Fourteenth Distinction

Question One. Whether Penitence is Necessarily Required for Deletion of Mortal Sin Committed after Baptism

1. “After this about penitence” [Lombard, Sent. IV d.14 ch.1 n.1].

2. After the Master has dealt with the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist, here he makes determination about the fourth sacrament, namely penitence,The Latin word is ‘poenitentia’, which can be translated as penitence or penance, or even as repentance. The word is equivocal, as Scotus himself states in nn.59-60: it signifies the willing or accepting of punishment for sin committed and connotes the punishment. In English the word ‘penitence’ more properly signifies the willingness or readiness to accept punishment, ‘penance’ the punishment so accepted, and ‘repentance’ the sorrow for and repudiation of the sin deserving punishment. As for the sacrament of confession, as it is now typically called, this signifies rather the admission itself before a priest of sins deserving punishment. In the translation here ‘poenitentia’ has been translated as ‘penitence’, since it says in English what Scotus says ‘poenitentia’ directly signifies in Latin. If ‘penance’ were used as the translation instead (which might indeed be closer to the older English use of the word), it would signify what Scotus says ‘poenitentia’ indirectly connotes. ¹ which is a common sacrament but after a lapse, because “the second plank after shipwreck is penitence” (according to Jerome [Epistle 130 to Demetriades n.9; also in Lombard’s text]).

3. About this distinction I ask first whether penitence is necessarily required for deletion of mortal sin committed after baptism.

4. It seems that it is not:

Because when the interior and exterior act cease, the sin ceases to be, because the privation of rectitude in the act ceases, which privation is formally the sin;   therefore it is destroyed at once without penitence. The antecedent is plain, because sin is only a disorder in some interior or exterior act.

5. Second thus: a man who has been offended can remit the offense without the fact of the offender repenting; therefore much more can God, who is supremely merciful; but when the offense is remitted, the sin is dismissed; therefore etc     .

6. These two arguments prove that penitence is not required for this deletion of sin.

7. Again, there is proof that penitence is of no value for this deletion of sin:

First, according to Augustine in a sermon on Matthew 5.7, “Be ye merciful,” [On the Psalms, ps.32 sermon 1 n.11], where he says, speaking of the damned, “There will then too be penitence, but fruitless however;” which he proves through the verse about the damned in Wisdom 5.3, 8-9, “They will speak to one another in penitence [and in anguish of spirit they will groan.. .What has our arrogance profited us, and what good has our boasted wealth brought us?]”

8. If you say that as long as a man is in this life penitence is of value for deletion of sin, but not afterwards - against this is the authority of Jerome [On Matthew IV 27, 5] and it is in the text [Lombard, Sent. IV d.15 ch.7 n.8; taken from Gratian, Decretum, p.2 cause, 33 q.3], “It profited Judas nothing to have done a penitence through which he was not able to emend his crime.”

9. Again, it is necessary that what mortal sin is deleted by be a good greater than the sin was bad, or as good as it; but penitence is a lesser good than mortal sin is bad;     therefore etc     . The major is plain, because an evil is not recompensed save by a good equal to what it takes away. The proof of the minor is that penitence is a finite good, mortal sin an infinite bad, as is plain from Anselm Why God Man II ch.6: sin is as great as he is who is offended or against whom it is committed, but he is infinite; because “against you alone have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” [Psalm, 50.6].

10. These two arguments [nn.7-9] prove that penitence is of no value for deletion of mortal sin.

11. The opposite is proved in similar ways.

12. As concerns the first way [n.6], thus:

The Savior says, Luke 13.5, “Unless you are penitent, you will all likewise perish.”

13. Again, Jerome, “the second planks” [n.2], and it is in the text. The first plank is compared to an undamaged ship, which when broken, the one shipwrecked is in peril unless he cling to some plank - this is called the second plank. Therefore, by similarity, someone who falls into mortal sin and has in this suffered spiritual shipwreck is in danger unless he cling to penitence.

14. Again, as to the second conclusion [n.10] the argument is as follows:

In Matthew 3.2 it is said, “Be penitent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Therefore penitence is of value.

15. Again, Ezekiel 18.21, “But if the wicked are penitent,” and there follows, “I will not remember all his sins; his life will live.”

I. To the Question

16. Here there are three things to look at: First, what remains in a sinner when the act by which he is called a sinner passes away, because if nothing remains there is no need to ask what is to be deleted; on the contrary, he who has committed nothing and he who has committed sin, but has ceased from interior and exterior act of sinning, would be entirely similar. Second, that what remains is destroyed, and for this some punishment is required. Third, that not just any punishment but a penitential one. And in this the solution to the question is plain.

A. What Remains in a Sinner after Sin has been Committed

1. Preliminaries

17. About the first one needs to know that just as justice is double - habitual, namely charity and grace, and actual, namely the rectitude that is of a nature to be present in an elicited act (and the first is plain; the second is made clear because the act is of a nature to be elicited conformably to its rule, and in this conformity does rectitude consist) - so, since opposites are said in equally many ways, injustice too will be double: habitual, namely the privation of grace in him in whom grace should be present, and actual, namely privation of this rectitude in an act in which it should be present.

18. Also, after the intrinsic and extrinsic act pass away, there remains a certain habitual injustice; but not from this alone is someone said to be a sinner, because someone who had committed two thousand mortal sins and someone who had committed one would be equally sinners intensively and extensively, because the whole of grace in them as to intension, and it alone as to extension, is taken away, both in him who has committed a single less grave sin and in him who has committed two thousand very grave sins; and so the one will not be said to be less a sinner after the act has passed away than the other. The proof of the assumption is that in any mortal sin grace is so taken away that nothing of it remains, and consequently it can, through nothing that follows, become more intense or more extensive, speaking of habitual privation; because this privation deprives only one habit, just as the habit is only of a nature to be present as one.

19. And this reasoning is like the reasoning of Anselm, On Virginal Conception ch.22, that original sin is not of a nature to be more present in one than another, because he in whom there is no justice cannot be deprived of justice [sc. since original sin takes away the whole of justice, it cannot take more away from one than from another, but all are deprived and deprived equally, because deprived fully]. This was discussed in Ord. II dd.30-32 nn.51-56.

20. Now actual injustice cannot remain when the act ceases, because the proximate subject of it is the act, just as it is also of the opposed rectitude. The proof: for the soul cannot be the immediate subject of the rectitude but only of the act in the soul; but still, when the act does not remain, that rectitude does not remain nor the wrongness.

2. Opinion of Others

a. Statement of the Opinion

21. Therefore is it said [Aquinas Sent. IV d.13 nn.27-82] that conviction for a faultThe Latin word ‘culpa’ means both ‘fault’ and ‘guilt’, and is translated in both ways in what follows according to suitability to the context. ² remains in the soul, which is a kind of obligation to the penalty due for that fault; now this obligation is a certain real relation, not founded on the guilty act, but on the essence of the soul, though only with actual guilt preceding, as was often said above on how a relation is founded on action [Ord. IV d.13 nn.27-82].

b. Rejection of the Opinion

22. Against this there is a twofold argument: first that no real relation remains in the soul; second, that if it did remain, the soul would not be called a sinner because of it.

23. The proof of the first is that an intrinsically arising real relation necessarily follows the positing of the extremes; but the relation here does not follow. The fact is plain, because while the soul and God remain the same, or while penalty is disposed in the same way, the soul is not for this reason obligated to penalty in the same way, because it is not so obligated before sin.That is, even if we suppose the listed foundations of the real relation to remain the same (the penalty as always due for such sin, God as always decreeing such penalty for such sin, and the soul as always capable of such sin), yet no relation of obligation in the soul to the penalty follows therefrom, unless an actual sin is supposed as well. ³ But if the relation is an extrinsically arising relation, it is necessary to give it a cause whereby it may arise on the basis of the extremes already posited (as is true of ‘where’ and the other circumstances [cf. Nicomachean Ethics 3.2.1111a3-6]). For a real respect that does not follow the posited extremes cannot exist unless some real action answer to it as to the term. Of this obligation [n.21] neither a real action nor a really acting agent can be given. For not the soul, because in sinning it had only a single disordered action that was related to that act of willing, which was deprived of its due circumstances, and so not to this respect [sc. of obligation] as to its term. Nor can this obligation be said to be the immediate term of divine action, because no soul is said to be a sinner precisely by the fact that it is the immediate term of divine action.

24. The proof of the second [n.21] is through this last point [n.23], because if there were in the soul such an obligation, it could not be imagined to be there save immediately from God, and thus the soul would not formally be a sinner by it, since God is not cause of sin per se but only permissively.

25. This difficulty the Master touches on in d.18, last chapter [Sent. IV d.18 ch.8 n.3-4], and he seems to solve it through this: “Until it repent the soul is polluted, just as it was while a depraved will was in it.” And he gives an example about him who has touched an animal carcass; for after the act ceases he remains unclean just as before [Leviticus 11.31]. And he adds: “Thus does the soul remain polluted just as it was in the act of sin itself, because it is thus by unlikeness far from God; for this unlikeness, which is in the soul by sin and is a distancing of the soul from God, seems to be a stain.”

26. Against this stands the prior deduction [n.23], because this stain, or distancing or unlikeness (with whatever name it be named), cannot be only a lack of the habit of grace, because that lack is totally present in a first sin [sc. therefore further sins would not add a further stain]; nor is it the lack of rectitude in the act, because that is not of a nature to remain unless the stain in the act remains.

27. Again, the stain of supreme hatred for a and supreme love of that very a are repugnant to each other; therefore by one the other is taken away, and consequently the stain of hatred for a could be taken away by extreme love for that very a [sc. while not paying any penalty to remove that stain of the original hatred].

3. Scotus’ own Opinion

28. As to this article [n.16], then, I say that nothing real, absolute or respective, is in anyone by which he may be called a sinner after all act of sinning ceases - and this whether gravely or multiply a sinner, as one is said to be after the act passes away.

29. And if it be said that something left behind by the act remains, it is not formally sin, because it can continue in someone justified, just as a vicious habit, or a disposition for it, remains in someone justified suddenly. The fact is plain because at the beginning he is prone to follow the inclination of the vicious habit, but in fighting against the inclination of it he merits well and acquires for himself a habit to the contrary. Hence great sinners do not, as soon as they are justified, have that peace which the perfect and practiced in virtue do.

30. Also, whatever habit or vicious disposition might, from acts, be left behind, it would cease to be after passage of time unless it were strengthened by frequent acts (just as universally every disposition for a habit ceases to be when the acts perfecting that habit cease to be). But that by which a sinner is, after an act, said to be a sinner does not cease to be through any time however much, although like acts not be added to it; for he is a sinner for ever from when he committed it. So there is not anything absolute or respective there, positive or privative, from the time of the ceasing of the act up to penance, by which he may be called a sinner, but there is only a certain relation of reason, insofar as he is an object of the intellect or will of God. Because, after he has committed the sin, the will of God ordains him to a penalty corresponding to the sin, and the intellect of God foresees this for all time until the penalty due is paid.

31. The proof of this is from Augustine on Psalm 31.1-2, narration 2 n.9, “Blessed are those” [whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered]: ‘To see sins’, he says, belongs to God for assigning to penalty; ‘but to turn his face from sins’, this is for God not to keep for penalty. So Augustine says,     therefore , that sins are not covered over by God such that God not see them, but that he not wish to attend to them, that is, to punish them; therefore , that a sinner remains in guilt after the act passes away is only that he is ordained by God’s will for penalty befitting the sin. But an object of intellect or of will has, as it is understood or willed, only a relation of reason; therefore etc     .

32. This is confirmed by a likeness: let it be that God not consider, in a multiplication of merits, the habit of charity - as is possible if the merits be mild or even if they were intense - yet he who had many merits is, after the exterior or interior acts pass away, more deserving than someone else. Which is nothing other than that he is ordained to a greater glory, by which is not obtained anything real positive or privative intrinsic to him, absolute or respective, but only a relation of reason insofar as he is an object of the divine will and in order to be ordained to greater glory. For there, in the divine acceptance, merits are ordained, or the man is ordained through merits, to such or such a glory. Just as, therefore, this acceptation for transient merits is nothing really save an act of the divine will (and in this there is only a relation of reason as in an object willed), so on the other side the casting off of this man because of transient sins is only a reprobation or repulsion in the divine will, and in the sinner it is only a relation of reason (as of someone cast off or reprobate) for such or such a penalty.

33. This finally is plain from a like obvious case, that if someone offend a great prince with the sort of offense that a great penalty responds to, there is, when that act ceases, nothing in him that, before the act for which he be called an enemy now and not before, was not previously there; but the transient act in him is only in the will of the offended lord himself, and by this fact is it a relation of reason in him, as in a subject or object willed for such sort of penalty.

34. From this a corollary follows, that after the act of sin ceases the offense, stain, and fault is nothing other than this relation of reason, namely ordination to a penalty; and as this is unbecoming to the very soul, it is said to be the ‘stain’ of the soul (just as ‘beauty’ is said of it as the opposite); but as it is formally an obligation for this penalty it is called ‘guilt’; and as it is an act of divine will (which is this whole reality), by which act the soul is ordered to such penalty, it is called ‘offense’. For ‘to be offended’ or ‘to be angry’ is in God nothing other than will to exact vengeance with this penalty; and although God be said figuratively to be angry or offended, yet by taking this idea of ‘to be angry’ for ‘to will to avenge’ (excluding any accompanying passion of this ‘will’), God is formally angry and offended, because he is formally willing to avenge sin committed against his Law.

B. What Remains in the Sinner after Sin can be Deleted by some Punishment

35. About the second article [n.16] I say that that which is said to remain in the sinner after the act can be deleted and is sometimes deleted, according to the phrase ‘remission of sins’ in the Creed, that is, God is ready to remit sins and is sometimes remitting sins.

36. And the proof of this is as follows, that sometimes he who is predestined falls into mortal sin (it is plain about blessed Peter [John 18.17, 25-27] and blessed Paul [Acts 7.57-59, 9.1-6, Galatians 1.13-16] and others almost without number); but he cannot be beatified (toward which chiefly he is ordered by predestination) unless sin has been deleted, taking ‘sin’ in the way above stated [n.30], because no one is beatified while remaining obligated to paying a penalty. For either payment must be made along with glory (which is impossible, because at the least, according to divine disposition, that glory and any sin whatever are repugnant), or it must be paid after glorification, which is likewise impossible, because God has disposed that glory to be final in anyone, such that no penalty would follow;     therefore it is necessary that, before glorification, this obligation to undergo penalty be at some point remitted or deleted.

37. Second I say that sin is not remitted without punishment, or the equivalent in divine acceptation, because God is offended by any sin at all, as Scripture sufficiently proclaims [e.g. Genesis 6.5-12, Matthew 5.19-48, 6.1-7, Mark 7.20-23, Romans 7.23, Galatians 5.19-21, Colossians 3.5-15, etc     .]; but his displeasure or anger (as was said [n.34]) is his willing to avenge or his demanding something else sufficient for placation; so, whatever sin is posited, God wills to avenge it on the sinner. But to will to avenge is to will to punish; therefore after commission of sin, some punishment, or the equivalent in divine acceptation, is required. And although the fault that is taken away be as a rule taken away by a penalty (just as an obligation to anything is taken away by payment of it), and although sometimes it be taken away by something else (equivalent in divine acceptation) besides a penalty, yet it is as a rule put in order by a penalty but not taken away.

38. And this is what is commonly said, and it is taken from Boethius [Consolation of Philosophy IV prose 4 n.20-21], that penalty is an ordering of a fault, such that no fault can be left in the universe to which there corresponds no ordering penalty; and it is simply better for an uncorrected sinner to undergo penalty than be without penalty, because in the first there is something of good, namely a just correspondence of penalty to the fault, and in the second there would be only malice, namely the fault and it unpunished.

39. Nor yet do I take it that there be here simply a necessity of which the opposite includes a contradiction, because, from the fact that it is not essentially the same for God to dismiss guilt and precisely and especially to punish it (as will be plain in the question in distinction 16 [nn.60-63] about the expelling of guilt and infusion of grace), it seems that God could separate one from the other. But, of his ordained power, this is the way universally fixed by divine Law, namely putting sin in order through a penalty as through what properly corresponds to it.

C. About Voluntary Penalty or Punishment

1. About the Thing of Such Punishment or Penitence

a. The Penalty or Punishment should be Voluntary

40. About the third article [n.16] one must first see about the thing, second about the name.

And about the thing let this be the conclusion, that for the deletion of sin there is required as a rule a voluntary penalty or punishment.

41. The proof of this is that sin is deleted through some punishment, as was said in the second article [nn.36-39], and that through some punishment it is not deleted, as is plain in the damned. And about the penalty that immediately follows a fault, “You have commanded, O Lord, and so it is, that each sinner should be a penalty to himself,” according to Augustine Confessions I ch.12 n.19 [cf. Ord. II d.7 n.92].

42. Now a difference between a punishment by which sin is deleted and a punishment by which it is not deleted is not as provable as it is about what is voluntary and what is involuntary. First because the punishment of the damned is far greater, intensively and extensively, than is the punishment of a wayfarer whose sin is deleted by the punishment; and consequently being more and less intensive and extensive does not make a difference between a punishment that deletes sin and a punishment that does not.That is, if punishment itself is supposed to be what deletes sin, a greater punishment should delete a greater sin, but it does not, as is clear of the damned whose punishment is greater and yet does not delete their sin. ⁴ Second because we see it so in human offenses, that a voluntary penalty or distress placates the one offended, but not at all one that is involuntary and undertaken with murmuring.That is, what makes a penalty placate the person offended is not the mere fact that it is a punishment, but that it is undertaken voluntarily. ⁵ Therefore if deletion of offense be owed to some penalty and to some penalty not, and if the difference in this regard is not as provable by anything as it is by the voluntary and involuntary, it is reasonable that voluntary penalty be as a rule required for deletion of sin.

43. Then follows a corollary, how guilt is set in order in a double way by penalty: for guilt that remains is put in order by the accompanying penalty, but the penalty is involuntary; and guilt put in order by a voluntary penalty is deleted by it.

b. About the Ways in which a Penalty can be Voluntary

44. But if you ask how some penalty could be voluntary, since it is of the idea of penalty that it be involuntary (because just as no one commits sin in what he does not want, so no one is punished in what he does want) - I reply: this difficulty requires a rather long explication.

45. And here it must be noted that the involuntary is simply that against which the will simply murmurs back.

46. And consequently, by opposition, the voluntary can be understood in three ways: in one way that against which the will altogether does not murmur but patiently sustains; in a second way that which it voluntarily accepts; in a third way that which it voluntarily causes - and this in two ways: either as partial proximate cause and not intending the effect, or as principal remote cause and intending the effect. And thus are four members obtained.

47. And this distinction is plain, because in the first two modes sadness is only the object of the will; in the third it is only the effect and not the object; in the fourth it is the object and the effect, unless something else prevent it (these members will be at once explained [nn.49-55]). The order here is also plain, because the second makes an addition as to the idea of what is voluntary to the first, and the third to the second and the fourth to the third.

48. And penalty too can be understood either as whatever is disadvantageous or disagreeable (and that can be in a sense-part in man or in the body conjoined with act of the sense-soul), or it can be the prime disagreeable thing, which is the sadness that is the penalty properly and first, about which Augustine says, City of God XIV ch.15, “sadness is the soul’s dissenting from the things that happen to us against our will.”

49. Having made supposition, then, about the exterior penalties as about things that are manifest how they can be voluntary in each of these four ways of the voluntary [n.46] - let us see specifically about this first penalty, namely sadness.

50. It is plain that it can be voluntary in the first way, namely voluntary in a certain respect, that is, ‘borne patiently’, because a disagreeable evil, provided however it not be against right reason, can be undergone not only patiently absolutely but patiently in an ordered way.

51. It can also [sc. in the second way, n.46] be accepted in order to some end, as Augustine says [Ps.-Augustine, On True and False Penitence ch.13; in Lombard, Sent. IV d.14 ch.13 n.6], “Let the sinner grieve for his sin, and rejoice in his grief.”

52. But, third [n.46], as to how the will causes grief or sadness voluntarily as partial cause, a difficulty arises. I say that sadness in any will cannot be caused naturally save by two causes coming together, namely from actual willing of some existence and from actual apprehending of that existence,Sc. the apprehension of it as not being there, or not being there as one wills it to be there. ⁶ in line with the preceding description of sadness from Augustine [n.48]. Whatever therefore is cause of volition is partial cause of sadness, though it not intend, nor need intend, to cause sadness through the volition. Now these two causes, whenever they come together, cause (as far as it is from themselves) sadness as a naturally consequent effect.

53. From this third the fourth [n.46] is made clear, because from the fact that sadness follows, as a natural effect, on actual volition of something and actual consideration of the thing willed, then although these two proximate causes could come together in a multiplicity of ways (because coming from as many causes as such actual consideration in the intellect and such actual volition in the will can come from), yet no single one can be cause of sadness (speaking of natural causation) unless there could be a cause of the coming together of these two that are the naturally necessary proximate causes.

54. Now a common cause of this sort can the will be as commanding an act of consideration and an act of volition of the same object, and this in an ordering to the intended end, so that a punitive sadness follows; therefore the will, when bidding the intellect to consider something as existing in act and bidding the will to will it as existing in act, causes sadness as a single cause, as also intending this effect - and this not as proximate cause, because there cannot be a proximate single sufficient cause; but it causes sadness as a remote single cause, because it is cause of the proximate causes in regard to sadness, and cause of the applying of them.

55. Thus therefore is it plain how the first penalty, namely sadness [n.49], can be supremely voluntary and caused by the will, not only as by a partial cause (the way the will universally causes when causing what happens), but as by a total cause, namely by applying the proximate partial causes of this effect, and this in an order to causing such effect.

56. Then as to the argument that ‘every penalty is involuntary’ [n.44], it is true in itself, and this when comparing it to the will that is following love of advantage. However, a penalty can be voluntary in the antecedent will, namely in the voluntary applying of the causes on which a penalty follows. It can also be voluntary with accepting will, and this with a will that follows love of justice, because it thus accepts whatever has an order to something that is to be justly willed per se; and this sadness can be toward something that is to be justly willed per se.

2. About the Name of the Aforesaid Penitence

a. About the Word ‘Penitence’ Equivocally Taken

57. About the second conclusion of this article [n.32], namely about the word ‘penitence’, I say that, just as in the case of the voluntary punishment [nn.49-55], it turns out there are many things to consider: First indeed, the will to punish, which is a commanding or efficacious will joining together the proximate causes of undergoing the punishment; second, the not willing to have sinned or to give displeasure, which is a proximate partial cause of the penalty, although the not willing not intend the penalty; and third, willing, that is, accepting, the undergoing of the punishment now inflicted; fourth, bearing the punishment patiently. And let these four be thus briefly expressed: to avenge what has been done; to detest what has been done; to accept the penalty inflicted; to bear patiently the penalty inflicted.

58. To these four correspond another four on the part of the term of the volition, wherein the material element is the same, namely ‘to punish’. And there are four superadded formal elements, namely what is willed by the will causing, what by the will detesting, what by the will accepting, what by the will patiently bearing.

59. Now it is plain that none of the aforesaid volitions is per se the same as the punishment undergone. And thus the name [sc. ‘penitence’], which per se signifies volition and connotes punishment, will not signify punishment univocally in connoting volition, and consequently, if any expression per se signify the punishment willed and the willing of the penalty, this will be done equivocally. Again, if it signify this fourfold volition, this will be done equivocally.

60. The same name, then, could be equivocally imposed on these eight elements.

b. About the Word ‘Penitence’ Taken Univocally or Properly

61. But putting the stress on the term ‘to be penitent’, since ‘to be penitent’ is ‘to hold a penalty’In Latin ‘to repent’ is ‘poenitere’, which here is made to derive from ‘poenam tenere’, or ‘to hold a penalty’. ⁷ (according to the etymology of the word), and since ‘to hold a penalty’ imports suffering with respect to the penalty (not just the suffering of it as it is presentSc. not just suffering the pain of punishment, which the impenitent can do, but suffering the fact that it is a ‘penalty’, something one deserves for a sin one now detests, which only the penitent can do. ⁸), the thing signified by this term seems to consists in four primary things.

62. And so there is a fourfold description of what it is ‘to be penitent’:

First is this: ‘To be penitent is to avenge a sin committed by oneself’. And it is plain how there it is ‘holding a penalty’, because to apply a penalty to oneself is to hold it; and it can be so understood whether one apply or inflict the penalty in fact or in affection, because he who avenges no less avenges even when the penalty, because of the defect of some second cause, not follow, provided however he himself have equal intention to inflict the penalty.

The second description of what it is ‘to be penitent’ is ‘to detest or hate a sin committed by oneself’ or ‘to have displeasure about this sin committed by oneself’. And it is plain how there it is ‘holding a penalty’, because holding it in a partial proximate cause. And this is understood of the willing-against or detesting or having displeasure about this sin in its proper idea, or in general at the same time about any sin committed by oneself - and again whether of formal or virtual displeasure. And virtual displeasure is any act of the will virtually including that displeasure, the way a cause in some way includes its effect even though the effect in itself not be caused; thus since every willing-against arises from some willing, all displeasure or willing-against of sin, although it not be present formally, can yet be present virtually in one’s will, on which will such displeasure is of a nature to follow.

The third description: ‘to be penitent is to accept gladly a punishment inflicted for sin committed’. And it is plain how here it is ‘holding a penalty’, in just the way an object is held by an act of will; and this can be understood of accepting formally or virtually, namely in some acceptation in which it is included virtually, just as willing a thing for an end is included in willing the end.

The fourth description: ‘to be penitent is to suffer patiently the punishment inflicted on oneself for one’s sin’. And it is plain how here it is ‘holding a penalty’, because it is not to cast off by murmuring back; hence too it is similarly said in this sense to be ‘to sustain’‘Sustinere’, a word derived from ‘tenere’ (like ‘poenitere’) and from ‘sub’ or ‘under’; hence to sustain is to hold oneself under something. ⁹, as if to keep oneself under the action of the agent, or of the one doing the inflicting, by conforming oneself to it.

63. All voluntary punishment is contained under one or other of the four modes of penitence. But, for the deletion of any actual mortal sin committed after baptism, some voluntary punishment is required; so for the deletion of it is required penitence stated in one or other of the four modes.

D. Solution of the Question

64. From these results I argue briefly thus to the solution of the question: for the deletion of a mortal fault committed after baptism there is required voluntary punishment or a will for punishment; but neither of these can be without penitence;     therefore etc     . The proof of the first proposition is in the second article and at the beginning of this third article [nn.39-41]; the second is plain from the first part of this article [n.54].

65. And from this argument is it plain how the conclusion on which the solution to the question rests, namely that penitence is required for deletion of sin, should be understood etc. [n.40]; for it is only understood of actual penitence, that is, of an act of penitence, which is an actual ‘holding a penalty’ (so to speak); and the understanding is only about that act as indistinctly taken for any of the four descriptions stated before [nn.61-63]. But whether this act must be right or virtuous or not, or formed or not, is in the following question [nn.84-150].

66. The conclusion is also only understood of what is required simply necessarily (of which the opposite includes a contradiction), because God could remit sin without any act by him to whom he remits it. But neither is it necessarily required on the supposition of an act by the man to whom sin is remitted; for God could remit sin through some fervent act of love for God without any of the four previously stated acts in their proper idea - as in the case of an act of zeal for martyrdom that is at once to be undergone, where perhaps there would be no thought taken of any sin previously committed, nor consequently any aforesaid penitence; and this taken formally, though virtually in that motion there would be penitence in its second signification [sc. virtual, n.62].

67. And the proof of this is that no one is excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven who does what is simply necessary; but it is possible for someone who is in mortal sin up to instant a to be necessitated from instant a on to focus with his whole heart on acts distracting him for thinking of past sin, as his being at once exposed to the most straitened martyrdom.

68. And for this reason was it said in the conclusion that ‘[voluntary punishment] is as a rule required for deletion of sin’ [n.40], because that thing is said to happen ‘as a rule’ which happens according to rules determined by Divine Wisdom, of which this is one: that sin committed is not destroyed without displeasure at the sin committed. And this rule appears very reasonable, because just as sin turns one away from the end and toward creatures, so it is reasonable that it only be destroyed by an opposite motion turning one away from sin or from creatures (as being that which the sin was about) and toward God.

69. Now, to the part that is ‘to be displeased at sin committed’ [n.68] can be reduced the three other members of what it is to be penitent [sc. the second, third, and fourth descriptions in n.62].

70. But as to the special conditions about how an act of penitence is required for deletion of sin (whether as preceding or as concomitant disposition) - this will be plain in the following question [nn.130-132].

II. To the Initial Arguments

71. As to the first argument [n.4] the answer is plain from the first article [nn.29-30].

72. As to the second [n.5], the proof is only about God’s absolute power, and this was conceded in the second main article [n.39].

73. But if you argue that God can, of his ordained power, remit sin without a penalty, just as also can an irate man - I reply: the remission of sin is not by change of God’s will, because his will, both in itself and in the act of willing, both absolute and insofar as it focuses on the object, is uniform, and consequently, if God in eternity wills someone to be punished for a certain time, he wills him always to be punished for that time, unless something in creatures changes. But it is not so with the will of an irate man, which changes as to act of willing and un-willing.

74. To the third [n.7], about the penitence of the damned, I say as before [n.42], that they do not truly repent, because neither do they ‘hold a penalty’, since it is not there voluntary but a murmuring back. And as to what is said about Judas [n.8], I reply that not just any act of being penitent suffices for deletion of sin (as will be plain from the following question [n.127]), but the act must be ordered, and ordered especially by the circumstance of the end, which is first among the circumstances of a moral act. And Judas was not penitent with that circumstance, or for love of God.

75. As to the last [n.9], it will in the following question [n.145] be plain in a way what act of being penitent is a disposition previous to deletion of sin, and what act is required formally in which sin is deleted. And this second act is as good as the sin is bad, because the malice of a sin consists in turning away from the end; therefore the good that brings one back consists in turning to the end; and thus the act of turning to the end as perfectly turns one to God as the act of sin turns one away. And just as in this second act there is not really a goodness intensively infinite, so there is not in the act of sin a malice intensively infinite. For malice is not greater than the good that it deprives; and only what is of a nature to be in the act deprives the act of good; but in the act, since it is something finite, only a finite good is of a nature to be present. There is precisely infinity, therefore, and malice in sin and goodness in the opposite act because of the infinity of the object from which sin turns away and to which a good act turns back. And this in the act is only a participated infinity, or rather an infinity in speech, because of the infinity real and simply in the object itself.

Question Two. Whether the Act of Penitence Required for Deletion of Mortal Sin is an Act of some Virtue

76. Whether the act of penitence required for deletion of mortal sin is an act of some virtue.

77. That it is not:

Because “we are not praised for passions,” Ethics 2.4.1105b31-32, and an act of the virtues is praiseworthy, from the same text [1106a1-2]. But to be penitent is a kind of passion, just as is also the punishment that it includes.

78. Again, an act of virtue is voluntary, because it is an act of choice, from Ethics 2.5.1106b36-1107a2; but penitence is involuntary, for nothing is a penalty save what is against one’s will; and then as before [n.77, cf. n.56].

79. Again, the virtues would have been present in the state of innocence, and they will remain in the fatherland, because nature will remain perfect and it would then have been perfect, whose these virtues are. But in the state of innocence there was no penitence, nor will there be in the fatherland, because neither will there be any evil there for which voluntary punishment may be due;     therefore etc     .

80. Again, if to be penitent were an act of virtue, it would not have been a virtue of anything other than the will (as is plain by induction); but it is not any ‘willing’, because it is in respect of evil, nor is it any un-willing save the un-willing that is ‘not willing to have sinned’. But this is not an act of virtue because neither is it an act of choice, for choice does not regard what is impossible, and that the past had not been past is impossible even for God, from Ethics 6.2.1139b10-11: “From God is taken this alone, to make undone what has been done.”

81. Again, it would be an act either of acquired or of infused virtue. Not in the first way because acquired virtue and its act can remain along with mortal sin, but an act of a virtue of penitence cannot, because it destroys mortal sin. Nor is it an act of infused virtue; this is plain by induction about faith, hope, and charity, and also by common proof, because infused virtue and its act have God immediately for object - not so this act, namely of being penitent [sc. which has sin for object, n.62];     therefore etc     .

82. The opposite is plain from the Master in the text [Lombard, Sent. IV d.14 ch.1 n.2].

I. To the Question

83. In this question it is necessary first to see how ‘to be penitent’ could be an act of virtue, and this in any of the four ways that were set down in the preceding question in article three [n.62], and an act of what virtue; second to see whether any of these acts is required as an act of virtue. And therefore the treatment in both articles must be about all four indifferently, because one only gets from the preceding solution that any of them may suffice.

A. About ‘To be Penitent’ as an Act of Virtue

84. The first of these two articles has four parts, according to the four ideas of penitence touched on above about penitence [n.62].

1. According to the First Signification, which is ‘To Avenge Sin’

85. According to the first signification [n.62], the first conclusion is this: to be penitent can be the mean of an act of virtue for this purpose [sc. to avenge a sin], because it can be an act conform to right reason or to rectitude.

86. The proof of this is that according to right reason any legislator avenges transgressions of law; hence the Philosopher in Ethics 10.11.1179b34-81b79b23, after the teaching about the vices and virtues, at once introduces positive law as avenger of vices and rewarder of virtues. But if the legislator avenges by right reason, his minister executes it by right reason, because rectitude in an act of a subordinate universally comes from its conformity with the agent it ministers to. Therefore, according to right reason someone can, as minister of the legislator, avenge sin committed against the law, and avenge it on him on whom he has received commission to take vengeance, for otherwise he would not be subordinate minister.

87. But each of us has received commission to be minister of God in enforcing his law on ourselves for sins committed, and ‘to be penitent’ in the first way states taking vengeance on oneself. For ‘to hold’, when a dative expressing for whom it is held is not added, signifies that it is held for oneself (this is plain from common speechFor instance, to say ‘I hold it’ referring to some object one possesses, means in effect ‘I hold it for myself’. If, however, one is holding it for someone, as in safekeeping, one would say ‘I hold it for you’. ¹⁰). Therefore God, although he punish the sinner, is not said to be penitent, because he inflicts the penalty not on himself but on another. But ‘inflicting a penalty on oneself’ is called holding a penalty, that is, holding a penalty for oneself by applying it to oneself.

88. As to this conclusion, then, I do not say that ‘to be penitent’ in the first way is always an act of virtue, that is, elicited by virtue, but it is of virtue, that is, of a nature to be elicited by virtue or to generate virtue, because it is conform to right reason; and in this lies the goodness of a human moral act. But, as far as concerns the per se idea of moral goodness, it is accidental that it be generated by virtue or generate virtue, as was said in Ord. III d.9 n.12 [also d.33 nn.43-45].

89. The second conclusion is which virtue, according to the first signification of this word [n.62], this act of being penitent belongs to.

90. To solve this one needs to know that ‘to be penitent’ requires, according to this understanding, a distinct prior knowledge of that about which one is penitent. Here I say that the following things are disposed in order: (1) to command the coming together of the partial proximate causes of sadness; (2) and the conjunction of these partial causes that are the proximate effect of the command; (3) and there follows further the remote effect of this command, namely the sadness itself; (4) next contentment in the sadness can follow, which is an act of will having sadness for object; (5) and finally joy in the sadness, according to the saying of Augustine, “Let the sinner grieve over his sin and rejoice in his grief” [n.51].

91. The distinction between these is plain: the distinction, indeed, of the first one, namely the command, from the proximate cause of sadness, as of the principal and remote cause from the proximate and second cause; the distinction of the second one from the third, as of the cause from the effect and of the action from the passion; and the third one from the fourth, as of the object from the action; the fourth one from the fifth, as of the object from the passion that is desirous of this object.

92. I say,     therefore , that nothing in all these five is per se ‘to avenge’ save the first of them, namely the imperative willing itself (the proof is that for an inferior and a superior avenger, or at least for anyone immediately avenging the same sin under the same idea and the same circumstances of avenging, there can be an act of avenging of the same idea). But to take vengeance on oneself and on another, according to right reason in both cases, cannot uniformly be any of these besides the first; therefore etc     .

93. This could be proved a posteriori, because the actions pertaining to the second stage [n.90] can come from as many indeterminate causes as you like, but justly avenging cannot. But this, without arguing in a circle, will be shown immediately a priori.

94. Let it be sufficient, then, to say here that it is possible to find some act that is prior to the proximate causes of sadness and that brings them together, as was made clear in the last article of the preceding question [nn.53-54]; and consequently this act precedes the sadness, and thereby precedes the contentment and much more the joy in the sadness [n.90]. That possible first act I call ‘to avenge’ or to inflict a penalty for what has been committed, and as a result we have the distinct idea of what it is ‘to be penitent’ according to the first signification of the word.

95. On this supposition, let this be the third conclusion [nn.85, 89]: ‘to be penitent’ is an act of a special virtue. The proof is that this act is of a nature to have a special object and specific circumstances, or circumstances ordered around an object, that come together in an act as the act is tending rightly to such object, namely the circumstances that are the end and manner and the like.

96. Further, in particular, let there be this conclusion: ‘to be penitent’ is not an act of any intellectual virtue.

97. The fact is immediately plain, because it is an act of appetite as appetite, for it is to command the intellect to consider and the will to detest (as was said in the preceding solution [nn.54-56, 64-69]). This commanding belongs only to appetite and will. For neither can any sensitive power give command to the intellect and to the will and join them together in their acts; nor can the intellect give command to itself and to the will, but the will alone can give command to itself and to the intellect, according to the remark of Augustine [On the Trinity XI ch.9 n.16], “it joins the parent with the offspring,” and this as concerns the intellect. And as concerns the will, the will gives command to itself.

98. This conclusion [n.96] is also plain as follows, that an intellectual virtue says ‘it is true or it is not true’ in matters of speculation or action. It also inclines to acting accordingly, namely to avenging, but not to giving command that one must so act. Avenging, therefore, is an act not of intellectual but of appetitive virtue.

99. Another conclusion follows, that to be penitent does not belong to an appetitive virtue putting things in order for itself, of which sort are temperance and fortitude; therefore to a virtue putting things in order for another, of which sort is justice. This argument holds on the supposition of the famous distinction between appetitive virtues, that all may be reduced to two genera [Ethics, 5.3.1129b31-33].

100. The proof of the antecedent is that someone can exercise the act of avenging according to right reason in the same way on another as on himself. Also, if he do exercise it on himself, he does not exercise it on himself save as on someone else, because he does not exercise it save insofar as taking vengeance on this guilty party is committed to him by the legislator.

101. But it is accidental that he to whom it is committed as to a minister of the judge is this guilty party himself, because he acts on the guilty party in the same way according to the right reason of a minister as if that party were altogether different in person. Therefore the virtue to which this act is of a nature to belong is contained under justice, to the extent that any virtue is called justice that regulates things for another, or as if for another. Nor is it an obstacle that he is, because of this, directed at himself in this act, because he is only directed at himself as at another, namely as a minister of the judge against someone guilty of breaking the law, authority over whom has been committed to him by the judge.

102. A further inquiry: for under justice is contained friendship, speaking of justice in general, because friendship is a virtue toward another, Ethics 8.1.1155a3-31 and 9.4.1166a1-33 - is this act of penitence, then, or punishing an act of friendship?

103. It seems that it is, because an act of reconciling with a friend is friendship, and such this act is.

104. Again, it is a mark of friendship to correct a friend so that he be worthy to be loved (with that excluded which is repugnant to an honest friendship). The avenging here is a correcting of a friend, so that he become worthily lovable;     therefore etc     . The proof of the minor is that if he is only punished so that vengeance be exacted or the avenger be sated, it is cruelty;     therefore avenging is according to right reason only so that he on whom vengeance is taken be corrected; but this is friendship; therefore etc     .

105. There is a confirmation from the Philosopher in Rhetoric 1.10.1369b12-14, who says that reproof differs from punishment strictly taken in this, that reproof is for the sake of the one reproved, namely so that he be amended, but punishment is for the sake of the punisher, so that he be sated. But the second seems to belong altogether to cruelty, and this both in the minister and in the judge, for the minister ought to carry out the sentence for the same end as that for which the judge gave it, because the minister’s end should be the end of the one moving him; and consequently what is of cruelty in one is of cruelty in the other.

106. I reply:The arguments that follow, which reject this Aristotelian-derived idea of punishment as an act of friendship, seem more clever than decisive, and seem also to give to observance of the law qua observance a status more tidy than compelling. For the law would seem, like the Sabbath (Mark 2.27), to be for man and not man for the law, and fulfillment of the law is not observance but love (Romans 13.10). Let the arguments, however, be the judge. ¹¹ ‘to avenge’, even when it is an ordered act, is not an act of friendship toward him on whom vengeance is taken, because vengeance properly regards the penalty that, according to law, corresponds to the fault committed, even if reproof of the one punished not accompany it. Hence too is just vengeance sometimes done by extermination of the culprit, where it is plain it is not done by reproving him. Nor yet is it cruelty, as the second objection argues [n.104], because the proximate end of it is conservation of the law, and the further end is what the end of the law is. But the end of the positive law passed by man is not the legislator himself or his good, but the common good; therefore the law and its observance are for the sake of that end. And so vengeance insofar as it is for that end is more reasonable than if it were for the private good of a public person.

107. Now in the issue at hand it could similarly be said that the divine Law is for the common good of men, to whom also has been given punishment of anyone sinning against the Law, and this latter [sc. punishment] is for the sake of observance of the Law, and further for the sake of the common good of those to whom the Law has been given. But at last it is for the sake of the Legislator himself, and so is it here for this reason; and it is not so as to law passed by man, because the good of the Legislator in the former case is simply better than the good of the community, but not so in the latter case.

108. Now an act of friendship that commanded some punishment of a loved one as loved would precisely command it only for correction of the loved one; and though this might be the way of correcting him, yet if there were another way of more easily correcting him toward friendship as friendship, it would rather command the other way.

109. Hereby to the first objection [n.103] I say that, if someone be reconciled by penitence to God, yet God does not principally take vengeance on him to reconcile him to himself (calling ‘reconciliation’ his being brought back to the old friendship), but so that the one reconciled be held immune from the penalty due to sin, since the penalty has now been paid, which the avenger (because of its aforesaid correspondence with the fault committed) per se required to be paid according to law.

110. To the second objection [n.105] I say similarly that vengeance is not properly for the correction of the one punished, although that correction sometimes follow. But it is per se for setting the fault in order through the penalty, and so that the punitive law against which transgression was made be observed. And when it is said that this belongs to cruelty, plainly it does not, because the further good is the common good; but it would be cruel if a stand were made in an end other than the common end, or than the ultimate end.

111. As to the confirmation from the Rhetoric [n.105] I say that he who corrects does it for the sake of the one reproved, but an avenger does so not per se for the sake of the one reproved or for the sake of himself, but for the sake of the law, and this further for the sake of the common good - and then for the sake of himself if he himself is the end of the law, as it is in the issue at hand.

112. There is this act of punitive justice, then, which is distinguished from commutative justice, and also from friendship. And perhaps this act is nobler than any act of justice in common (excepting the act of giving reward), for it is proper to the legislator and fits no one else, save by commission from the judge as to his deputy.

113. Now other acts (of exchange and of friendship and the like) can regularly belong to any person, but an act that is proper to a more excellent person is, ceteris paribus, more excellent. An act of rewarding, however, is more excellent still because, along with this excellence common to each (namely that the rewarding belongs to a prince alone), it has extremes that are each more noble, namely the merit for which it is done, and the reward that is conferred, and the deserving person on whom it is conferred - which excel the penalty, fault, and guilty person on whom the penalty is inflicted.

114. Another conclusion is this, that the act is an act of the will, whose job it is to give command to intellect and will, and this by a command belonging to the irascible power, or some power having in itself something similar to irascible virtue. For just as the irascible power in the sense faculty avenges in its own way, so the power that commands vengeance in the intellective part has something similar to the irascible power; but in the intellective part it now belongs only to the will.

115. From this there could be a doubt about the relation of this virtue to charity; for from the fact that by its own act it commands an act of charity, it seems to be superior to charity.

116. Yet the opposite is manifest, because the object per se of charity is God under his most noble objective idea, and the proper object of this virtue is a bad to be avenged or a culprit on whom vengeance should be taken.

117. From this is it plain that penitence not only is not a theological virtue, as was argued before [n.81], but that neither is it the simply most noble virtue among those virtues that concern a created object.

118. To the second objection [n.104], about the use of virtue, I say that the will can use itself circularly, as it were, according to diverse habits: from an act of love for God in himself, which is an act of charity, it can command an act of will of avenging sin, and conversely from an act commanding vengeance it can command an act of love for God in himself, on which there follows an un-willing or displeasure about some sin committed, and thus sadness about this sin. Therefore charity can use an act of penitence, and also an act of any virtue in the will or in the intellect. And penitence can use charity and any virtue, in the intellect and in the will, that can be the principle of a consideration or an un-willing of an object about which it wills to cause sadness.

119. I say, therefore, that the virtue to which, from its object, command more belongs is better simply than another virtue; but to charity, from its object, namely the ultimate end, it belongs to use any other virtue rather than conversely, just as always in ordered arts and powers what has a higher end regularly uses inferior ones.

120. So does it appear about the first act of being penitent, or about the first signification of this word ‘to be penitent’ [n.62]: what it is - that it is an imperative willing; and of what it is the effect - that it is the effect of sadness; through what things as through what instruments - that it is through the proximate causes of sadness, namely actual knowledge and actual un-willing of some object; and about what object - that it is about sin committed; and by whom - that it is by a minister having from the legislator a commission for punishing; and for the sake of what end - that it is for the sake of observance of the law and further for the sake of the common good; and thereby that it can be the act of a special virtue - that it is of a certain special justice; and of what object - that it is of the will; and what comparison it has with the acquired and infused theological virtues.

2. According to the Remaining Three Significations, which are: To Detest Sin, to Accept Penalty Gladly, to Suffer Penalty Patiently

121. About the second signification of this word that ‘to be penitent’ is, about what of course it is to detest sin committed or to be displeased over sin committed - I say that this can be an act of virtue.

122. The proof is as before [n.85], that it can be an act of choice in agreement with right reason; for just as right reason dictates that one should be pleased with the honorable good, so it dictates that one should be displeased with the dishonorable bad.

123. From this is plain a second conclusion, namely of which virtue it can be the act, that it is not of some special virtue but of any virtue of appetite. For any virtue whatever inclines toward being pleased with the honorable good; any virtue also inclines to detesting the dishonorable bad (as chastity in respect of something disordered against chastity inclines to displeasure, humility in respect of an inordinate act of pride, and so on of the rest). However, whatever inclines toward such displeasure is an appetitive virtue, because nothing is a principle of hating or loving unless it is an appetitive virtue.

124. From this is plain that detestation of sin would be badly posited to be an act of penitence as virtue, speaking of penitence as virtue in the first way, as it is a species of justice [n.62]; because this act is much more general than what that could be which is an act proper to penitence-as-justice elicited by it.

125. About the third one, which is ‘to accept gladly a punishment inflicted for sin committed’, I say that this act can be an act of virtue because it is in agreement with right reason; and secondly I say it can be an act of many virtues, each of which however is an appetitive virtue; because whatever can be a principle of accepting some object, can be a principle of accepting another object in its order to it. And different objects can be accepted through diverse virtues, in an ordering to which a penalty inflicted for sin could be accepted; for if God is loved out of charity, a penalty can be accepted out of charity insofar as it leads back to divine friendship. But if God were, out of the virtue of hope, desired as a good for me, a penalty would, out of the virtue of hope, be accepted as ordering me to this attainable reward. If the loss of eternal life is, out of the virtue of fear, guarded against, a penalty can, out of this fear, be accepted as excluding the loss. If one loves purity and innocence for oneself out of honorable love for oneself, one can accept, out of that love, the penalty that pays the guilt that was present.

126. About the fourth one, namely to bear patiently a penalty inflicted, it is plain that it can be an act of virtue, and of a special virtue, because of an act of patience.

B. Whether Being Penitent as an Act of Virtue is Required for Deletion of Sin

127. About the second main point [n.83], namely whether ‘to be penitent’, as an act of virtue, is required for deletion of sin, I say not as an act of one determinate virtue; and, second, not as an act of any virtue, of this or that sort indifferently; and third, if as an act with the circumstances present simply perfectly, is it sufficient as formed or as unformed?

1. For Deletion of Sin ‘To be Penitent’ is not Required as an Act of any Determinate Virtue

128. The first is plain from what was aid, that ‘to be penitent’ suffices according to any of the four significations stated before - as is proved by the authority of Ezekiel 18.21-22, “In the hour the sinner laments, he will be saved” [in Gratian Decretum p.1 d.50 ch.14, Lombard Sent. d.17 ch.1 n.4, from Caesarius of Arles, sermon 70 n.2: “In the day the sinner will be converted, all his iniquities will be given over to oblivion”]. The first act and two others do not necessarily belong to the same determinate virtue, but the first to justice, the last to patience, the two in the middle to any appetitive virtue.

2. For the Deletion of Sin an Act as it is First Generative of Virtue can Suffice

129. I prove the second [n.127], that an act equally perfect as to all moral circumstances is equally accepted by God for deletion of sin; but it is possible for an act equally perfect as to all circumstances to be had without generated virtue, just as it is possible for it to be had now with generated virtue. For there can be, in accord with a perfect dictate of intellect about any doable thing, a perfect choice, conditioned by all the circumstances, that is first generative of the virtue; and consequently, a right act perfectly circumstanced (which is required for deletion of sin), does not have to be an act of virtue as coming from a virtue now inwardly present, but it can come from an act of virtue as this act is first generative of the virtue.

3. Whether for Deletion of Sin is Required a Human Act that is Unformed or Formed

130. About the third [n.127] I say that the requirement of some human act for deletion of sin can be understood in two ways: either as a disposition preceding it or as one concomitant with it.

131. In the first way an unformed act is sufficient; indeed it is always unformed, because a disposition previous to deletion of sin is always without the grace and charity by whose inherence and inclination to act alone is an act said to be formed.

132. In the second way [n.130] I say that a formed act is required, because in the instant in which sin is deleted charity is present, and consequently, if an act as concomitant is required, a formed act is required.

133. To understand this one must note that when a sinner is in a state of sin (in the way stated in the preceding question, the first article, that sin remains after the act [nn.28-34]), he is able, using his natural powers with their common influence, to reflect on the sin committed as it is offensive to God, and contrary to the Divine Law, and turning away from God, and impeding reward, and inducing punishment, and under many such ideas. The will too can, under any of these ideas, detest the sin thus considered, and its motion can be continued and intensified before infusion of grace.

134. This detesting can also be conditioned fully with its due moral circumstances. For it is not likely to be necessary that any act concerning the committed sin be, because of the remaining sin within, defective in any moral circumstance. Thw whole movement here is called attrition, and it is a disposition, or a merit by congruity,Merit by congruity is not a merit that deserves deletion of sin (the only such merit is Christ’s, not the sinner’s). It is the congruity that if the sinner does what he can (namely to be sad with natural sadness for sin committed), then God does what he can (namely forgive sin and infuse supernatural grace). ¹² for the deletion of mortal sin, which deletion follows at the last moment of the time during which the attrition endured.

135. And it is not certain whether God wanted such attrition, if it not be perfectly morally conditioned, to be a disposition for justification. At any rate, if there is some circumstance not conditioned in proper order, such attrition is not a disposition for justice, because it is actually then offensive. But if it is lacking some due circumstance only because of inconsideration or omission by the will as to that circumstance, then there is doubt whether it be a sufficient disposition for justice.

136. However, if the attrition has all the circumstances in the class of morals perfectly, the disposition does seem to be an altogether sufficient disposition for acquiring justice at the term of the attrition - at the term, I say, which God has prefixed should be the term of the motion of the attrition that he wants to be continued up to that point. For either one must say that a sinner is justified without any disposition on his part that is sufficient by congruity (and it is consequently difficult to save the fact that there is with God no acceptance of persons, as was said in Ord. II d.7 n.47ff. [Rep IVA d.7 qq.13]).If there is no disposition at all on the part of a sinner for which God, by congruity, gives charity and deletes sin, then that this sinner receives charity and that other does not bears no relation to any difference in the sinner but is arbitrary on God’s part, so that God engages in acceptance of persons, choosing this one and not that one regardless of presence or absence of disposition. ¹³ Or that there can be no disposition more sufficient for this justification than this attrition perfectly circumstanced in the class of morals, and that then in the final instant (or in some instant up to which God has determined the attrition should last so as to be a merit by congruity for justification), grace is infused and sin is then simply destroyed.

137. And if the movement against sin remain the same in being of nature and of morals as it was before, the same motion that was attrition before becomes, in that instant, contrition as well, because in that instant it becomes concomitant with grace and so is a formed act, because it has charity along with it, which is the form of the act as we are here speaking of it.

138. One must, however, distinguish momentsStrictly ‘signs’, but these signs are as it were distinct moments of understanding, succeeding each other progressively not in time but in completeness of analysis. ¹⁴ of nature there: between the act as it is the sort of thing it is in being of nature and of morals, and between charity, and between the act as it is formed - because in the first moment of nature an act of the above sort is there; in the second there is charity; in the third an act formed by a charity now inclining inherently from within. And in this way does attrition become contrition without any real change in the act itself.

139. To the contrary: therefore guilt is not destroyed by contrition, because there is only contrition in the third moment of nature, and guilt is destroyed in the second moment; nor even is it destroyed by this contrition as by merit, because it follows the deletion.

140. One can say, therefore, that God disposes to give, through attrition over time (as through a merit by congruity), at some instant grace; and he justifies for that attrition, as for a merit, in the way it is the merit of justification. And although the act concerning the sin not be continued the same as before in genus of nature and morals, yet in that instant grace would be infused, because now sufficient merit by congruity has preceded. For let it be that in the final instant the intellect and will cease from the act just done by turning themselves to some other inappropriate act, why will he not be justified in that final instant as someone else will be who in that instant has the act he had before? For he who has the act in that last instant is not justified in that last instant by that sort of act, but by the act as it has gone before in time, and in this way did the former have that act.

141. And one would, according to this, say that it is not necessary for deletion of sin that some act of penitence is concomitant, neither formed nor not formed, but only that an unformed act of penitence precedes in time up to that instant.

142. But what if in that or some other moment he put an obstacle in the way? For just as he can have an inappropriate act then, so can he have an opposite one.

143. One would say that he cannot put an obstacle in the way, because he has already merited that in that instant grace be given to him.

144. But this is nothing, for although one could not put an obstacle in they way in the instant of being rewarded after merit by congruity, namely one cannot demerit in the instant of death (for then impeccability must be rendered for his merit), yet he who has merited by congruity can put an obstacle in the way in the instant in which he would receive the term of merit if there were no obstacle; and just as in the term of merit by congruity he is able not to have that which he did not merit (because he puts an obstacle in the way), so it is likely that unless he continue in that instant an act in the class of morals of like sort, he will not have that for which such an act by congruity meritoriously disposes him.

145. And therefore the first way [n.138] seems more reasonable, namely that by an unformed act of penitence but one that is fully or half fully circumstanced in the class of morals, sin is deleted as by preceding disposition and merit by congruity. And by an act of penitence that is formed and is called ‘contrition’ sin is deleted as by concomitant act [nn.130-132].

146. And when it is argued that contrition as contrition follows deletion of sin [n.139], I reply: the act that is contrition is, in the same instant of time, prior in nature to the deletion, even though as contrition, that is, as formed, it follow the deletion of sin in order of nature. And thus should it be conceded, in the sense of division, that by the act that is contrition sin is destroyed as by an altogether proximate disposition; nor is it unacceptable, rather is it acceptable, that the proximate disposition exist at the same time as the form for which it is the disposition.

147. If a question be asked about the four acts above stated [nn.62; 57, 120-126], by comparing them with each other as to which is simply a disposition more fitting for deletion of sin - I reply: the more an act is elicited from more virtues and from virtues more perfect, the more is that act better; therefore if the first act be elicited by justice alone, mediately or immediately, and if the second act and the third be elicited by a more perfect virtue, that is, by charity, it is plain that the second or third is more excellent than the first. The same way of understanding must be taken about the fourth; for it is simply most imperfect, both because it has less of the idea of the voluntary and because it is from a less perfect virtue [sc. patience].

148. But if justice, when commanding an act in the first way, be moved to give its command by an act of charity, as is above said to be possible [n.120], then the first act has a double goodness: both from the justice proximately commanding the act and from the charity remotely commanding the act. Similarly, if justice in the first way command the use of charity as proximate cause with respect to sadness, the act of charity is thereby more perfect (because coming from two virtues) than if it come from one alone.

149. But if it be asked which of these acts is more efficacious with respect to the inhering of sadness, I reply: the last two presuppose a sadness already inherent. And the other two can be mutually excellent in inducing sadness. For sometimes, from love or contemplation of God, there is at once present a certain detestation of sin, and there follows a very strong sadness when still no act of justice with respect to sadness is in place. And sometimes the first act of justice is present and intense in itself, and yet the proximate causes (namely the intellect in considering and the will in detesting) are not efficaciously moved by command of justice, perhaps because they lack the habits that would be the principles of perfection in their acts. And although these are sometimes moved, sadness does not follow, because, although this could be for many causes, it is sometimes for this cause, that just as the intellect is conformed in us to the sense part, so too the intellective appetite, as far as concerns being easily delighted or saddened, is conformed to the sense appetite. Therefore, his will is not easily saddened whose sense appetite is not of a nature to be saddened or grieved.

150. And from this follows that there is someone who has a very great act of penitence in the first way and yet no or little effect; and some others, without any act of penitence in the first way, have an effect very great, an effect of the same idea as that which is of a nature to be the effect of penitence. And the fact that the effect is greater or lesser is indeed an excellence in the order of deletion of sin. But greater simply is the excellence of act over act, on which acts follows the sadness on this side and on that, because the act causative of sadness destroys sin meritoriously more than does the sadness itself.

II. To the Initial Arguments

151. To the first initial argument [n.77] I say that although sadness is a passion, yet to command it is an act; and, as was said before [nn.52-53], to be sad is not an act of the virtue of penitence, however one takes penitence; but sadness is the remote effect of the virtue of penitence taken in the first way, and it is the proximate effect of the cause immediate to that very sadness.

152. As to the second [n.78], it was said in the preceding question how a penalty can be voluntary according to the affection of justice [n.56]; and let it be that the penalty were involuntary, it does not follow that the act elicited by the will not be voluntary.

153. As to the third [n.79], a twofold response can be made:

In one way that [penitence comes] from the fact virtue in us supplies for a natural deficiency in us; hence some do not posit moral virtues in the angels, and [moral virtues] in the state of innocence would not have been such in nature as they are now; nor would there then have been need to have all the virtues that there is need of now. And this holds especially of the virtues that do not have good for object but bad, as penitence does, because in the state if innocence that bad would not have existed, just as neither would there have been patience then, nor matter for patience.

154. It can be said alternatively that penitence is a habit inclining to avenging easily a guilty party; and that this party is oneself is the material for it, because the formal idea of the virtue would be the same if it were committed to oneself to take vengeance on some other guilty party. And the blessed and innocent can have a habit for promptly taking vengeance on another guilty party; therefore on themselves too, provided however a fault were present. And thus can it be conceded that in the state of innocence and in beatitude penitence would remain a justice-virtue; and no wonder since in God there remains vindictive justice, although not against himself, because he cannot be guilty.

155. To the final one [n.81, the fifth]No response is given by Scotus to the fourth argument [n.80], but a response can be constructed from what he says in answer to the question of what remains after an act of sin to stain the sinner. For he says there that such a stain can be the object of a choice, because it can be removed by an act of penitence that is chosen [nn.34-43]. ¹⁵ I say that penitence is not a theological virtue, but concerns a created object.

156. And when argument is made that it cannot be unformed, I deny it; indeed, from many acts of justly avenging oneself as culprit, a habit can be acquired that may abide with mortal sin; and it could be acquired before deletion of mortal sin, save perhaps that the Lord justifies before sufficient acts could be obtained for generating penitence.

157. And when proof is given first that it destroys sin, so it does not stand along with sin, I reply that a virtue does not destroy sin, even meritoriously, but the act does that is of a nature to be an act of the virtue, whether it be elicited by the virtue or not but is generative of it; and along with this act can [sin] very well stand, indeed it necessarily does so, since the act is unformed; and consequently the habit of it, if it is present, will be unformed.

158. And if argument to the contrary is made through authorities, one of which is Augustine On Patience ch.23 n.20, “without charity in us there cannot be true penitence,”Augustine’s text reads ‘patience’ for ‘penitence’, but ‘penitence’ is given in the citation of it by Gratian, Decretum p.2 cause 33 q.3, and Lombard, Sent. d.15 ch.7 n.1. ¹⁶ and another of which is [Ps.]-Augustine On True and False Penitence ch.17 n.33, “Since fruitful penitence is a work of God, he can inspire it whenever his mercy wishes,” and in the same place [ch.9 n.24], he considers it unacceptable that someone obtain pardon without the love of God, and unacceptable in the same way that true penitence exist without love of GodPs.-Augustine ibid. “For true penitence makes an effort to lead the penitent to the purity of baptism... Let him know that he remains hard in guilt who laments the ravages of time or the death of a friend, and does not with tears show grief for sin.” ¹⁷ - all these authorities have a single response, that penitence, whether the act or the virtue, is not a true virtue as to attaining the end of penitence without charity. And this is what the second authority says about fruitful penitence. For penitence can, absolutely, arise from man’s natural faculties, but fruitful penitence cannot, that is, penitence bearing fruit; indeed, as fruitful, it exists in the final instant. But the third authority, that without love no one obtains God’s pardon - ‘pardon’ there can be taken not only for mercy but for the end of penitence; and thus do we commonly say that pardon is acquired through penitence, and the pardon is when someone is through grace accepted for God’s mercy or friendship.

Question Three. Whether Penitence as Virtue is Inflictive of a Single Penalty Only

159. Whether penitence as virtue is inflictive of only a single penalty: 160. That it is:

It inflicts a penalty as the penalty is a putting of the fault in order; but of one fault there is one penal putting in order, as there is one ordering of one disorder;     therefore etc     .

161. Again, penitence is a sort of justice, as said in the preceding question [n.112]; but justice returns equal for equal; but to one fault there can be only one equal penalty corresponding to it;     therefore etc     .

162. Again, of one virtue there is one act and one object;     therefore of penitence, which is one virtue, there is one act, namely to inflict penalty, and one object, namely the penalty inflicted.

163. On the contrary:

Joel 2.13, “Rend your garments etc     .;” James 5.16, “Confess your sins to one another;” Matthew 3.8 [Luke, 3.8], “Bring forth fruits worthy of penitence.”

164. From these the argument goes as follows, according to [Ps.]-Augustine, On True and False Penitence, ch.9 n.23, “True penitence for baptism strives to bring back innocence;” but it is not brought back save through those three things [n.163].

165. Or better as follows: penitence is punitive justice according to Divine Law; but according to Divine Law it is necessary to inflict several penalties, as is proved by the authorities [n.163];     therefore etc     .

166. Again, [Ps.]-Augustine, On True and False Penitence, chs.14-15, nn.29-31 (and it is put in Lombard’s text d.16 [ch.2 nn.1-6, as taken from Gratian, Decretum p.2 cause 33 q.3, d.5 ch.1]) - an extended authority about very many things that are required in a true penitent; and there is added: “these are the fruits of penitence;”     therefore etc     .

I. To the Question

167. It is said here that to every virtue in the appetite there corresponds a rule in the intellect, either different rules for different virtues or one rule for several virtues (about this in Ord. III d.36 nn.43-59, 72, 92, 95-100 [the opinions of Henry of Ghent and Scotus respectively]); penitence, according as it is a virtue and a certain particular justice (from the solution in the preceding question [nn.85-88, 112]), has a proper act of ‘being penitent’ in the first of the four significations set down before [nn.57, 62, 120]; therefore one must look in the intellect for a rule of the virtue, and according to that rule does an act of choice follow inflictive of one penalty or of several.

168. Now one particular rule of it is said to be naturally knowable, namely that one ought to be displeased at sin (and this would be known to an angelic intellect if an angel had been a wayfarer after commission of sin and could, consequently, have had something in his will correspondingly inclining him to this rule as regard act of avenging or displeasure). And this penitence, as also its rule, could be unformed at every stage because, if knowledge natural and fitting to human nature did not fail, it could reach knowledge of this rule at any stage and could, as a result, equally have in the will something inclining it proportionally to this rule.

169. In another way, the rule regarding detestation of sin is only known from Revelation, namely that sin is to be detested insofar as it is offensive to God or turns away from God or impedes acquisition of beatitude or insofar as it leads to final misery. And under these ideas there corresponds in the will some rule of justice, a different justice even as its rule is different.

170. To the issue at hand:

Penitence in the first way [n.168] is inflictive of only one penalty, just as its rule shows that only one penalty is to be inflicted, namely the displeasure on which sadness follows, which is a penalty single and first.

171. The second penitence [n.169] is inflictive of anything which its rule dictates, and its rule, namely the knowledge had from divine Scripture, dictates several penalties to be inflicted, which the Author of this law, whose minister the penitent is, wanted to be inflicted for purpose that he be sufficiently placated; and of such sort of penalties there are many, as is gathered from Scripture [nn163-166].

172. I say therefore to the question that penitence in the first way, as having a rule naturally known, is inflictive only of one penalty, and thereby of the sadness that is consequent to it; but penitence in the second way, namely as having a rule received from Sacred Scripture, is inflictive of several penalties, namely as many as the Legislator has in the same place revealed he wills sufficient for total expiation of guilt.

173. But an objection is made [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.14 q.1 a.2, ST IIIa q.85 a.5], that penitence in the second way is not an acquired virtue, because that for whose generation something supernatural is required is not an acquired virtue; but penitence in the second way is of this sort because the knowledge that is its rule is not natural, since it is only to be had from Revelation;     therefore etc     .

174. I reply: in all ordered teachings, both speculative and practical, and both of action and of making, the higher knows something in a way in which it cannot be known to the lower. The fact is plain from Metaphysics 1.1.980b29-982a3 and Ethics 1.1.1094a1-1906a13, and from manifest examples; because in speculative teaching the higher knows the ‘reason because of which’ where the lower knows only the ‘fact that’; and in practical teachings of action the higher intends the higher end and knows it in its proper idea; and the lower does not but only its own end; likewise in the case of the arts, when speaking of the subordinate arts, Ethics 1.5.1097a15-30.

175. As to the issue at hand, we cannot know naturally the supreme speculative truths but only from Revelation, as that ‘God is triune’ and all the truths universally that are immediate about God, as is plain in Ord. prol. nn.60-65, I d.42 n.9.

176. Similarly with practical truths, we cannot know that God in his proper idea is the end of the intellectual creature except by Revelation.

177. Similarly, if an art so excellent could be found, whose proper end would not be naturally knowable, there would be need to have knowledge of its end through Revelation.

178. Now among the virtues some that are possible for human nature can be ordered to an end under a higher idea than the knowledge of this state of life extend to: as that all things are to be abandoned for Christ’s sake, obedience in all licit things is to be for Christ, and the like. Therefore in such things there is need for directive rules known by Revelation, and such are universally all the rules of the Evangelical virtues (as poverty, chastity, and the like), because the principles or practical conclusions on which, as on their rules, these virtues rest cannot be known naturally.

179. Nor for this reason are these virtues lesser; rather are they more excellent: first because these truths are truths the more excellent the more the natural light of the wayfarer does not attain to them, and second because these truths are more certain than many other truths that the natural light of the wayfarer does attain to, because they are true with the Truth that “cannot deceive nor be deceived” [Augustine, On the Psalms ps.123 n.2]. Hence, to him who has faith that God has inspired the whole of Sacred Scripture and that he is Truth infallible - to him must whatever has been revealed by God in Scripture be more certain than what any intellect can by natural light attain to.

180. Nor from the fact that the rule of this virtue is only known from Revelation, or faith, does it follow that this appetitive virtue is not a moral virtue; because, according to the Philosopher Ethics 2.1.1103a17, 25-26, a virtue is called moral from the fact that it is generable by habit or custom. And by any knowledge at all, whether had by natural light or by faith, is the appetite able to incline frequently in accord with it and generate in itself, from the frequent action, a habit that thus inclines, which will be a habit of choice, because it is appetitive and according to right reason, though not according to natural right reason but another one more right.

181. And in this way are poverty and humility and chastity and the like moral virtues, because they are, in accord with perfect and right reason (though not purely natural right reason), generated by habit, that is, by being thus frequently elicited. Thus, on the supposition of this rule known from the Gospel ‘Do penance’ [Matthew 4.17], the will is able, by frequently eliciting an act conformed to this rule, to generate in itself a habit inclining to similar acts; and it will truly be a virtue, because consonant with right reason (indeed with the most right reason), and yet a moral virtue, because generated from habit and custom.

182. Against these points doubt arises: first, how it can be known by natural reason that some sinSc. some sin, say, against the Evangelical virtues [n.178]. For how can such a sin be known to be a sin in human acts (as opposed to acts transcending human acts) if it is not known to be so by natural reason? ¹⁸ falls under the idea of sin in human acts; second, how it can be known that sin is offensive to God; third, how it can be known that sin turns away from God; fourth, how it can be known that sin is dispositive as demerit preventive of eternal beatitude; fifth, how it can be known that sin is dispositive as demerit for final penalty.

All these doubts rest on this, that ‘none of these things seems to be knowable by natural reason’.

183. I reply: whatever be the way it is naturally knowable that sin is to be detested and punished, it is possible to obtain from that same reason a rule of penitence in the first way stated, namely as naturally knowable [n.168]; but if as supernaturally knowable, then it has for rule penitence in the second way stated [n.169].

II. To the Initial Arguments

184. To the first argument [n.160] it can be said that a penalty putting guilt per se in order can be one penalty for one fault; but when putting it in order for a second whom the fault offends, the penalty is multiple according to the will of him in relation to whom the penalty does the ordering. The fact is plain in human actions, where a penalty making satisfaction to someone offended is as great and as multiple as suffices the one offended for amends. But penitence, as a penalty subordinate to the justice of the judge, is a virtue that inflicts penalty corresponding to the will of the one offended; and it is multiple, speaking of penitence in the second way [n.169], as is plain from Scripture [n.163] where the justice of the Chief Judge in avenging fault is expressed.

185. To the second [n.161] the answer is plain from the same point, that what is equal as to the nature of the thing can be given back and yet it would not punish sufficiently, because the punishing here regards someone else, in relation to whose acceptance the punishment is done.

186. And if you argue that it is cruel if a punishment in itself sufficient is not sufficient for him - look for the response.a

a.a [Interpolated text] It can be said that all the penalties are equivalent to one perfect punishment; for attrition is often insufficient; therefore something else is required, as was said [nn.171-172].

187. As to the third [n.162] the answer is plain in the same place, in the preceding solution [nn.118], that to command is an act of penitence as virtue - and this to give command to what is, as it were, next to it about acts causative of penalty [n.90], which acts are consideration in respect of sadness and willing-against of some object. But the subsequent sadness is a remote effect, and it can well be multiplied while the act of penitence as virtue continues single; and someone can, through one act of avenging or commanding of punishment, command all the punishments corresponding in justice to this fault.

Question Four. Whether Guilt is Deleted by the Sacrament of Penitence

188. Fourth I ask whether guilt is deleted by the sacrament of penitence.

189. It seems that it is not:

Because in Psalm 31.5 is said, “I have spoken, I will confess my injustice to the Lord.” Cassiodorus, Exposition of the Psalms, 31.5, says there, “The great piety of God is that he dismisses sin for promise alone; for the wish is judged enough for the deed.” And Augustine on the same place, Narratives on the Psalms, Ps.31 nar. 2 n.15, “He does not yet pronounce [his confession], but he promises that he will pronounce it, and God dismisses [his sin]” [But without pronunciation [of confession] penitence is not a sacrament. [Citations taken from Lombard’s text, Sent. IV d.17 ch.1, and Gratian, Decretum p.2 cause 33 q.3.]

190. Again, Augustine, Sermon 67 ch.1 n.1, on John 11.43-44, about the resuscitation of Lazarus: “No one can confess unless raised up.” And he proves it in three ways [Narrations on the Psalms, psalm 87 n.10-11]: first from the raising of Lazarus, who is raised before led out of the tomb; second by Ecclesiastes 17, “From among the dead,” as from him who is not, “confession perishes;” the third by Psalm, “Will the cured rise and confess to you?”

191. Again, if sin is dismissed by the sacrament of penitence then, since the priest ministers the sacrament, the priest would dismiss sin. The consequent is false, from Jerome On Matthew III, 16.19, “I will give you the keys of the Kingdom etc.;” he says, “Some, not understanding this place, take something from the pride of the Pharisees, so as to think the innocent are condemning or the guilty paying [sc. some priests in the confessional think they, as innocent, are judging the guilty penitent, and imposing payment], although with the Lord not the judgment of the priests but the life of the condemned is what is asked for.” And the proof of this he points to when he adds, “In Leviticus [14.2] the leprous were bidden to show themselves to the priests; and the priests do not make them leprous or clean but discriminate those who are clean and those who are unclean.” So also here [in the sacrament of penitence. - Texts taken from Lombard, Sent.IV d.18 ch.6 n.2.]

192. Matthew 16.19, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.”

193. Again, John 20.23, “Whose sins you remit, they are remitted.”

I. To the Question

194. Here three things need to be seen: first, the idea of this name ‘sacrament of penitence’; second, that there is something contained under this name; third, the solution of the question.

A. About the Idea of the Name ‘Sacrament of Penitence’

195. About the first point [n.194] I set down this idea of the name: ‘Penitence is the absolution of a penitent man, carried out in certain words, with due intention, pronounced by a priest, who possesses jurisdiction from divine institution, signifying the absolution of the soul from sin’.

B. Something is Contained under the Idea of the Aforesaid Name

196. As to the second point [n.194], I show, first, that it is possible for something to be contained under this idea of the name; second, that it is fitting for something to be contained under it; and third, that something is contained under it.

1. It is Possible for Something to be Contained under the Idea of the Name

197. The first is shown by this, that it is possible for God to absolve from sin, according to the article in the Apostles’ Creed ‘remission of sins’. And consequently it is possible to institute some sign for the absolution, and this an efficacious sign, the way ‘efficacious’ was expounded before in the material about the sacraments in general [Ord. IV d.2 nn.14, 27-32]; and, by parity of reason, to institute whatever words, and pronounced by whatever minister; and then the total possibility of the name is clear.

2. It is Fitting for Something to be Contained under the Idea of the Name

198. The proof of the fittingness [n.196] as to the individual particulars is: First, that it is fitting for something to be a sensible sign of this absolution from sin, for the same reasons as those for which the fittingness of a sacrament in general was spoken of, in Ord. IV d.1 nn.225-234.

199. And for the same reasons is it fitting that the sign is a sign instituted by God, because this will move and lead the intellect more to certitude, and incline the affection more to promptitude in taking up the sign.

200. It is fitting too that, in the issue at hand, the sign of interior absolution is instituted in words signifying absolution, the way a sign represents the thing signified. This then is what is meant in the idea that penitence is an ‘absolution’ [n.195], that is, a certain definitive sentence absolving the guilty party. But it is not a sentence of the Principal Judge, but of a secondary judge or commissary; for someone can take cognizance of a cause by commission, and so by commission pronounce sentence either for condemnation of the guilty party (if he is unworthy) or for his absolution (if he is worthy).

201. It is also fitting that this exterior absolution be done by a priest, because it is fitting to bring extremes through the middle back to the extreme;Sc. the extremes are sinners on the one side, alienated from God, the extreme on the other side, to whom the sinners, through the middle of the priest, are brought back. ¹⁹ and so, in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the extremes, namely sinners, are brought to God through the hierarch, that is, the priest, as is in the Church triumphant.

202. It is fitting too that it be done by one having jurisdiction, because a sentence not passed by the judge of it is null.

203. From this follows a corollary, that the doctrine about the sacrament of penitence is like or sub-alternate to the doctrine about judgments and also to the doctrine about sentences. For to the extent there is in the Church a double forum, to that extent there is a double judgment; and as concerns rules of justice, there must be acceptability on this side and that, just as each definition on this side and that is an act of justice. And to that extent can the sacrament of penitence be called a judicial sacrament or a sacramental judgment, and from this that the sacramental one is firmer and more irrevocable than the other public judgment.

204. Hence appears the reason why it is not necessary that here the words in this sacrament are as precise as in baptism or the Eucharist, because it is enough that the act of the absolving sentence be expressed, just as also in a public judgment it is not necessary that the words are limited; for one judge says about the Martyr Theodore “I command you to be committed to the flames;” another says of St. Cyprian, “It pleases us to turn attention to the sword” [Acts of the Martyrs, Augustine, Sermon 309 ch.4 n.6].

However commonly the words “I absolve you” are appropriate, whatever other words precede or follow, according to diverse custom in diverse Churches.

205. It is fitting too that due intention be required, as was expounded above in the other sacraments [Ord. IV d.6 nn.102-112, d.7 n.7, d.13 n.185].

206. It is fitting too that, on the part of the recipient, he be penitent, that is, have some disposition about the sin committed; for this we see also in secular judges, that they condemn the impudent in their sentencing, but the penitent they in their own way absolve, that is, they pass sentence or judge as if about someone not guilty or not to be punished.

3. Something is Really Contained under the Idea of the Name

207. Third [n.196], I say that this has been done.

208. The foundation for this is taken from the authorities adduced for the opposite [nn.192-193].

209. And that it can be dispensed by a priest only is had from Gregory IX, Decretals, I tit.1 ch.1.

210. And from this follows a corollary, that nothing pertaining to the sacrament of penitence can be dispensed by a layman, just as neither can the confection of the Eucharist; and therefore confession (which is preparatory to the sacrament of penitence, as will be said later [d.16 n.26]), when made to a layman, has no value by virtue of the work worked.

212. And further, it is doubtful but that this be to the detriment of salvation, because this revelation [sc. to a layman] cannot be confessional.

C. Solution of the Question

213. As to the third article [n.194], the opinion of the Master [Sent. IV d.18 ch.6 n.3] seems to be: “In pardoning and retaining guilt,” he says, “the Gospel priest works and judges as the priest of the law [of Moses] did in the case of those who were infected with leprosy, which signifies sin.” And he proves it from the remark of Jerome, which is there adduced [n.191].

214. But this seems to take too much from the sacrament of penitence. For, according thereto, sin would never be deleted by the sacrament of penitence but it would have to be deleted by confession first so that the sacrament of penitence might be worthily received, because no one is shown to be clean of sin unless he is free from it first. And a further unacceptable result would follow, that never could the sacrament of penitence be a second plank [n.13], because the one shipwrecked would never be free from danger of sinking.

215. Therefore is it said that thus does God require a disposition by congruity, so that he may confer grace on the sinner - and this such that he not bind his power to the sacraments, but that it may, without the preparatory and fitting disposition that would suffice, confer grace through the sacrament. And this is a mark of greater mercy, namely to institute a double way by which the sinner may be justified, than to restrict it to one way. Just as therefore an adult can have the first grace, which destroys original sin, in a double way, namely from a good movement disposing him for grace by congruity, or from receiving baptism, so also in the issue at hand.

216. This is made clear as follows: that for the first reception of grace [sc. in baptism] there is required in adults some motion meritorious by congruity [sc. being a catechumen]; but for the second [sc. in penitence] there is required only a [sc. preceding] reception of baptism, voluntary and without pretense, and with the intention of receiving what the Church confers, and without will or act of mortal sin; so that in the first way there is required some intrinsic work that is somehow accepted as meritorious by congruity; in the second way there is only required an extrinsic work, with removal of exterior impediment.

217. Not only, then, does someone exercising attrition for some time up to a certain instant receive, in the final instant, the grace that destroys sin committed (as if by virtue of merit by congruity, as was made clear in the preceding solution [nn.134-138]), but he who does not have such an act as may suffice for merit by congruity, but has only the will of receiving the sacrament of the Church and without obstacle of mortal sin inhering in him either in fact or in will - he receives the effect of this sacrament, not by merit but by divine pact [Ord. IV d.1 n.308, 315, 323, d.4 n.103, d.8 n.146], as thus having done little attrition, even with the attrition that does not have the idea of merit for remission of sin.

218. He however who wants to receive the sacrament of penitence as it is dispensed in the Church, and without obstacle and will of mortal sin in act at the last moment of the pronouncing of the words (wherein is the force of the sacrament) - he will receive the effect of the sacrament, namely penitential grace; not indeed by merit (because this interior disposition was not enough by way of merit), but by pact of God who aids his sacrament to this effect for which he instituted the sacrament. Otherwise it would not appear how the sacrament of penitence is ‘a second plank’ [n.13], if through it (as it is a sacrament) can never be recovered a lost second grace, but only through attrition as a preparatory disposition, and through contrition as through a completive disposition.

219. If you ask whether penitence is a sacrament, I say that what you want is done in the word ‘penitence’ if this word is taken as it is in the two preceding questions, namely for actual ‘holding a penalty’ according to any of the above significations [nn.62-65]; or also taken for habitual ‘holding a penalty’, which is a certain special virtue whose act is actual ‘holding a penalty’ [nn.120-126]. According to the first signification penitence is not a sacrament, because it is not a sensible sign; but in the latter ways it could be called a sacrament of penitence, when taking that in a transitive and not intransitive sense [n.189] the way ‘creature of salt’‘Creature of salt’ in the intransitive sense is, ‘creature that is salt’, and in the transitive sense, ‘creature that comes from salt’. In several rites, including that of baptism, the words ‘I exorcize you, creature of salt’ are used for blessing salt. One could speak instead here of objective and subjective genitive, as in the case of ‘love of God’, which in the objective sense means the love we have for God, and in the subjective sense the love God has for us. So ‘sacrament of penitence’ in the transitive or objective sense is the sacrament that has penitence for object (namely the penitent sinner receiving forgiveness), and in the intransitive or subjective sense it means the sacrament that penitence is (namely the sacrament in which the penitent, by confessing, receives the sacramental grace). ²⁰ is taken, unless the name ‘penitence’ is here used equivocally.

II. To the Initial Arguments

220. To the first argument [n.189] I concede (according to the authorities from Augustine and Isidore) that sin is frequently dismissed by some motion of attrition or contrition, as through merit by congruity, before reception of the sacrament of penitence, just as in an adult original sin is frequently dismissed before reception of baptism. But it does not follow that it not be dismissed through the sacrament, because if that other dismissal sometimes not be present, this one does not fail; and this one requires less, namely the intention alone of receiving baptism or the sacrament of penance without any obstacle in the way of its effect.

221. To the second argument [n.190] I say that confession is double: of praise or of crime. No one confesses worthily by confession of praise unless he is first raised up -from Jerome in the Epistle ‘You think that I’ [in fact Paschasius Radbert, Epistle on the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary, n.36], “Praise in the mouth of a sinner is not seemly” [Ecclesiasticus 15.9]. But confession of crime in the mouth of a sinner is accepted, that is, of a sinner who is still a sinner in the way that, in the first question of this distinction [nn.28-34], exposition was given how sin remains after the act - provided, however, that the sinner not be a sinner in desire (whether in interior or exterior act). I concede therefore that, before worthy reception of penitence, the sinner must be raised up: either simply so, and then the sin is not destroyed by penitence as sacrament [sc. because it was already destroyed in the ‘raising up’, n.220], but the grace that was there before is increased; or raised up in a certain respect, so that he have some displeasure about his sins and a proposal to be wary as to the rest, and should want to receive the sacrament of penitence, wherein attrition becomes contrition and he is, through the sacrament, simply raised up - and this indeed is necessary, as will be stated in d.17 n.50, just as was also said above that for someone justified by the baptism of desire the baptism of water is necessary [Ord. IV d.5 nn.43, 48-51].

222. When argument is made about Lazarus [n.190], that he was raised up first before being loosed of his chains, I reply: the guilty party is obligated to the debt of an eternal penalty, and when this chain is loosed he is obligated to a temporal penalty. But he is raised up first before the first obligation is commuted to the second; or, what is truer, he is raised up first before he is loosed from the second obligation. And in this way does it belong to the priests to loose, not simply, but on the part of the penalty, which they can relax by virtue of the keys (which will be spoken of below [dd.18-19 nn.107-110]). And thus Lazarus, having been vivified by Christ (that is, the sinner is resuscitated by grace from the death of guilt), and having been loosed from the prison of the tomb (that is, the sinner is loosed from the debt of the penalty of hell), is left to the disciples for being loosed from the grave-clothes (that is, from the temporal penalties to which the eternal penalty is commuted, which temporal penalties the priest can relax, the key not being in error).

223. As to the final argument [n.191], I concede that the priest dismisses sin in penitence just as in baptism, and so he absolves just as he baptizes, because on both sides it is simply true that he administers the sacrament; and he causes the effect of the sacrament ministerially, because he causes something on which (according to the disposition or pact of God [cf. n.217]) the effect of the sacrament according to rule follows.

224. To the comment of Jerome [n.191] I say that the affirmative is true, that just as the priest of the Mosaic Law made manifest lepers who were cleansed, so the Gospel priest makes manifest sinners who are justified. But the negative, namely that the Gospel priest is not disposed differently to the spiritually leprous than the priests of the Mosaic Law were to the bodily leprous (namely by making uncleanness manifest on this side as on that), is false. And the reason is that God did not in the Old Law give a ceremony or purification, which, when administered by a suitable minister, he would, as a matter of rule, be present to for cleansing bodily leprosy. But he did in the New Law give a sacrament, which, as a matter of rule, he is by pact present to for cleansing the spiritually leprous, unless the obstacle of a contrary will stand in the way.