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.