a. Against the First Conclusion

95. Against the first [n.86]: because then the sacrament of penitence would not be a sacrament of the New Law. Nor would it have any causality or causal disposition for the first grace, because it would never be received save by one who already has the first grace, for no one is worthily shown to be loosed by God unless he was loosed before.

96. Again, the reception of this sacrament is an instrument for grace, that is, a disposition efficacious and necessary, by divine statute, for the reception of grace. But an instrument or preceding disposition is not a sign recollective or ostensive of anything as already past but of the future; therefore, the conferring of the sacrament of penitence, in order for it to be worthily done, does not need to be a sign of a preceding divine absolution.

97. I concede this point, as has been made clear at length in distinction 14 question 4 [nn.130-150], that the sacrament of penitence can be worthily received by someone who has attrition, and this with as much attrition as would not suffice by way of merit for receiving justification at the term of attrition. And if at the term it not in pretense be received, the first grace that is conferred by God is received; and sacramental absolution is an efficacious sign of the absolution that follows in the final instant of it, just as the speaking of the words is a sign of confection of the body of Christ.

98. Accordingly, it is plain how this sacrament is an instrument for the first grace as a disposition previous to it, in the way that alteration can be called an instrument with respect to the generation of substance, because it is a disposition previous to it.

99. There is no likeness, then, between the priest of the law [of Moses] with respect to leprosy and the Gospel priest with respect to guilt; because the former only performed something that was a sign recollective of cleansing from leprosy, and nothing that was an efficacious prognostic sign of a cleansing that follows. But the latter [sc. the Gospel priest] performs an act that is an efficacious prognostic sign of a cleansing that follows at the last instant; nor however is he lying, because the absolution [of the penitent] is understood to be for the instant at which he is absolved by God and the Church.

100. If you say that therefore the priest destroys the stain and eternal penalty of death, which is proper to God - I say that he does both, provided there are two there, which was spoken about elsewhere [d.16 nn.44-65]. But he only does them instrumentally, not indeed in reaching the effect either by his own power or that of another, but by reaching something prior, which is a necessitating disposition for the effect - necessitating, I say, by divine pact. And such an agent that causes a disposition necessary for the term is called an ‘instrumental agent’, just as is true of something that alters and generates [n.98]. But it is proper principally to God to cleanse and to remit the debt by also reaching the effect; and neither of these belongs to the priest.

101. The authorities, therefore, that the Master adduces for himself [nn.89-91], do affirmatively say that the priest does this, and it is indeed true that the Gospel priest shows this [penitent] cleansed and loosed at the instant at which his absolution is understood to be. But not this only; rather he thus shows that the showing is a disposition preceding and necessary for that which is shown. For this is the excellence of the sacraments of the New Law, that the reception of them is a disposition sufficient for grace; but of the legal ones [sc. of the Mosaic Law] not even the reception was an efficacious disposition for bodily cleansing of leprosy, or that sort of foulness.

102. Now it would be similar if we were to speak of the priest of the law [of Moses] purifying someone, through certain washings, from some irregularity contracted in the Law by contact with leprosy or the like. For then the priest would perform an act that would be a sign efficacious of reconciliation from this sort of irregularity and of cleansing from this pollution, in the act or term of which cleansing the effect signified would follow, namely that this person was worthy to commune with the rest in the Synagogue.