1. First Way

21. [Exposition of the opinion] - To this question it is said [by Henry of Ghent] that things are differently disposed as regard acquired habit and infused habit. For the natural act of a man, and the lack of impediment in the act, is from another, because of the indetermination that nature has with respect to that act, - and therefore acquired virtue is a perfection of nature, with nature presupposed under the idea of the principle of act; but if supernatural virtue belonged to nature (with nature presupposed in that to which such an act corresponds), then the supernatural virtue alone would facilitate nature, as acquired virtue does; but this is false, nay by the same thing there is ‘gratuitous existence’ and a gratuitous act, according to that [supernatural] degree, is simply elicited - the result being that acquired virtue is a virtue according to the idea of virtue that is posited in Nicomachean Ethics 2.5.1106a15-17, but theological virtue is not like that but accords with the idea of virtue by which it is laid down that virtue is ‘the utmost of power’ (De Caelo 1.11.281a10-12).

22. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this opinion [n.21], if thus he [sc. Henry of Ghent] understands that a supernatural habit is simply principle with respect to act, I argue as follows:

That by which someone can act simply is a power; therefore a supernatural habit will be a power. The antecedent is plain, because power is that whereby we are simply and first able to act.Note by Scotus: “This is true of the genus of action, it is false of operation-action.” ¹⁴

23. Further, from this [sc. that a supernatural habit is a principle of act] it follows in addition that no more will the will be good if it acts through the habit of charity than a piece of wood is perfected in acting if it acts by the heat inhering in it accidentally;Note by Scotus: “By that action a subject, whose formal principle is ‘an accident through an accident’ of that subject, is not per se perfected.” ¹⁵ an example: for just as from this fact [sc. the wood acting through heat] no action belongs to the wood through the form of wood but only to the agent [sc. the heat] that is received in the wood, so also it seems that the action that would belong to charity as to principal principle would in no way belong to the will as will. And it also follows further that just as heat, if it were separated, would heat equally as much, so charity, if it were separated, would act equally as much, for every form that is the total principle of acting as it exists in a subject, can, if it exists per se, operate per se - and thus the intended proposition evidently follows, namely that the habit will be a power.Note by Scotus: “If heat were an active principle in respect of something which would be a perfection of wood, there would be nothing similar to ‘heat is active’ (each unfitting result rightly follows when one posits habit as the reason for receiving the operation); nothing would be similar about operation, - for a material cause of operation is lacking; nothing either about acting, about genus of action, because in this way it is only a principle of something immanent, not of something transient (but why is it not?).” ¹⁶

24. Further, an operation whose active principle is purely natural is not freely elicited; but a habit, since it is not formally the will, nor as a consequence formally free, will, if it is an active principle, be purely natural; therefore its operation will not be purely free, and thus no ‘willing’ will be free if it is elicited by the habit as by a total active principle.

25. Further, in that case a man who once has charity could never sin mortally, which is unfitting. - The proof of the consequence is that he who has some active form predominating in him can never be moved against the inclination of that predominating form, just as never can a heavy mixed body be raised upwards against the inclination of the dominating earth in it; but charity - if it is the total active principle - is predominant over the will itself, which has no power for that act; therefore the will always follows the inclination of charity in acting, and so it will never sin.

26. Further, that act is not mine which is not in my power; but the action of the habit itself is not in my power, because the habit itself - if it is active - is not free but is a natural principle; therefore the ‘loving’ will not be mine, such that it be in my power, and so I will not merit by that act.