a. About God’s Justice in the First Penalty

107. The first punishment [n.97] indeed is not inflicted, nor could it be inflicted justly, since it is guilt formally but a penalty left afterwards, as Augustine says On Psalms, Psalm 5 n.10, “When God punishes sinners, he does not inflict his evil on them but leaves the bad to their evils.” I understand this of the first penalty, which is the guilt left afterwards, or not remitted, or the abandonment of the sinner in this sort of guilt; and this, in the way it was said to be from God in the preceding article [n.101], is thus justly from him. For he justly abandons or does not remit, whether because the will voluntarily continues to will badly, or because it remained in sin without penance to the end (which time, however, was precisely reckoned to it for penance), or, third, because in wayfaring it sinned, where it deserved by demerit to be thus left behind.

108. Just indeed it is that he who continues malice not be freed from malice by another - and not this case only but he who could have left malice behind and had time precisely reckoned for this and is not corrected in that time but perseveres in evil; for it is just that, when the time has elapsed, he be left to that evil. Third too (which is less evident), if someone by his guilt has thrown himself into an incapacity of escaping, not only of escaping by himself but also by anyone’s help save his whom he then offends, he justly deserves to be abandoned in his incapacity - in the way that, if someone were to throw himself voluntarily into a pit from which he could not get out by himself, or in any way, save by the help of another whom he despises and offends by throwing himself therein, he can justly be left behind in it.

109. These three points are sufficiently clear as to the issue at hand, because someone damned is continually in some bad act of will (as seems probable), and persists impenitent up to the end of life, and offends as wayfarer by tottering into sin from which he cannot escape by himself save only by disposing himself with congruous merit, and that for this state of life, through the whole of which state he passed fruitlessly without such merit.