2. Whether a Supernatural Habit giving it Grace has to be posited so that a Nature Capable of Beatification may be Beatified

160. About the second article [n.125] I say that God could of his absolute power have very well accepted - with the special acceptance stated before [n.129] - a nature capable of beatification that was existing in its pure natural state; and likewise, the act of it, for which it had a purely natural inclination, he could have accepted as meritorious. But he is not believed to have so disposed things that he should thus accept its pure nature or act, because to say that ‘an act from purely natural powers is meritorious’ comes close to the error of Pelagius [n.121]. Therefore the more likely belief is that he accepts nature and its act as meritorious on the basis of a supernatural habit.

161. But there is a double doubt here.

One as to how something in created nature could be a reason for acceptance by the divine will (whether absolutely or in such a way [sc. of special acceptance]), since nothing in nature is a reason for divine action, whether in itself or as it tends about such an object.

162. The other doubt is because, when every supernatural gift of God is excluded, there is a distinguishing between friend and enemy, - so that an enemy is said to be he in whom sin has not been destroyed (and so the offense remains), and a non-enemy is said to be he in whom it is not an offense; but in advance of the conferring of any spiritual gift an offense could be removed from someone who was ‘an enemy before’, as will be said in IV d.16 [n.120].

163. I reply. A non-enemy is not a ‘friend’; because someone who forgives an offense in another - for the reason that he no longer seeks punishment for the offense -does not become that other’s enemy more; but it does not follow because of this that he at once recover him as a friend, nor that he repel him as an enemy in some contrary way, but in a negative one - that he neither will him evil as an enemy nor good as a friend.

164. As far as this article [n.162] is concerned, then, there is no necessity to posit a supernatural habit conferring grace when speaking of the necessity that regards God’s absolute power (especially since he could give beatitude without any preceding merit), although however this may be necessary when speaking of the necessity that regards God’s ordained power, which ordaining we pick up in Scripture and from the sayings of the saints, where we have it that a sinner is not worthy of eternal life and that a just man is worthy.