Question One. Whether Penitence is Necessarily Required for Deletion of Mortal Sin Committed after Baptism

1. “After this about penitence” [Lombard, Sent. IV d.14 ch.1 n.1].

2. After the Master has dealt with the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist, here he makes determination about the fourth sacrament, namely penitence,The Latin word is ‘poenitentia’, which can be translated as penitence or penance, or even as repentance. The word is equivocal, as Scotus himself states in nn.59-60: it signifies the willing or accepting of punishment for sin committed and connotes the punishment. In English the word ‘penitence’ more properly signifies the willingness or readiness to accept punishment, ‘penance’ the punishment so accepted, and ‘repentance’ the sorrow for and repudiation of the sin deserving punishment. As for the sacrament of confession, as it is now typically called, this signifies rather the admission itself before a priest of sins deserving punishment. In the translation here ‘poenitentia’ has been translated as ‘penitence’, since it says in English what Scotus says ‘poenitentia’ directly signifies in Latin. If ‘penance’ were used as the translation instead (which might indeed be closer to the older English use of the word), it would signify what Scotus says ‘poenitentia’ indirectly connotes. ¹ which is a common sacrament but after a lapse, because “the second plank after shipwreck is penitence” (according to Jerome [Epistle 130 to Demetriades n.9; also in Lombard’s text]).

3. About this distinction I ask first whether penitence is necessarily required for deletion of mortal sin committed after baptism.

4. It seems that it is not:

Because when the interior and exterior act cease, the sin ceases to be, because the privation of rectitude in the act ceases, which privation is formally the sin;   therefore it is destroyed at once without penitence. The antecedent is plain, because sin is only a disorder in some interior or exterior act.

5. Second thus: a man who has been offended can remit the offense without the fact of the offender repenting; therefore much more can God, who is supremely merciful; but when the offense is remitted, the sin is dismissed; therefore etc     .

6. These two arguments prove that penitence is not required for this deletion of sin.

7. Again, there is proof that penitence is of no value for this deletion of sin:

First, according to Augustine in a sermon on Matthew 5.7, “Be ye merciful,” [On the Psalms, ps.32 sermon 1 n.11], where he says, speaking of the damned, “There will then too be penitence, but fruitless however;” which he proves through the verse about the damned in Wisdom 5.3, 8-9, “They will speak to one another in penitence [and in anguish of spirit they will groan.. .What has our arrogance profited us, and what good has our boasted wealth brought us?]”

8. If you say that as long as a man is in this life penitence is of value for deletion of sin, but not afterwards - against this is the authority of Jerome [On Matthew IV 27, 5] and it is in the text [Lombard, Sent. IV d.15 ch.7 n.8; taken from Gratian, Decretum, p.2 cause, 33 q.3], “It profited Judas nothing to have done a penitence through which he was not able to emend his crime.”

9. Again, it is necessary that what mortal sin is deleted by be a good greater than the sin was bad, or as good as it; but penitence is a lesser good than mortal sin is bad;     therefore etc     . The major is plain, because an evil is not recompensed save by a good equal to what it takes away. The proof of the minor is that penitence is a finite good, mortal sin an infinite bad, as is plain from Anselm Why God Man II ch.6: sin is as great as he is who is offended or against whom it is committed, but he is infinite; because “against you alone have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” [Psalm, 50.6].

10. These two arguments [nn.7-9] prove that penitence is of no value for deletion of mortal sin.

11. The opposite is proved in similar ways.

12. As concerns the first way [n.6], thus:

The Savior says, Luke 13.5, “Unless you are penitent, you will all likewise perish.”

13. Again, Jerome, “the second planks” [n.2], and it is in the text. The first plank is compared to an undamaged ship, which when broken, the one shipwrecked is in peril unless he cling to some plank - this is called the second plank. Therefore, by similarity, someone who falls into mortal sin and has in this suffered spiritual shipwreck is in danger unless he cling to penitence.

14. Again, as to the second conclusion [n.10] the argument is as follows:

In Matthew 3.2 it is said, “Be penitent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Therefore penitence is of value.

15. Again, Ezekiel 18.21, “But if the wicked are penitent,” and there follows, “I will not remember all his sins; his life will live.”

I. To the Question

16. Here there are three things to look at: First, what remains in a sinner when the act by which he is called a sinner passes away, because if nothing remains there is no need to ask what is to be deleted; on the contrary, he who has committed nothing and he who has committed sin, but has ceased from interior and exterior act of sinning, would be entirely similar. Second, that what remains is destroyed, and for this some punishment is required. Third, that not just any punishment but a penitential one. And in this the solution to the question is plain.

A. What Remains in a Sinner after Sin has been Committed

1. Preliminaries

17. About the first one needs to know that just as justice is double - habitual, namely charity and grace, and actual, namely the rectitude that is of a nature to be present in an elicited act (and the first is plain; the second is made clear because the act is of a nature to be elicited conformably to its rule, and in this conformity does rectitude consist) - so, since opposites are said in equally many ways, injustice too will be double: habitual, namely the privation of grace in him in whom grace should be present, and actual, namely privation of this rectitude in an act in which it should be present.

18. Also, after the intrinsic and extrinsic act pass away, there remains a certain habitual injustice; but not from this alone is someone said to be a sinner, because someone who had committed two thousand mortal sins and someone who had committed one would be equally sinners intensively and extensively, because the whole of grace in them as to intension, and it alone as to extension, is taken away, both in him who has committed a single less grave sin and in him who has committed two thousand very grave sins; and so the one will not be said to be less a sinner after the act has passed away than the other. The proof of the assumption is that in any mortal sin grace is so taken away that nothing of it remains, and consequently it can, through nothing that follows, become more intense or more extensive, speaking of habitual privation; because this privation deprives only one habit, just as the habit is only of a nature to be present as one.

19. And this reasoning is like the reasoning of Anselm, On Virginal Conception ch.22, that original sin is not of a nature to be more present in one than another, because he in whom there is no justice cannot be deprived of justice [sc. since original sin takes away the whole of justice, it cannot take more away from one than from another, but all are deprived and deprived equally, because deprived fully]. This was discussed in Ord. II dd.30-32 nn.51-56.

20. Now actual injustice cannot remain when the act ceases, because the proximate subject of it is the act, just as it is also of the opposed rectitude. The proof: for the soul cannot be the immediate subject of the rectitude but only of the act in the soul; but still, when the act does not remain, that rectitude does not remain nor the wrongness.

2. Opinion of Others

a. Statement of the Opinion

21. Therefore is it said [Aquinas Sent. IV d.13 nn.27-82] that conviction for a faultThe Latin word ‘culpa’ means both ‘fault’ and ‘guilt’, and is translated in both ways in what follows according to suitability to the context. ² remains in the soul, which is a kind of obligation to the penalty due for that fault; now this obligation is a certain real relation, not founded on the guilty act, but on the essence of the soul, though only with actual guilt preceding, as was often said above on how a relation is founded on action [Ord. IV d.13 nn.27-82].

b. Rejection of the Opinion

22. Against this there is a twofold argument: first that no real relation remains in the soul; second, that if it did remain, the soul would not be called a sinner because of it.

23. The proof of the first is that an intrinsically arising real relation necessarily follows the positing of the extremes; but the relation here does not follow. The fact is plain, because while the soul and God remain the same, or while penalty is disposed in the same way, the soul is not for this reason obligated to penalty in the same way, because it is not so obligated before sin.That is, even if we suppose the listed foundations of the real relation to remain the same (the penalty as always due for such sin, God as always decreeing such penalty for such sin, and the soul as always capable of such sin), yet no relation of obligation in the soul to the penalty follows therefrom, unless an actual sin is supposed as well. ³ But if the relation is an extrinsically arising relation, it is necessary to give it a cause whereby it may arise on the basis of the extremes already posited (as is true of ‘where’ and the other circumstances [cf. Nicomachean Ethics 3.2.1111a3-6]). For a real respect that does not follow the posited extremes cannot exist unless some real action answer to it as to the term. Of this obligation [n.21] neither a real action nor a really acting agent can be given. For not the soul, because in sinning it had only a single disordered action that was related to that act of willing, which was deprived of its due circumstances, and so not to this respect [sc. of obligation] as to its term. Nor can this obligation be said to be the immediate term of divine action, because no soul is said to be a sinner precisely by the fact that it is the immediate term of divine action.

24. The proof of the second [n.21] is through this last point [n.23], because if there were in the soul such an obligation, it could not be imagined to be there save immediately from God, and thus the soul would not formally be a sinner by it, since God is not cause of sin per se but only permissively.

25. This difficulty the Master touches on in d.18, last chapter [Sent. IV d.18 ch.8 n.3-4], and he seems to solve it through this: “Until it repent the soul is polluted, just as it was while a depraved will was in it.” And he gives an example about him who has touched an animal carcass; for after the act ceases he remains unclean just as before [Leviticus 11.31]. And he adds: “Thus does the soul remain polluted just as it was in the act of sin itself, because it is thus by unlikeness far from God; for this unlikeness, which is in the soul by sin and is a distancing of the soul from God, seems to be a stain.”

26. Against this stands the prior deduction [n.23], because this stain, or distancing or unlikeness (with whatever name it be named), cannot be only a lack of the habit of grace, because that lack is totally present in a first sin [sc. therefore further sins would not add a further stain]; nor is it the lack of rectitude in the act, because that is not of a nature to remain unless the stain in the act remains.

27. Again, the stain of supreme hatred for a and supreme love of that very a are repugnant to each other; therefore by one the other is taken away, and consequently the stain of hatred for a could be taken away by extreme love for that very a [sc. while not paying any penalty to remove that stain of the original hatred].

3. Scotus’ own Opinion

28. As to this article [n.16], then, I say that nothing real, absolute or respective, is in anyone by which he may be called a sinner after all act of sinning ceases - and this whether gravely or multiply a sinner, as one is said to be after the act passes away.

29. And if it be said that something left behind by the act remains, it is not formally sin, because it can continue in someone justified, just as a vicious habit, or a disposition for it, remains in someone justified suddenly. The fact is plain because at the beginning he is prone to follow the inclination of the vicious habit, but in fighting against the inclination of it he merits well and acquires for himself a habit to the contrary. Hence great sinners do not, as soon as they are justified, have that peace which the perfect and practiced in virtue do.

30. Also, whatever habit or vicious disposition might, from acts, be left behind, it would cease to be after passage of time unless it were strengthened by frequent acts (just as universally every disposition for a habit ceases to be when the acts perfecting that habit cease to be). But that by which a sinner is, after an act, said to be a sinner does not cease to be through any time however much, although like acts not be added to it; for he is a sinner for ever from when he committed it. So there is not anything absolute or respective there, positive or privative, from the time of the ceasing of the act up to penance, by which he may be called a sinner, but there is only a certain relation of reason, insofar as he is an object of the intellect or will of God. Because, after he has committed the sin, the will of God ordains him to a penalty corresponding to the sin, and the intellect of God foresees this for all time until the penalty due is paid.

31. The proof of this is from Augustine on Psalm 31.1-2, narration 2 n.9, “Blessed are those” [whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered]: ‘To see sins’, he says, belongs to God for assigning to penalty; ‘but to turn his face from sins’, this is for God not to keep for penalty. So Augustine says,     therefore , that sins are not covered over by God such that God not see them, but that he not wish to attend to them, that is, to punish them; therefore , that a sinner remains in guilt after the act passes away is only that he is ordained by God’s will for penalty befitting the sin. But an object of intellect or of will has, as it is understood or willed, only a relation of reason; therefore etc     .

32. This is confirmed by a likeness: let it be that God not consider, in a multiplication of merits, the habit of charity - as is possible if the merits be mild or even if they were intense - yet he who had many merits is, after the exterior or interior acts pass away, more deserving than someone else. Which is nothing other than that he is ordained to a greater glory, by which is not obtained anything real positive or privative intrinsic to him, absolute or respective, but only a relation of reason insofar as he is an object of the divine will and in order to be ordained to greater glory. For there, in the divine acceptance, merits are ordained, or the man is ordained through merits, to such or such a glory. Just as, therefore, this acceptation for transient merits is nothing really save an act of the divine will (and in this there is only a relation of reason as in an object willed), so on the other side the casting off of this man because of transient sins is only a reprobation or repulsion in the divine will, and in the sinner it is only a relation of reason (as of someone cast off or reprobate) for such or such a penalty.

33. This finally is plain from a like obvious case, that if someone offend a great prince with the sort of offense that a great penalty responds to, there is, when that act ceases, nothing in him that, before the act for which he be called an enemy now and not before, was not previously there; but the transient act in him is only in the will of the offended lord himself, and by this fact is it a relation of reason in him, as in a subject or object willed for such sort of penalty.

34. From this a corollary follows, that after the act of sin ceases the offense, stain, and fault is nothing other than this relation of reason, namely ordination to a penalty; and as this is unbecoming to the very soul, it is said to be the ‘stain’ of the soul (just as ‘beauty’ is said of it as the opposite); but as it is formally an obligation for this penalty it is called ‘guilt’; and as it is an act of divine will (which is this whole reality), by which act the soul is ordered to such penalty, it is called ‘offense’. For ‘to be offended’ or ‘to be angry’ is in God nothing other than will to exact vengeance with this penalty; and although God be said figuratively to be angry or offended, yet by taking this idea of ‘to be angry’ for ‘to will to avenge’ (excluding any accompanying passion of this ‘will’), God is formally angry and offended, because he is formally willing to avenge sin committed against his Law.

B. What Remains in the Sinner after Sin can be Deleted by some Punishment

35. About the second article [n.16] I say that that which is said to remain in the sinner after the act can be deleted and is sometimes deleted, according to the phrase ‘remission of sins’ in the Creed, that is, God is ready to remit sins and is sometimes remitting sins.

36. And the proof of this is as follows, that sometimes he who is predestined falls into mortal sin (it is plain about blessed Peter [John 18.17, 25-27] and blessed Paul [Acts 7.57-59, 9.1-6, Galatians 1.13-16] and others almost without number); but he cannot be beatified (toward which chiefly he is ordered by predestination) unless sin has been deleted, taking ‘sin’ in the way above stated [n.30], because no one is beatified while remaining obligated to paying a penalty. For either payment must be made along with glory (which is impossible, because at the least, according to divine disposition, that glory and any sin whatever are repugnant), or it must be paid after glorification, which is likewise impossible, because God has disposed that glory to be final in anyone, such that no penalty would follow;     therefore it is necessary that, before glorification, this obligation to undergo penalty be at some point remitted or deleted.

37. Second I say that sin is not remitted without punishment, or the equivalent in divine acceptation, because God is offended by any sin at all, as Scripture sufficiently proclaims [e.g. Genesis 6.5-12, Matthew 5.19-48, 6.1-7, Mark 7.20-23, Romans 7.23, Galatians 5.19-21, Colossians 3.5-15, etc     .]; but his displeasure or anger (as was said [n.34]) is his willing to avenge or his demanding something else sufficient for placation; so, whatever sin is posited, God wills to avenge it on the sinner. But to will to avenge is to will to punish; therefore after commission of sin, some punishment, or the equivalent in divine acceptation, is required. And although the fault that is taken away be as a rule taken away by a penalty (just as an obligation to anything is taken away by payment of it), and although sometimes it be taken away by something else (equivalent in divine acceptation) besides a penalty, yet it is as a rule put in order by a penalty but not taken away.

38. And this is what is commonly said, and it is taken from Boethius [Consolation of Philosophy IV prose 4 n.20-21], that penalty is an ordering of a fault, such that no fault can be left in the universe to which there corresponds no ordering penalty; and it is simply better for an uncorrected sinner to undergo penalty than be without penalty, because in the first there is something of good, namely a just correspondence of penalty to the fault, and in the second there would be only malice, namely the fault and it unpunished.

39. Nor yet do I take it that there be here simply a necessity of which the opposite includes a contradiction, because, from the fact that it is not essentially the same for God to dismiss guilt and precisely and especially to punish it (as will be plain in the question in distinction 16 [nn.60-63] about the expelling of guilt and infusion of grace), it seems that God could separate one from the other. But, of his ordained power, this is the way universally fixed by divine Law, namely putting sin in order through a penalty as through what properly corresponds to it.

C. About Voluntary Penalty or Punishment

1. About the Thing of Such Punishment or Penitence

a. The Penalty or Punishment should be Voluntary

40. About the third article [n.16] one must first see about the thing, second about the name.

And about the thing let this be the conclusion, that for the deletion of sin there is required as a rule a voluntary penalty or punishment.

41. The proof of this is that sin is deleted through some punishment, as was said in the second article [nn.36-39], and that through some punishment it is not deleted, as is plain in the damned. And about the penalty that immediately follows a fault, “You have commanded, O Lord, and so it is, that each sinner should be a penalty to himself,” according to Augustine Confessions I ch.12 n.19 [cf. Ord. II d.7 n.92].

42. Now a difference between a punishment by which sin is deleted and a punishment by which it is not deleted is not as provable as it is about what is voluntary and what is involuntary. First because the punishment of the damned is far greater, intensively and extensively, than is the punishment of a wayfarer whose sin is deleted by the punishment; and consequently being more and less intensive and extensive does not make a difference between a punishment that deletes sin and a punishment that does not.That is, if punishment itself is supposed to be what deletes sin, a greater punishment should delete a greater sin, but it does not, as is clear of the damned whose punishment is greater and yet does not delete their sin. ⁴ Second because we see it so in human offenses, that a voluntary penalty or distress placates the one offended, but not at all one that is involuntary and undertaken with murmuring.That is, what makes a penalty placate the person offended is not the mere fact that it is a punishment, but that it is undertaken voluntarily. ⁵ Therefore if deletion of offense be owed to some penalty and to some penalty not, and if the difference in this regard is not as provable by anything as it is by the voluntary and involuntary, it is reasonable that voluntary penalty be as a rule required for deletion of sin.

43. Then follows a corollary, how guilt is set in order in a double way by penalty: for guilt that remains is put in order by the accompanying penalty, but the penalty is involuntary; and guilt put in order by a voluntary penalty is deleted by it.

b. About the Ways in which a Penalty can be Voluntary

44. But if you ask how some penalty could be voluntary, since it is of the idea of penalty that it be involuntary (because just as no one commits sin in what he does not want, so no one is punished in what he does want) - I reply: this difficulty requires a rather long explication.

45. And here it must be noted that the involuntary is simply that against which the will simply murmurs back.

46. And consequently, by opposition, the voluntary can be understood in three ways: in one way that against which the will altogether does not murmur but patiently sustains; in a second way that which it voluntarily accepts; in a third way that which it voluntarily causes - and this in two ways: either as partial proximate cause and not intending the effect, or as principal remote cause and intending the effect. And thus are four members obtained.

47. And this distinction is plain, because in the first two modes sadness is only the object of the will; in the third it is only the effect and not the object; in the fourth it is the object and the effect, unless something else prevent it (these members will be at once explained [nn.49-55]). The order here is also plain, because the second makes an addition as to the idea of what is voluntary to the first, and the third to the second and the fourth to the third.

48. And penalty too can be understood either as whatever is disadvantageous or disagreeable (and that can be in a sense-part in man or in the body conjoined with act of the sense-soul), or it can be the prime disagreeable thing, which is the sadness that is the penalty properly and first, about which Augustine says, City of God XIV ch.15, “sadness is the soul’s dissenting from the things that happen to us against our will.”

49. Having made supposition, then, about the exterior penalties as about things that are manifest how they can be voluntary in each of these four ways of the voluntary [n.46] - let us see specifically about this first penalty, namely sadness.

50. It is plain that it can be voluntary in the first way, namely voluntary in a certain respect, that is, ‘borne patiently’, because a disagreeable evil, provided however it not be against right reason, can be undergone not only patiently absolutely but patiently in an ordered way.

51. It can also [sc. in the second way, n.46] be accepted in order to some end, as Augustine says [Ps.-Augustine, On True and False Penitence ch.13; in Lombard, Sent. IV d.14 ch.13 n.6], “Let the sinner grieve for his sin, and rejoice in his grief.”

52. But, third [n.46], as to how the will causes grief or sadness voluntarily as partial cause, a difficulty arises. I say that sadness in any will cannot be caused naturally save by two causes coming together, namely from actual willing of some existence and from actual apprehending of that existence,Sc. the apprehension of it as not being there, or not being there as one wills it to be there. ⁶ in line with the preceding description of sadness from Augustine [n.48]. Whatever therefore is cause of volition is partial cause of sadness, though it not intend, nor need intend, to cause sadness through the volition. Now these two causes, whenever they come together, cause (as far as it is from themselves) sadness as a naturally consequent effect.

53. From this third the fourth [n.46] is made clear, because from the fact that sadness follows, as a natural effect, on actual volition of something and actual consideration of the thing willed, then although these two proximate causes could come together in a multiplicity of ways (because coming from as many causes as such actual consideration in the intellect and such actual volition in the will can come from), yet no single one can be cause of sadness (speaking of natural causation) unless there could be a cause of the coming together of these two that are the naturally necessary proximate causes.

54. Now a common cause of this sort can the will be as commanding an act of consideration and an act of volition of the same object, and this in an ordering to the intended end, so that a punitive sadness follows; therefore the will, when bidding the intellect to consider something as existing in act and bidding the will to will it as existing in act, causes sadness as a single cause, as also intending this effect - and this not as proximate cause, because there cannot be a proximate single sufficient cause; but it causes sadness as a remote single cause, because it is cause of the proximate causes in regard to sadness, and cause of the applying of them.

55. Thus therefore is it plain how the first penalty, namely sadness [n.49], can be supremely voluntary and caused by the will, not only as by a partial cause (the way the will universally causes when causing what happens), but as by a total cause, namely by applying the proximate partial causes of this effect, and this in an order to causing such effect.

56. Then as to the argument that ‘every penalty is involuntary’ [n.44], it is true in itself, and this when comparing it to the will that is following love of advantage. However, a penalty can be voluntary in the antecedent will, namely in the voluntary applying of the causes on which a penalty follows. It can also be voluntary with accepting will, and this with a will that follows love of justice, because it thus accepts whatever has an order to something that is to be justly willed per se; and this sadness can be toward something that is to be justly willed per se.

2. About the Name of the Aforesaid Penitence

a. About the Word ‘Penitence’ Equivocally Taken

57. About the second conclusion of this article [n.32], namely about the word ‘penitence’, I say that, just as in the case of the voluntary punishment [nn.49-55], it turns out there are many things to consider: First indeed, the will to punish, which is a commanding or efficacious will joining together the proximate causes of undergoing the punishment; second, the not willing to have sinned or to give displeasure, which is a proximate partial cause of the penalty, although the not willing not intend the penalty; and third, willing, that is, accepting, the undergoing of the punishment now inflicted; fourth, bearing the punishment patiently. And let these four be thus briefly expressed: to avenge what has been done; to detest what has been done; to accept the penalty inflicted; to bear patiently the penalty inflicted.

58. To these four correspond another four on the part of the term of the volition, wherein the material element is the same, namely ‘to punish’. And there are four superadded formal elements, namely what is willed by the will causing, what by the will detesting, what by the will accepting, what by the will patiently bearing.

59. Now it is plain that none of the aforesaid volitions is per se the same as the punishment undergone. And thus the name [sc. ‘penitence’], which per se signifies volition and connotes punishment, will not signify punishment univocally in connoting volition, and consequently, if any expression per se signify the punishment willed and the willing of the penalty, this will be done equivocally. Again, if it signify this fourfold volition, this will be done equivocally.

60. The same name, then, could be equivocally imposed on these eight elements.

b. About the Word ‘Penitence’ Taken Univocally or Properly

61. But putting the stress on the term ‘to be penitent’, since ‘to be penitent’ is ‘to hold a penalty’In Latin ‘to repent’ is ‘poenitere’, which here is made to derive from ‘poenam tenere’, or ‘to hold a penalty’. ⁷ (according to the etymology of the word), and since ‘to hold a penalty’ imports suffering with respect to the penalty (not just the suffering of it as it is presentSc. not just suffering the pain of punishment, which the impenitent can do, but suffering the fact that it is a ‘penalty’, something one deserves for a sin one now detests, which only the penitent can do. ⁸), the thing signified by this term seems to consists in four primary things.

62. And so there is a fourfold description of what it is ‘to be penitent’:

First is this: ‘To be penitent is to avenge a sin committed by oneself’. And it is plain how there it is ‘holding a penalty’, because to apply a penalty to oneself is to hold it; and it can be so understood whether one apply or inflict the penalty in fact or in affection, because he who avenges no less avenges even when the penalty, because of the defect of some second cause, not follow, provided however he himself have equal intention to inflict the penalty.

The second description of what it is ‘to be penitent’ is ‘to detest or hate a sin committed by oneself’ or ‘to have displeasure about this sin committed by oneself’. And it is plain how there it is ‘holding a penalty’, because holding it in a partial proximate cause. And this is understood of the willing-against or detesting or having displeasure about this sin in its proper idea, or in general at the same time about any sin committed by oneself - and again whether of formal or virtual displeasure. And virtual displeasure is any act of the will virtually including that displeasure, the way a cause in some way includes its effect even though the effect in itself not be caused; thus since every willing-against arises from some willing, all displeasure or willing-against of sin, although it not be present formally, can yet be present virtually in one’s will, on which will such displeasure is of a nature to follow.

The third description: ‘to be penitent is to accept gladly a punishment inflicted for sin committed’. And it is plain how here it is ‘holding a penalty’, in just the way an object is held by an act of will; and this can be understood of accepting formally or virtually, namely in some acceptation in which it is included virtually, just as willing a thing for an end is included in willing the end.

The fourth description: ‘to be penitent is to suffer patiently the punishment inflicted on oneself for one’s sin’. And it is plain how here it is ‘holding a penalty’, because it is not to cast off by murmuring back; hence too it is similarly said in this sense to be ‘to sustain’‘Sustinere’, a word derived from ‘tenere’ (like ‘poenitere’) and from ‘sub’ or ‘under’; hence to sustain is to hold oneself under something. ⁹, as if to keep oneself under the action of the agent, or of the one doing the inflicting, by conforming oneself to it.

63. All voluntary punishment is contained under one or other of the four modes of penitence. But, for the deletion of any actual mortal sin committed after baptism, some voluntary punishment is required; so for the deletion of it is required penitence stated in one or other of the four modes.

D. Solution of the Question

64. From these results I argue briefly thus to the solution of the question: for the deletion of a mortal fault committed after baptism there is required voluntary punishment or a will for punishment; but neither of these can be without penitence;     therefore etc     . The proof of the first proposition is in the second article and at the beginning of this third article [nn.39-41]; the second is plain from the first part of this article [n.54].

65. And from this argument is it plain how the conclusion on which the solution to the question rests, namely that penitence is required for deletion of sin, should be understood etc. [n.40]; for it is only understood of actual penitence, that is, of an act of penitence, which is an actual ‘holding a penalty’ (so to speak); and the understanding is only about that act as indistinctly taken for any of the four descriptions stated before [nn.61-63]. But whether this act must be right or virtuous or not, or formed or not, is in the following question [nn.84-150].

66. The conclusion is also only understood of what is required simply necessarily (of which the opposite includes a contradiction), because God could remit sin without any act by him to whom he remits it. But neither is it necessarily required on the supposition of an act by the man to whom sin is remitted; for God could remit sin through some fervent act of love for God without any of the four previously stated acts in their proper idea - as in the case of an act of zeal for martyrdom that is at once to be undergone, where perhaps there would be no thought taken of any sin previously committed, nor consequently any aforesaid penitence; and this taken formally, though virtually in that motion there would be penitence in its second signification [sc. virtual, n.62].

67. And the proof of this is that no one is excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven who does what is simply necessary; but it is possible for someone who is in mortal sin up to instant a to be necessitated from instant a on to focus with his whole heart on acts distracting him for thinking of past sin, as his being at once exposed to the most straitened martyrdom.

68. And for this reason was it said in the conclusion that ‘[voluntary punishment] is as a rule required for deletion of sin’ [n.40], because that thing is said to happen ‘as a rule’ which happens according to rules determined by Divine Wisdom, of which this is one: that sin committed is not destroyed without displeasure at the sin committed. And this rule appears very reasonable, because just as sin turns one away from the end and toward creatures, so it is reasonable that it only be destroyed by an opposite motion turning one away from sin or from creatures (as being that which the sin was about) and toward God.

69. Now, to the part that is ‘to be displeased at sin committed’ [n.68] can be reduced the three other members of what it is to be penitent [sc. the second, third, and fourth descriptions in n.62].

70. But as to the special conditions about how an act of penitence is required for deletion of sin (whether as preceding or as concomitant disposition) - this will be plain in the following question [nn.130-132].

II. To the Initial Arguments

71. As to the first argument [n.4] the answer is plain from the first article [nn.29-30].

72. As to the second [n.5], the proof is only about God’s absolute power, and this was conceded in the second main article [n.39].

73. But if you argue that God can, of his ordained power, remit sin without a penalty, just as also can an irate man - I reply: the remission of sin is not by change of God’s will, because his will, both in itself and in the act of willing, both absolute and insofar as it focuses on the object, is uniform, and consequently, if God in eternity wills someone to be punished for a certain time, he wills him always to be punished for that time, unless something in creatures changes. But it is not so with the will of an irate man, which changes as to act of willing and un-willing.

74. To the third [n.7], about the penitence of the damned, I say as before [n.42], that they do not truly repent, because neither do they ‘hold a penalty’, since it is not there voluntary but a murmuring back. And as to what is said about Judas [n.8], I reply that not just any act of being penitent suffices for deletion of sin (as will be plain from the following question [n.127]), but the act must be ordered, and ordered especially by the circumstance of the end, which is first among the circumstances of a moral act. And Judas was not penitent with that circumstance, or for love of God.

75. As to the last [n.9], it will in the following question [n.145] be plain in a way what act of being penitent is a disposition previous to deletion of sin, and what act is required formally in which sin is deleted. And this second act is as good as the sin is bad, because the malice of a sin consists in turning away from the end; therefore the good that brings one back consists in turning to the end; and thus the act of turning to the end as perfectly turns one to God as the act of sin turns one away. And just as in this second act there is not really a goodness intensively infinite, so there is not in the act of sin a malice intensively infinite. For malice is not greater than the good that it deprives; and only what is of a nature to be in the act deprives the act of good; but in the act, since it is something finite, only a finite good is of a nature to be present. There is precisely infinity, therefore, and malice in sin and goodness in the opposite act because of the infinity of the object from which sin turns away and to which a good act turns back. And this in the act is only a participated infinity, or rather an infinity in speech, because of the infinity real and simply in the object itself.