Disputation XXIV: On Restitution

AMONG the species of Justice enumerated above, none is graver, or more pressing, than Restitution; which therefore suffers grave difficulties: for to steal another's goods, a greed conscious of its own need does not disdain; but to restore, for the most part, recoils rather from disdain than from want; since it is not so much the return of what was taken away, as a kind of public confession of the crime committed. Yet nevertheless there is an obligation of compensating the injury inflicted, or the thing taken away; so that D. Augustine could say with the greatest confidence, epist. 54 ad Macedonium, that even one who persuades a man not to restore, or even does not compel him (provided the task of compelling is in his own hands), is a partner in the crime and the fraud, and will be bound by an equal bond both of punishment and of fault; and however much he be absolved from the fault by touching penitence, nothing will ever exempt him from the penalty of paying, except an impossibility of paying. For as St. Augustine says a little further on in the same place: No one is to be interceded for, that what he took away by crime he may possess with impunity for the crime; but, the injury being forgiven, let him render what he took away unjustly, provided he has what he took away, or something else from which he may restore it. Concerning this restitution, therefore, we must here treat with the usual brevity.