II. To the Initial Arguments

63. To the initial arguments:

As to the first [n.3], it is plain that the parable principally tends toward this, that the same penitence is demanded of the servant who did not want to dismiss his fellow servant’s debts as would have been exacted of him because of his main debt. For what is said there to him [Matthew 18.30, 34], send him to prison until he pay “the whole debt,” I understand relative to the issue at hand, that he would only pay the whole debt in paying the debt of damnation for it, by being sent to the prison of the damned; and so, to the issue at hand, he who falls back again is adjudged for the same penalty of damnation that he would have had because of his prior and previously dismissed sins - and a penalty equal as to duration because it is ‘until he pay back etc.’ But it does not follow that he would have an equal penalty as to intensity.

64. And so, one should say to all the authorities of the saints [n.3] founded on this parable of the Savior, that ‘sins return’, that is, that the obligation to damnation returns, and a graver obligation because of the re-sending of the dismissed sins.

65. To the second [n.4]: in this way is the authority of Blessed James to be understood, namely as to damnation, which is the general penalty for all mortal sins, “he is made guilty of all.” Or in another way (and it returns to the same) it is understood as to the turning away from the ultimate end, which turning away is common to every mortal sin. But ‘he is made guilty of all’ is not to be understood as to the special gravity of individual sins and not in any way as to grave sins the same in number or species.

66. To the third [n.5]:

In one way can it be said that if he who was contrite before despises confession later, he sins with a new mortal sin in that contempt; and yet the fault that was dismissed through contrition does not return, either as to the malice or as to the guilt. But there only always remains the temporal penalty due to it, though the penalty of damnation be due to a new mortal sin.

67. In another way it could be said that, when complete penitence is obtained (understand ‘complete’ as to the three parts of penitence, namely contrition, confession, and satisfaction [d.16 nn.18-24]), then the penalty of damnation is commuted into temporal penalty; but not so as to a sin for which contrition is had without the other two parts of penitence.

68. But the first response [n.66] is more acceptable, because sin is simply deleted in contrition, so that only the obligation to temporal penalty remains there; but if afterwards contempt of confession or of satisfaction follows, it is a new mortal sin, and made worse because of the earlier fault that in contrition was dismissed.

69. To the fourth [n.6] I say that the same shadow in number cannot return, at any rate by nature; because there cannot be the same negation, as neither the same affirmation, when an interruption is posited on this side and on that.

70. As to the proof [n.6], I say that unity of subject and of opposed habit is not sufficient for unity of privation, but unity of its continuation in the subject is required, in the way in which it can have being in a subject. This is shown by a likeness, that for unity of negation unity of affirmation does not suffice, for ‘non-Socrates’, which is the negation of one affirmation in number, can be not only many in number but be in many things diverse in genus and species, and be as many ‘beings’ as there are entities that are not Socrates. So too a privation can be a privation of the same form and yet not be the same. A privation can also be multiplied in the same receptive subject if there is an interruption, just as also the habit (of which the privation is the privation) would be multiplied if it were with interruption in the subject. For to repair something numerically the same, whether positive or privative or negative (as will be said in the material about resurrection [Ord. IV d.43 q.3 n.22, q.5 nn.4-6]), belongs to infinite power alone, namely God.