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.