Part IV: On Particular Precepts

2127. The order of matters now demands that we approach the FOURTH PART of moral theology, which we have inscribed On Particular Precepts. For, after the general principles of Christian Ethics have been unfolded in the FIRST PART, after the laws of natural right which regard all human beings and which human law has sanctioned more or less have been declared in the SECOND, and after finally the positive divine laws which Christ the Lord, by instituting the Sacraments, established and proposed to us to be observed have been set forth in the THIRD, this one thing remains: that we institute a discourse concerning those laws and obligations to which some human beings bind themselves when they freely undertake a particular manner of living, namely a state or a public office.

Nor indeed should this Fourth Part be judged to be of small moment; for just as all the faithful are held to have a sufficient notion concerning the precepts of the Decalogue and concerning the Sacraments to be received, so likewise every human being is held to know the other precepts which pertain to his own state or office, in such wise indeed that vincible ignorance itself of them, although no transgression follows, already involves mortal sin in itself¹ (recall the things said in n. 319).

Moreover, according to the threefold perfection to be pursued in human society, there is distinguished a THREEFOLD species of states and particular offices, namely: 1. The Religious State, whose end is to lead the human being who undertakes it to his own perfection, and this a spiritual one. - 2. The clerical state, whose end is to lead spiritual society, or the Congregation of Christ's faithful, to its supernatural perfection. - 3. The lay state, whose end is, according to its diverse offices, to lead civil society to its natural or temporal perfection.

Hence there will be a THREEFOLD TREATISE: the first, On the Religious State; - the second, On the clerical State; - the third, On the lay State.