C. Difficulties as to the Definition of Divine Justice, and the Solution of Them

37. Against these conclusions:

First, because this justice cannot be in any will unless this will be inclined agreeably to the dictate of prudence, and consequently to the conclusion of a practical syllogism; but the divine intellect does not syllogize since it does not proceed discursively.

38. Again, the divine intellect apprehends the doable first before the will wills it, and the will cannot disagree with the apprehending intellect; but the intellect apprehends this doable thing determinately, such that it does not apprehend this and that doable thing indifferently, because then it would have erred; therefore the will determinately wills this doable thing, such that it cannot will the opposite if it wills rightly.

39. Again, if it is just for Peter to be saved and God justly wills this, then it is unjust for Peter to be damned, and so, if God can will this, he can will something unjust.

40. To the first [n.37] I say that if in us there can be some moral virtue inclining us to agree with the conclusion of a practical syllogism, much more is there in us a practical habit of appetite that inclines us to agree with the first practical principle, because this principle is truer and consequently more right. But justice, which is in God single in reality and in idea (as was said [n.28]), inclines agreeably to the first practical principle, namely ‘God is to be loved’.

41. But if you take this justice strictly, that it does not incline agreeably to the conclusion of a practical syllogism, therefore it is not any special virtue - I concede that the justice that is in God is only as it were a universal and radical virtue, from whose rectitude all the particular justices are of a nature to proceed, though not by necessity.

42. To the second [n.38] I say that the [divine] intellect apprehends the doable thing before the will wills it, but it does not determinately apprehend ‘this is to be done’, which apprehending is called commanding; rather it offers it as something neutral to the divine will, from which will as a result, when the will determines through its volition that ‘this is to be done’, the intellect apprehends ‘this is to be done’ as true, as was said in the material about future contingents, Ord. I d.39, Lectura I d.39.

43. However, on the supposition that the intellect were to apprehend a ‘this is to be done’ about something before the will were to will it, just as it apprehends it about this, ‘God is to be loved’, the inference does not by natural necessity follow that ‘it apprehends this and the will cannot disagree, therefore the will by natural necessity wills this’. For the will cannot disagree as to the object (namely so that it will against or will for what the intellect shows to be willed), but in manner of tending toward that object it disagrees or, more properly, is distinguished, because the intellect tends toward the object in its way (that is, naturally) and the will in its way (that is, freely). And those powers always agree that always tend to the same object in their own ways of tending, as imagination and intellect do not disagree if the imagination tends to the object as a singular and the intellect to it as a universal.

44. To the third [n.39] I say it is like in polities, that the legislator has regard to the simply just in itself (which is the just of the public good), but does in a certain respect have regard to some partial justs, always to be sure in proportionate relation to the former just [of the public good] - and therefore in certain cases it is not just to keep just laws concerning these partial justs, namely when observation of them would tend to the detriment of the public just, namely the well-being of the republic. So God is determined simply toward the public good, not by commonness of aggregation, as in a city, but by commonness of eminent containing, which is the just that befits his goodness. But everything else that is just is particular, and now this is just, now that is just, according as it is ordered toward or fits in with this just [of the common good].

45. I say, therefore, that God can will Peter to be damned and justly will it, because this particular just thing, ‘Peter is saved’, is not required for the public good necessarily so that its opposite could not be ordered to the same public good, namely to fitness with God’s own divine goodness; for that goodness is indeed an end which requires for the end no entity with determinate necessity.