B. About the Habit one must have for one’s Neighbor

16. About the second point [n.8] I say that just as the denial of a conclusion that does not necessarily follow from the premise can stand along with assertion of the premise (for not every error about a conclusion destroys the truth or assertion of the premise), therefore, since love of a finite good does not necessarily follow from love of the infinite Good, the loss of love of God does not, from the nature of the case in acts of love, necessarily follow from loss of love of neighbor, and this too whether the loss of love be understood by way of contrariety or of contradiction. Even less would the contradiction that is love of God and not love of neighbor follow from the nature of the habit.

17. This act of love, therefore, is about something other [than God] insofar as a command has been given about loving something other. And for this act there is required the use of the habit, or at any rate not acting against the habit; otherwise the act and the habit as to God would be destroyed, not by the nature of the contradiction, but by the nature of the demerit. For transgression of a precept does not destroy the act, or even the habit, of loving God in a positive way, but deserves by demerit that God withdraw himself so that neither the habit nor the act can remain.

18. The fact as to the habit is plain also from this, that the habit, which of its nature is not private but common, is naturally inclined toward not loving God in a private way; and so a private act of loving, namely one that destroys loving one’s neighbor, cannot in any way belong to the habit. And herein is apparent the great perfection of this habit, that although acquired zeal could be greater than a small amount of infused charity as regard intensity of eliciting the act here and there, yet the habit of charity, because it is an ordered and perfect habit in the genus of appetitive habits, can only be of God as of a common Good to be loved by others. And so the habit cannot be the principle of any act in which God would be loved along with the opposite of love for one’s neighbor.

19. It is plain from this, then, how the act is necessary from the nature of the habit - at least by understanding that it cannot be elicited as a private act or as contrary to an act toward one’s neighbor.

20. From the nature too of the precept added to the habit, an act toward one’s neighbor must be positively elicited, or at least a contrary one must not be elicited, lest one deserve by demerit the corruption of the habit which concerns God.