b. About the Third and Fourth Penalty or Punishment

103. But the two unwanted punishments, namely the two detentions [n.99], are from God, because they are positive realities and consequently good.

And the first detention is from God immediately, at least as it is perpetual, because although fire may detain a spirit as if formally, yet it does not effectively locate him in place, namely neither by effectively detaining him in this ‘where’ nor by prohibiting him from that ‘where’; nor does a spirit locate himself, at least not perpetually. Therefore God is immediately cause of this definitive, perpetual detention.

And of the other detention, namely of the intelligence in intense consideration of fire, the proximate but partial cause is the fire. Now God is the remaining and immediate cause, because according to the common order of causes, an object should, in acting on someone’s intelligence, have a causality subordinate with respect to his will; but here the object is not subordinate to the will of the spirit himself, rather it moves against his will, as if immediately subordinate to the divine will.

104. These four sadnesses, then, since they are positive effects, are from God, but all are so mediately, namely through the medium of apprehension of the unwanted object.