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Appendix A
Next after this I ask whether he who possesses created charity is accepted by it formally as worthy of eternal life.30
That he is not:
Because ‘to be an accepted person to God’ is nothing else than for a person to be accepted by God or for God to accept him; but nothing on the part of the creature can be the formal reason of a divine act (the proof is that nothing in a creature, or nothing extrinsic, can be the formal reason of anything intrinsic in God; but the act of accepting is intrinsic to God); 
therefore etc 
.
Further, a person is accepted before charity is given him (the fact is plain, because, in the case of two existing sinners, God accepts this one for grace and not that one); but what is posterior cannot be the cause of what is prior; therefore etc .
Further, charity is not the form of an act because it is prior to the act; but an act should be accepted through something intrinsic to it; therefore not through charity. Further, if someone were accepted, and not from some formal thing that is intrinsic but from an extrinsic one, then ‘he who possesses that extrinsic thing’ could not have a non-meritorious act, - which is false, because it is retributive justice that accepts an act as worthy of eternal life, and then an indifferent act or a venial sin would be accepted as worthy of eternal life. There must be something else, then, in addition to charity, intrinsic to an act because of which the act is accepted.
On the contrary:
A person is formally such as he is through that through which he is distinguished from others who are not such as he is; but charity “divides and distinguishes between the sons of God and the sons of perdition” according to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.18 n.32; therefore it is through charity that each individual is accepted to God.
Further, the argument proceeds in the same way about act, because each individual is formally such as he is by the act by which, once it is in place and all other acts are not in place, he is such, and by which, once it is removed and all other acts are in place, he is not such; but when charity is in place an act is worthy of eternal life, and when charity is removed - anything else whatever being in place - it is not worthy, as is plain about the state of innocence, where acts would have been most right and virtuous and yet not worthy, without charity, of eternal life. - In favor of this are the authorities of Augustine that the Master alleges in dd.27 and 28 of book II.31
Response:
First I put as preliminary that the will has a first object, just as the intellect does, but this object in the case of the divine will can be nothing but his essence. The fact is plain from this, that every operative power necessarily demands as a co-requisite its own first object; but no created thing whether extrinsic or finite is necessarily required for an act of the divine will or intellect; therefore the divine essence alone is the first object (for a better treatment of this argument see below, in the question ‘Whether God have some object other than himself’, [Additiones Magnae I d.36 q.2 n.5, 7; d.35 q.2 n.7]). His will then is its own reason for willing all other secondary objects.
Second: it then follows that the first object and nothing else is willed necessarily. Proof, for the power cannot sometimes be in act and sometimes not, but it must be always in right act, and consequently it always wills its first object necessarily (otherwise it could not be right).
Again, from this it follows that the first object is object from the nature of the thing - but other objects are not, for other objects have the fact that they are objects by act of the divine intellect.
Then to the intended proposition. Acceptance of the will can be understood to be ‘simple well wishing’, and this is necessarily of anything possible, just as also is simple intellection; another acceptance is ‘efficacious acceptance’, and this is when the will wants things to exist in fact and wishes the means necessary for that result. This very thing is plain in us, because sometimes we want a good for someone, but we do not work toward it, nor do we seek out the means necessary for him to attain that good - and then the will is one of simple well wishing; but when we will and seek out the means necessary for that good to be attained by him, then the will is efficacious. And in this last way God wanted creatures to be in real fact, and devils to be punished, and the act that is the substrate of sin to exist.
But there is another sort of special acceptance, which is ‘volition ordaining to a good’ so that someone may attain a greater good, - because God wants him not only to exist but orders him to a greater good or to fulfillment of this good. And in this way he accepts only the rational creature.
I say to the question, then, that created charity is not an eliciting reason on the part of the one accepting, because that reason is intrinsic to God. It will, therefore, be in some way an objectifying reason: not first reason, as has been proved [about simple well wishing]; nor is it reason only in real fact - as in the case of intelligibles - (namely the reason that is not followed by acceptance), but it is reason as making the subject apt for acceptance. However, from this making apt one does not get that the acceptance is a matter of justice.
We can therefore consider the divine will in two ways:
In one way as practical principles are offered to it that are not necessary from their terms, as is this one ‘the just man will be finally justified’. Therefore before acceptance by the will there is aptness only, but after acceptance by the will the proposition is then necessary and is a principle, nor can God do the contrary by his ordained power.
In a second way, there is a distinction in God between justice and judgment, because justice accords with law in its universality, but judgment accords with execution in the particular case. Before acceptance by the will, there is no justice, - but after acceptance there is justice.
I prove this by one argument and two examples.
By argument as follows: just as an intellectual habit in some way includes the object in its idea of intelligibility, so the appetitive habit in some way includes the object in its idea of lovability.
The example is this: what the center does in the case of heavy things, this God does in the case of spiritual things (for God is the center and term of spiritual things);32 for if the center of heavy things loved itself, it would love anything whatever insofar as that thing tended to the center, and, because every weighty thing tends to the center, it would love all weighty things, and not only weighty things but also motion itself and the center. - So in the proposed case. God loves himself because of himself, therefore he loves anything whatever insofar as it tends toward him; likewise, charity is the weight by which there is tendency toward God. Therefore God loves acts of love directed to himself and the weight too by which such movement of love comes to be.
Second example: according to Augustine On the Trinity VIII ch.6 n.9 “justice rather is beauty” (and he takes justice for charity, because in Scripture all these things are taken for the same: justice, wisdom, charity, and grace); but beauty is the reason for lovability in corporeal things, and justice is beauty that makes one similar to God; so there can be a reason for lovability in the mind which God loves. Likewise, it is plain that the center is the reason for accepting something weighty and is more the reason for accepting the motion by which the thing tends to the center. - Thus in the proposed case about charity. For if charity is the reason for accepting a person, it will be more the reason for accepting an act; and so the first example is valid about an act, not the second ‘about beauty’, because many acts are pleasing on account of beauty toward which beauty is in no way ordered, - just as sometimes someone beautiful asks for something and is heard because of his beauty, and yet beauty is in no way ordered toward this; but it is not like this in the case of an act with respect to charity, because charity is not the reason for accepting any act save only that act toward which charity inclines insofar as it is charity.
To the first argument, when it is said ‘nothing else than...’ [opening argument above], this is not taken absolutely but as it is compared to act. And then, when it is said that ‘nothing created is the reason of anything intrinsic to God’, I say that this is true, not as the created thing is a first object nor as a new object, but as apprehended in eternity, whereby God accepts it aptitudinally before the will’s acceptance of the principle which is not known from its terms, and after the will’s acceptance he accepts it from justice.
To the second argument: acceptance is double, namely ‘in a certain respect’, and this is first and the way to acceptance simply; the other is acceptance ‘simply’. The first is in respect of some gift, namely grace, the second in respect of glory; the first very well precedes, but the second follows or is concomitant.
To the third I say that charity is the formal reason, not intrinsic reason but inclining reason; and on this account, not every act is meritorious, but only that act to which charity as charity inclines. And so it is plain that the same form is the principle for accepting the act and the person.