2. Rejection of the Opinions

36. Against the first of these ways there are four arguments:

First, because since the good, in which the sin is, is finite, it could be wholly consumed by having some finite good taken away from it repeatedly.

37. And if it be said that the taking away is of parts in the same proportion, and so it goes on ad infinitum - on the contrary, a second evil can be equal to the first in malice or worse than it, so it corrupts a part that is of the same or greater amount; therefore, by a process in this way of equal or greater sins, the nature of the good is at length totally consumed.

38. Second, because intellectual nature can be created only by God and, thereby, it is simply incorruptible as regards the creature, so that no creature can destroy it; therefore someone sinning in his act cannot destroy any part of his nature, because the part, as concerns incorruptibility, would be of the same idea as the whole nature, for an incorruptible is not made up of corruptibles.

39. Further, what is formally repugnant to an effect does not destroy a nonnecessary [sc. contingent] cause of that effect; sin states formally a deformity or wrongness repugnant to rightness in an act; so it does not destroy a non-necessary cause of this rightness (the will is a non-necessary cause of rightness, both because it does not cause an act of rightness necessarily but contingently, and because if it causes an act it does not necessarily cause it to be right). The proof of the major is that a contingent cause in respect of something is able not to be and not to cause; so the cause need not be destroyed when the thing caused does not exist. The point is plain by way of likeness from the opposite: for what alters a thing - by introducing something repugnant to a quality in it - corrupts the substantial form for this reason, that the sort of quality in question necessarily follows the substantial form; therefore a thing that is corruptive precisely of some contingent concomitant thing cannot corrupt what it is contingently thus concomitant to.

40. Further sins would not differ in species, because they are privations of a good and privations only get their specific difference from the opposed positives.

41. Further, the same arguments (some of them [the second, third, and fourth, nn.38-40]) prove that sin is not formally privation or corruption of grace [n.35] (although the first argument [n.36] does not prove this), because grace is totally destroyed by a first mortal sin. However there is another specific argument here, namely that a second sin will not be a sin, because it will not corrupt anything that a sin is of a nature per se to corrupt, for the grace that would be corrupted is not present.

42. The second argument [n.38] is conclusive here, because grace is by creation from God alone and is preserved by him alone; and when it is destroyed, it is annihilated - because annihilation is the destruction of that of which creation is the production. The third argument [n.39] is also conclusive here, because grace is a contingent cause with respect to rightness in an act. The fourth [n.40] is also likewise conclusive, because all mortal sins would be of the same nature in formal idea of privation.

43. The same arguments (some of them [the first and third, nn.36, 39]) are also conclusive against acquired justice or virtue [n.35], because although acquired justice does not remain always incorruptible as nature does [nn.36-38], and although it is not corrupted by one mortal sin as grace is [n.41], yet mortal sin is not per se the privation of it, because mortal sin can stand along with it.

44. And if you say about this contention [n.43] that mortal sin cannot stand along with acquired justice - on the contrary: acquired justice can exist more intensely in him who sins mortally than in him who does not sin, namely if the latter has a justice of nine degrees and the former one of ten degrees and the former sins mortally. Let us posit that in the former the tenth degree of justice is corrupted, so he still has a justice equal to him who did not sin mortally; so if the latter had sinned mortally with a like sin, that sin in him would not have been repugnant to his justice of nine degrees [sc. because it is supposed to be repugnant only to the tenth degree], and so would not have corrupted it.

45. The third argument [n.39] is conclusive here, because any such habit is only a contingent cause with respect to an act of sin.