a. About the First and Second Penalty or Punishment

101. About the second article [n.94]:

The first penalty [n.97], namely the continuation of guilt without intermission, which continuation can be called ‘obstinacy’, does not have God for positive cause. For just as guilt, when committed, does not, as guilt, have any positive cause, so neither does it to the extent that guilt as guilt is continued; and, as guilt, it is the first penalty, according to the remark of Augustine Confessions 1.12 n.19, “You have commanded, Lord, and so it is, that every sinner should be a punishment to himself;” and there was discussion of this in Ord. II d.7 n.92. Now this guilt, as continued, is from God as negative cause, namely as not remitting it. He is not, however, the first cause, but the will itself voluntarily continuing it is the demeritorious cause that God does not remit it - or at least the will itself, when it committed it, demerited, though it not always continue it after the act of the sin.

102. The second penalty likewise, since it is a privation, has no positive cause, but does have God as negative cause, because having him as not conferring beatitude; but this ‘not causing’ of God’s has another cause, a cause of demerit, in the [one punished], namely guilt, whereby it was said [n.97] that this advantage is not conferred on him.