3. Objection to the First Thesis

30. Against the first of these theses [n.29] I argue that, according to the Apostle to the Romans 13.9, “Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”     Therefore in this precept ‘you shall love etc     .’ are necessarily included the commandments of the second table, for the Apostle seems to prove this expressly there and in the end he seems to conclude, “He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law” [Romans 12.9-13]. And this is proved on the authority of our Savior, which is a greater authority, in Matthew 22.37-40,

“On this depend all the law and the prophets.” But love of neighbor follows necessarily from this principle, ‘God is to be loved’.     Therefore etc     . So, from first to last, all the commandments of the second table follow from what is the first commandment of the first table. And if the commandments of the first table belong simply to the law of nature (because they are included in the first principle or the first commandment, which belongs simply to the law of nature), then it follows that the commandments of the second table will also strictly belong to the law of nature, even though they are conclusions of the same first principle.

31. The proof of the assumption is clear from what was said in d.28 nn.10-11, where it is proved in two ways that the perfect and ordered love of God cannot be zealous, properly speaking, because the love of the common good as a good to be appropriated to oneself alone is disordered. The love too of someone who does not want the beloved to be loved jointly by others is disordered and imperfect.     Therefore it follows that if God is to be loved perfectly and in ordered way, that he who loves God should want his neighbor to love God. But in wanting this for his neighbor he loves his neighbor, for only in this way is one’s neighbor loved from charity, as is said in the gloss [Lombard On Romans 13.7-10]. Therefore etc     .