God indeed sometimes hardens men, not positively, as if He turned the mind away from good, and induced it into evil by some depraved quality infused: but only privatively, namely by withdrawing the congruous assistance, which being removed, the mind is not instructed divinely to see aright, nor is the heart allured to live honestly. Which indeed S. Augustine openly teaches, Epist. 105. ad Sixtum, in these words: God doth not turn aside by imparting malice: but by not bestowing mercy. And in tractate 53. on John: Thus, he says, doth God exercise, thus doth He harden by forsaking, not by adjuring, which He can do by hidden judgment, nay, cannot. In this manner also God is said to deceive, and to deliver up to a reprobate sense: namely, by forsaking man for a just cause, and despoiling him of a more abundant and special aid of grace.

The Heretics object 2. S. Augustine, who in various places seems to teach that God induces to sin. Thus lib. De correptione et gratia, cap. 14., where he openly testifies that Christ chose Judas to the shedding of His blood. When, he says, we hear: Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? those we must understand to be chosen through mercy, that one through judgment. Those therefore He chose to obtain His kingdom, that one to shed His blood. And lib. De gratia, et libero arbitrio, cap. 20., he teaches that the wills of men are so in the power of God, that He makes them to incline whithersoever He will, whenever He will, either to benefits to be bestowed on certain ones, or to certain punishments to be inflicted: and he understands by punishments there, the sins themselves, for thus he subjoins: We are not ignorant that certain sins are even punishments > for punishments of sins, as are the vials of wrath, which the Apostle says perfected unto perdition: as is the hardening of Pharaoh, whose heart is also said to be blinded in it by the power of God. And speaking there of Semei cursing David by the mandate of God: His will, he says, He inclined to evil proper in this sin, by His own just and hidden judgment. And cap. 21. he concludes at length thus: Sufficiently, I judge, is it manifested that God worketh in the hearts of men to incline their wills whithersoever He will, either to goods on account of His mercy, or to evils on account of their merits.

I answer to the first, that the mind of S. Augustine is that Judas was chosen to the shedding of the blood of Christ, not antecedently, but consequently: because indeed the perverse will of the latter, foreseen from eternity as determined to the betrayal of Christ, God nevertheless willed for the work of redemption to be accomplished. This ordination of the evil will of Judas to the completing of the redemption is called by Augustine an election; not that it is an ordination of that will to sin, but that it is a destination of the same will, already depraved and about to sin, to the work of redemption to be consummated. Which indeed S. Augustine signified in the words immediately preceding, saying:

For from that election is He, who knoweth well how to use even evils, that through his damnable work, that work for the sake of which He Himself had come, the venerable work, might be fulfilled.

By which words he does not say that He chose the will of Judas to the accomplishing of the work of redemption, but that He, having foreseen it would sin, used it for the consummating of the work of redemption. The other authorities I say, S. Augustine wills only this, not that God makes the evil wills of men evil, and inclines them to sin, but only that He orders those evil by their own fault unto good, as is clear from his words.

The Heretics object 3. God is the per se cause of the entity of the sinful act: therefore He is also the cause of sin. The Doctor proves the antecedent in 2. d. 37. q. 1. n. 1. Both because, he says, the sinful act is some being, and not from itself: therefore from another, and thus from God: And because to give alms, to preach Christ, to work miracles, to beget a son, are works of the same reason in natural being, whether they be done well morally or ill: therefore they have a cause of the same reason as to their natural being: but God is the cause of those acts when they are morally good: therefore also when they are morally evil. The consequence is also evident: for to this extent the created will is accounted the cause of the sinful act as it is sin, because it is the cause of all the positive entity of that sinful act: therefore since God is also the cause of that entity, He will likewise be the cause of the formality of sin. — I deny the consequence; but the reason of the disparity, why God, although He concurs to the entity of the sinful act just as the created will does, is nevertheless not accounted the cause of sin as the latter is, various authors bring forward variously, as may be seen in Pontrius in the Comment. on the aforesaid question of the Subtle Doctor; Veraerius disp. 21. Sect. 2. Martinonius disp. 22. Sect. 8: but omitting the opinions of others, I answer that the genuine reason of this diversity is to be sought from this, that God does not concur to the very sinful act materially, or formally with a determining physical concurrence, and as a particular cause, but only with a general concurrence, which He ought to bestow as the universal cause, determined by the created will to the eliciting of that very sinful act: and because moreover God does not concur to that act morally, namely by persuading and commanding it, but rather deters from it by prohibition, commination, illuminations, and pious motions to the opposite. Nor does He will that sinful act with an antecedent will, but rather wills it not to be; nor did He implant natural powers for that end, and make nature possessed of reason and free will in order that it might sin; but that it might live according to the prescription of right reason. Whence, since He exhibits His concurrence, He intends its good use: and therefore while He concurs physically and immediately to the evil act, He performs this beyond His first intention, and to accommodate Himself to the liberty of the creature, permitting it to work according to the condition of its nature, and to exercise the natural dominion over its own acts, without which its acts could be neither morally good nor morally evil: wherefore He exhibits that concurrence as if against His will. Wherefore Isaiah 43., to the sinner He thus upbraids: But thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities. The Doctor adds, dist. 37. qu. 2. n. 20., that not

on this account is sin imputed to the created will, because it itself by acting causes the defect; but because it itself is bound to act rightly, inasmuch as the effect is under its own power, and does not act rightly; but not thus is the divine will bound; and from this it cannot sin of itself; nor can it itself first fail by not causing with respect to the rectitude owed in the act, such that it then becomes owed, when it is not from the defect of the created will.

That is, therefore the malice of sin is not to be ascribed to God, but to the created will, because the created will, since it is subject to the law, and ought to conform itself to it in the acts elicited, is also bound to attribute to its own act rectitude or conformity with the law: but God, since He is subject to no law, ought not to attribute that rectitude to the act to which He concurs; nevertheless He would attribute it if man willed, because of Himself He would will to make all the works of men right, if men themselves also willed this, and did not resist His divine will.

You will urge: God concurs only as the universal cause to the good act: nor is He any less accounted the cause of that good act morally: therefore by parity of reason, He will be accounted the cause of the evil action morally; since He concurs to it with a general concurrence. — I deny the parity, for God is held to concur far otherwise to morally good actions than to evil actions; for good actions, if they be supernatural, are done by God through a special assistance, and have from Him that they are supernatural. But if they be good only morally, they are indeed from God through the general assistance; nevertheless two things are attributed to Him on their account: first indeed because they are intended by Him; namely to this end He created us, and endowed us with free will and supplies the general assistance, that we might use these things rightly for conducting life according to the dictamen of right reason; although He permits that we do otherwise, even if it should please us: secondly because God persuades, commands, praises good actions, and exhorts and invites to them: but by a similar reason an evil action cannot be attributed to God, because He neither intends it, nor commands it; nay rather He disapproves, forbids, deters from it, and turns away from it.

You will press: That which is the cause of the cause is also the cause of the caused: but God is the cause of the entity of the action, from which the deformity of sin arises: therefore He is also the cause of that deformity itself. — I distinguish the major: that which is the cause of the cause in the physical genus, is also the cause of the caused in the same genus, I concede: that which is the cause of the cause in the physical genus, is also the cause of the caused, or of the effect, or as it were the effect, in the moral genus, I deny. And thus the minor being distinguished, the consequence must be denied: for God concurs only to the physical entity of the action, but not to its deformity, which is a certain moral thing; not indeed positive, but privative; nor is it an effect, but rather a defect: whence, as we warned above, it has not an efficient cause, but a deficient one. Other similar instances we have already solved, both in the Disputation on divine providence; and likewise in the treatise on Causes, as may be seen in our Academica Philosophia.

The Heretics object 4. It often happens that one sin is the punishment of another sin, as S. Augustine expressly proves, lib. 5. contra Iulianum, cap. 3. and 4: but God is the author of every punishment inflicted upon creatures; therefore He is also to be accounted the author of sin, which is the punishment of another. — I answer first, that sin can be considered in a twofold manner; namely, either insofar as it proceeds from the will, and is a certain action; or insofar as it is received in the will itself, and is called a passion. In the former manner it is not a punishment, but a fault; for punishment signifies not action, but passion. But in the latter manner it can be called a punishment, not indeed properly: for every punishment properly so called is simply involuntary; but sin is voluntary; yet it is called a punishment in a broader manner, and improperly, insofar as it deprives of the due rectitude, and likewise of the aids and divine charisms to be conceded by God to the soul, if sin were not in it. The Doctor answers secondly, d. 3. qu. 2. n. 25., distinguishing the minor: every positive punishment is from God effectively, he concedes: every privative punishment, he denies: for from Him these do not proceed except permissively, and with Him denying the more abundant aids:

For punishment, says the Doctor, is spoken of in two ways: in one way insofar as it is the privation of a good convenient to an intellectual nature, such as is the privation of the vision and fruition of God: and this is pure privation. In another way something positive, and yet disconvenient to such a nature, can be called punishment: as excessive heat is something positive disconvenient to flesh. All punishments spoken of in the second way can be posited by God, because they are something positive, and of these must be understood that which is in the first Retract. cap. 25. and 26.; for he says: In the good works of God, those punitive works are good, although they are evil for those punished, because they are disconvenient to them. But punishments of the first way are not from God as efficient, because they are not effectible; nor from Him as first deficient, but only on account of the demerit of the will in the act of sin, not compelling the will now to have that good to which He would have wrought, as far as in itself lies. Such a punishment therefore is from God not inflicting, or effecting, nor first deficient, but deserting, that is, leaving the nature by which it fails in its own defect, and in all the defects consequent upon that defect, wherein are included many privations of perfections convenient to such a nature: thus therefore the punishment, which is sin, is not from God as efficient, or first deficient; but only from God deserting the will on account of the first demerit, which, deserted by God, falls into the second demerit.

By the connections of sins I understand their connection or disjunction; equality or inequality; gravity or lightness: that these may be made clear,

Notandum 1. It is certain that not all sins are connected with one another; for some are contrary to others and at variance with them, such as prodigality and avarice, nor is it necessary that one who commits one be said to admit all the rest. For he who steals does not on that account blaspheme against God, nor is he guilty of adultery. Add that since the objects of sins are goods desirable, and these diverse and disparate, there is no need that one who desires one desire the others: nor therefore ought one who is illicitly detained about one object to be engaged also in undue desire about the others. Nor does that saying of St. James, chapter 2, stand against this truth: Whosoever shall keep the whole law, but offend in one point, is become guilty of all: for the sense of that oracle is that whoever transgresses one precept of the divine law becomes a transgressor of the law, which he ought to have fulfilled in its entirety: and he is guilty of all according to something [secundum quid], namely according to aversion from God the lawgiver, who commanded all those precepts, as the same Apostle signifies when he adds: For he that said, Thou shalt not commit adultery, said also, Thou shalt not kill: wherefore he who transgresses one precept seems to depart from the whole law, because he turns away from the author of the law. Or, as St. Augustine expounds, Epistle 21, since the bond of charity is the beginning of the whole law to be kept, and this is lost by one mortal sin, he who offends in one precept is judged guilty of all, because plainly he has not charity: for love is the fulfilling of the law. Or, as others add, he is said to be guilty of all, because he is stripped and despoiled of sanctifying grace, which is the life of the soul, and he incurs the guilt of eternal damnation, as if he had struck in all things. Wherefore I judge that nothing here remains to be said concerning a necessary connection of sins with one another. There occurs, therefore, only this to be determined here, from what source the gravity or lightness of sins, their equality and inequality, must be sought.

Notandum 2. From the Seraphic Doctor, book 2 of the Compendium of Theology, chapter 5: that one sin is said to be greater than another in many ways: namely by causality, as the sin of Lucifer: or by generality, as the sin of Adam: or by deformity, as the sin of Judas: or by difficulty of remission, as sin against the Holy Ghost: or by perilousness, as the sin of ignorance: or by inseparability, as the sin of cupidity: or by proneness, as the sin of the flesh: or by offensiveness, as the sin of idolatry: or by difficulty of expiation, as the sin of pride: or by blindness of mind, as the sin of anger. He admonishes further that there is no sin in the perfect man which is not sin in the imperfect, save in those things which he knows: for perfection does not change the species of sin: but it increases its quantity.

Notandum 3. By the name of the gravity of sin nothing else is understood than a certain manner and measure of malice, by reason of which a sin is said to be more or less disconsonant with rational nature, and also more or less offensive to God. For the moral magnitude of the depravity which inheres in sin is called gravity, and it derives from the fact that, as it were by its weight, it draws sinners from the highest good down to misery. Moreover, a twofold gravity is assigned by Theologians in sin, namely one essential or specific, the other accidental. The accidental is again subdivided into intensive and extensive. The first is that which a sin has from its own depraved species: the other is that which accrues to it accidentally, or which comes upon an act already constituted in its species. The intensive, moreover, is that which it has from the intensification of the act: the extensive, however, is that which it takes either from the duration of the same act, or from the quantity and multiplication of the object, or from other circumstances, to which may be reduced the manner of acting on account of, namely, greater or lesser liberty and advertence.

First Conclusion. — Not all sins are of equal malice, but one is graver than another. This is of faith against the Stoic Philosophers, who, as Tully relates in the third Paradox, taught that all sins are equal, and that he who killed a cock when there was no need sinned no less than he who smothered his father. Various heretics followed them, especially Jovinian, as is evident from St. Jerome, in the book published against him.

And it is proved from Sacred Scripture, which expressly declares one sin greater and graver than another. Thus Lamentations 4: The iniquity of the daughter of my people is made greater than the sin of Sodom. Jeremiah 3: They have wrought worse than their fathers. And John 19, Christ the Lord addressing Pilate, who was gravely sinning in condemning Him to death, says of Judas the traitor: Therefore he that hath delivered me to thee hath the greater sin: it is evident that this same truth holds in all those texts of Scripture, and likewise in the oracles of the Holy Fathers, by which we proved above that some sins are mortal: others venial; and that these are of lighter, those of graver offense.

The same assertion is proved by reason: Sins are specified, since they take their malice from the objects about which they are illicitly engaged, or from the virtues against which they militate: now certain objects befit rational nature more than others do: similarly certain virtues are more excellent than others; and therefore sins too ought to be graver one than another. Then, among virtues and good works there is an inequality of perfection, and they are rewarded diversely and unequally: therefore the same inequality between the vices opposed to them must necessarily be established: for contraries and opposites have the same reason. Finally, a sin is judged graver by how much a greater good it takes away: and the offense is greater by how much worthier a person it afflicts: consequently it is graver to kill a man than to take away his goods unjustly; for life is a more excellent good than any other temporal goods: so too it is worse to blaspheme against God and offer irreverence to Him than to injure a common man; for God infinitely excels man.

You will say 1: Sin is a transgression of a precept: whence the sinner performs the same thing in morals, transgressing the rectitude prescribed by the law, as one who in physics should leap over the fixed terminus of a line: but that transgression consists in an indivisible: and consequently, just as it matters not for leaping over a line whether one recede farther or less far; for either way it is true that he transgresses the fixed terminus: therefore equally since all sins transgress the rule of reason, they must necessarily be equal, although they transgress it more or less — I distinguish the major: sin is a transgression of the law considered only generically and universally, I deny; considered specifically and in the individual, I concede. But since precepts and laws according to their particular reason can be of greater or lesser moment, even their transgressions can be of greater or lesser malice: for although the law considered generically prohibits every sin universally with equal force; nevertheless this or that law considered singly and in particular can prohibit one sin more than another; e.g., avarice more than prodigality, or conversely: therefore although each would be a transgression of the precept of liberality, and would agree in that generic respect, yet one of those transgressions could be of one species and the other of another; and for this reason they can be mutually disconsonant, and one more sinful than the other.

You will say 2: Sin is the privation of rectitude, which ought to inhere in the act: but one privation no more takes away rectitude than any other: therefore one sin is not graver than another. — I deny the minor: for although one privation does not take away rectitude more than another, yet one can take away a better rectitude than another; namely if it be the privation of a nobler virtue: and by reason of this privation, the sin with which it is connected is judged graver than another, not because rectitude is more taken away by it than by another, but because a more excellent rectitude is removed, namely by the taking away of the greater perfection which would have been in the act, if that act had been an act of a nobler virtue.

Second Conclusion. — The gravity and inequality of sins is determined sometimes from opposition to a nobler or less noble virtue: sometimes truly from a more excellent object; sometimes from precepts: and also from certain joined circumstances. This Conclusion has three parts, all of which the Doctor teaches in book 2, dist. 21, q. 2, n. 3, saying: The gravity of sin is concluded either from this, that it is opposed to a more intense goodness: or because the goodness opposed is more necessary, namely because such a sin is more against more precepts, and more arduous ones, than another sin etc. As if he said: the gravity of sin as regards its intrinsic species is determined either from this, that it be opposed to a more perfect goodness, that is, a more excellent virtue; whence it comes that since the perfection of divine love is greater than the perfection of obedience, therefore it is graver to hate God than not to obey Him: and because it is more excellent to obey God than to render to one's neighbor what is his, therefore the sin of disobedience toward God is graver than injustice toward one's neighbor. Or, as he adds, the gravity or lightness of sin is gathered sometimes from this, that it bears upon the act of a virtue which is more necessary by reason of more precepts by which it is commanded or prohibited; thus it is graver not to obey God when He commands something which is to be kept by the law of nature, because it is more necessary, or because the obligation of keeping two precepts, namely positive and natural, is greater and stricter than of keeping one alone.

But that a greater gravity of sin also sometimes arises from circumstances, he teaches in the same place, num. 1, saying: A sin can be aggravated by an accidental circumstance, on account of the excellence and dignity of the person, who on this account ought the more to guard against sin: likewise on account of fortitude and the ability to resist. Whence if two committed one sin: and one did not have so perfect a knowledge of the malice of the sin as the other, nor was so strong to resist, nor had so great an obligation of avoiding the sin, it would follow from those circumstances that his sin would be lighter than the other's.

I have said, however: that sometimes one sin is graver than another from this, that it is opposed to a nobler virtue; for, as Poncius rightly observes in the appendix to dist. 35, num. 101, it is not universally true that a sin is always judged graver from this, that it excludes a more excellent virtue; for the sin of blasphemy is graver than not loving God, when one is bound to elicit an act of love: nevertheless religion, to which blasphemy is opposed, is less perfect than charity, to which the defect of the love of God is opposed. Again, to kill a man is a graver sin than not hearing Mass on a feast day; and yet justice, to which homicide is opposed, is not a virtue more excellent than religion, which obliges to hearing Mass. Finally, prodigality is a greater or lesser vice than avarice, and yet it is not opposed to a more perfect virtue; for each of them, according to the common opinion of the Philosophers, bears upon liberality.

To these add, that sometimes a sin opposed to an inferior virtue by reason of quantity or deliberation is graver than some sin opposed to a nobler virtue in a slight matter, or committed with imperfect advertence and deliberation: thus light negligence against the virtue of religion is a less grave sin than the theft of a thousand gold pieces, which is opposed to justice; for every mortal sin is graver than any venial sin. Similarly, although the virtue be more excellent, yet if its acts are not so necessary, even the omission of them is not so grave as would be the omission of an act more necessary of an interior virtue: thus to omit an act of gratitude or charity lightly necessary is a less sin than to omit an act of restitution most necessary. Hence it comes that concerning the gravity or lightness of sin scarcely any general rules can be laid down: but each must be gathered according to the dictamen of reason, and of a prudent man, sometimes from the more excellent virtue, at other times from the nobler objects upon which the sin bears, sometimes from various concurrent precepts, and also from joined circumstances.