B. About these Ways of Taking the Term with Respect to Penitence as Virtue

16. To the issue at hand:

The three things aforesaid [sc. contrition, confession, satisfaction, n.2] are in no way parts of penitence as virtue (the way argued to the main point [nn.2-7]), because that virtue is a certain simple form in the will, as is charity and anything else other than justice.Or “any other justice.” My reason for translating it as I do (making iustitia ablative and not nominative as in the printed text) is because justice is not a simple but a multiple virtue, and because to say charity is another kind of justice seems odd. ³⁷ And the point is plain from something else, that it is permanent, just as it is permanent things that belong to virtue. But contrition and confession and satisfaction are certain things that have their being in their coming-to-be; but a permanent thing does not consist of parts that have their being in their coming-to-be. Again, the last two [sc. confession and satisfaction] are not in the will as in a subject, but are certain exterior things.

17. Likewise I say that they are not parts of penitence said in the second way [n.9], because that act too is a certain simple act, as it is an act of a simple virtue. It is plain too from something else, that the act is immediately from the will itself, as elicited by the will; but confession and satisfaction are not acts immediately elicited by the will but commanded by it.

18. Speaking, however, of penitence in the third way, namely for the proximate cause of the very punishment to be inflicted, which is an act commanded by an act of penitence as virtue, of this can those three things be parts.

19. And similarly the three penalties, which are concomitant with the three acts, can be posited as parts of the fourth part, which is ‘to be punished’. And this in the following way: commutative justice has regard universally to equality in exchange, and this is not an equality of the thing but rather an equality according to right reason. And in this way, therefore, penitence or punitive justice in itself, which is a certain commutative justice in punishment, has regard to the penalty equal to, or commensurate with, the fault, and this according to the right reason of the law according to which it is avenging justice.

20. Now that law, according to which penitence as virtue is avenging, dictates that guilt must be ordered both through a penalty intrinsic to sadness and through a double extrinsic penalty (namely of shame and bodily affliction or labor), as is gathered from the diverse Scriptures [d.14 nn.37, 163-166] that contain that law; therefore, the penalty, or the being punished, which responds to the fault, is integrated from three penalties.

21. And likewise, the proximate cause of the penalty must be what is integrated from the causes proper to these penalties.

22. Now the cause proper to interior sadness is detestation of the sin committed, or displeasure about the sin. And this includes two partial causes, namely consideration of the sin committed, and the willing-against of it, and among these the more principal cause is the willing-against; also, when posited, it necessarily posits the other, but not conversely.

23. The act, then, which is the proximate proper cause of sadness, is called contrition; the second act, which is the proximate cause of blushing or shame, is called confession, where the hidden sin is made manifest to a human being. The third cause proper to the third penalty is some laborious or penal work.

24. Just as, therefore, the perfect penalty, which corresponds to the fault according to avenging justice, has three partial penalties, which are parts of one perfect punishment, in the way in which three restitutions would be parts of one perfect restitution for him who would have suffered loss in such a way - so the three acts, on which the three penalties follow, are parts of one sufficient cause proximate in regard to a fitting penalty.