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.