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.