Summa summae S. Thomae, Tomus II

I say 1° : No sin formally taken, even venial, can exist in and from the sensitive appetite alone, without some actual influx at least interpretative of the will.

It is proved 1°. Aug., lib. de vera Religione, c. 14, n. 27, says: « Either it must be denied that sin is committed, or it must be acknowledged that it is committed by the will. » And lib. de Duabus animabus, cap. 10, n. 14, says: « Sin is committed only by the will. »

St. Thomas, here a. 2, ad 1, already cited: « Sin is not committed except by the will, as by the first mover; but sin is committed by the other powers as moved by it. »

It is proved 2°. There cannot be sin, even venial, in the sensitive appetite, unless at least the will can impede its motion, as St. Thomas expressly teaches, in II Sentent., dist. 24, q. 3, a. 2, o, and the adversaries themselves also confess, who for that very reason deny that the primo primi motions are sins, because, since they anticipate all reason and are without advertence, the will cannot impede them. But by this very fact that the will can impede and does not impede, it inflows interpretatively and consents. Therefore. Whence the adversaries either speak inconsequently, or dispute about a word.

You will say 1° : St. Thomas, here q. 74, a. 3, ad 3, says: « The motion of sensuality that anticipates reason is a venial sin. » Q. 25 de Veritate, a. 5, ad 5: « It is not said to be sin in sensuality on account of the interpretative consent of reason. »¹

I answer. to the first, that St. Thomas speaks of a motion of sensuality that anticipates indeed reason fully deliberating, yet followed by reason half-deliberating, that is, of a secundo primo motion.

To the second. Similarly it does not require the interpretative consent of reason perfectly deliberating, but well of reason deliberating imperfectly and half-way.

You will say 2° : According to the doctrine of the preceding article, the sensitive appetite is free by its habitual conjunction alone, or immediate subordination, to the will. Therefore without actual influx of the will it can sin, at least venially.

I answer. I distinguish the antecedent. In act first, I concede; in act second, I deny. For since the liberty of the sensitive appetite is not primary in man, but subordinate and participated from the will, it cannot break forth into act without some influx of the will; just as also the cogitative power does not participate the power of discoursing in act about singulars, except « according to a certain reflux » of universal reason into it, as St. Thomas says, Ia p., q. 78, a. 4, ad 5.

I say 2° : The motions of sensuality that are primo primi, namely those which forestall every advertence of reason, or those which we suffer unwillingly, however much they turn about illicit things, are not sins, not even venial.

Thus it was defined by Trid., sess. V, can. 5, and the opposite was condemned by St. Pius V, propositions 50 and 51 among the Baianian ones.

[Thus the Synod of Trid. defined at the place cited: « That concupiscence, or fomes, remains in the baptized, this holy Synod confesses and holds; which, having been left for the contest, harms not those who do not consent, but manfully resist through the grace of Christ Jesus : nay more, whoever shall have striven lawfully shall be crowned. This concupiscence, which the Apostle sometimes calls sin, the holy Synod declares that the Catholic Church never understood to be called sin because it would truly and properly be sin in those reborn, but because it is from sin and inclines to sin. But if anyone shall hold the contrary, let him be anathema. »

Among the 79 propositions condemned first by St. Pius V and afterwards by Gregory XIII and Urban VIII, the following are read :

50. « The wicked desires to which reason does not consent, and which man suffers unwillingly, are forbidden by the precept: Thou shalt not covet. »

51. « Concupiscence, or the law of the members, and its wicked desires which men feel unwillingly, are true disobedience of the law. »

52. « The motions of wicked concupiscence, in the state of vitiated man, are forbidden by the precept: Thou shalt not covet. Whence man, feeling them and not consenting, transgresses the precept: Thou shalt not covet, although the transgression is not reckoned as sin. »

53. « As long as anything of carnal concupiscence is in the diligent man, he does not fulfill the precept: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart. »]

It follows from the preceding conclusion. For if there be no sin without some consent of the will, plainly it follows that motions which forestall all reason, or which we suffer with the will resisting, are not sins, since they are without any consent of the will.