§ 1. General Notions

— I. Notion of a capital sin. 1. From remote antiquity, Christians were taught to turn their mind not only to passing acts, but especially to consider habitual dispositions and propensities, which break forth into acts or are generated by acts. Did not the Apostle himself exhort the Galatians thus: "Walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh" ¹; and the Philippians: "For have this mind in you which also was in Christ Jesus" (2); and give this supreme rule to the Corinthians: "Let all your things be done in charity" (3)? And many other passages can be alleged by which care for habitual disposition as the source of good works is commended with great force.

But there are also inclinations favoring sins and vices. Concerning these ecclesiastical writers and the holy Fathers began to discourse and to indicate them in a greater or lesser number, until the authority of St. Gregory the Great obtained that seven capital sins were commonly numbered.

Therefore nothing revealed or so sacred is to be placed in that sevenfold number: St. Antoninus himself ¹ admitted eight or nine capital sins.

2. Therefore capital vices are special vices, not necessarily graver than others, indeed not necessarily mortal, but whose ends have certain primary reasons of moving the appetite, so that for the sake of pursuing them man does many things, both good and evil, and thus is led into several sins (2).

And so they can be considered in two ways: either as sources of other sins, or as formally capital; or as special sins. Under the former respect alone do they pertain to fundamental or general theology. Yet authors are accustomed to use this as an occasion to add certain useful things concerning the individual sins, considered in themselves, lest afterward they should seem as it were to handle the same argument twice. To this custom we shall accommodate our own treatise.

¹ Gal. 5, 16. - (2) Phil. 2, 5. - (3) 1 Cor. 16, 14.

¹ Summa aurea p. 2, t. 1-9. - (2) Cf. Summa 1, 2, q. 84 art. 4, c.; 2, 2, q. 118 art. 7; q. 132, art. 4, ad 3.

— II. Division. According to St. Thomas ³, capital vices are of a twofold notion:

1. Some are heads, the first origin of all sins, and they are two: cupidity and pride.

Concerning cupidity the Apostle said (4): "The root of all evils is cupidity." This already appears true if you take cupidity for the appetite for riches. For riches are the means of pursuing all temporal goods; but sin arises "from the appetite of a changeable good" (5). And it is more manifest if you oppose cupidity, as the pursuit of one's own good as such or as quasi-separated, to charity by which we love all and ourselves in God. In every sin there lies hidden a certain "egoism."

Concerning pride Sirach 10, 15 says: "The beginning of all sin is pride," because, as St. Thomas teaches ¹, the end which man intends in temporal appetitions is a certain singular perfection and excellence of himself. Or more simply it can be said that pride, as contrary to humility, radically repudiates every subjection to law, and therefore all impediments are removed which could call back or retard the soul from following its own cupidity. But pride is described as an inordinate appetite of one's own excellence. Perfect pride, according to Augustine, says love of self even to contempt of God (2).

2. Others, which are manifestations or fruits of those two roots, have the notion of proximate origin with respect to several sins (3). That is, considering less the peculiar disposition of the sinner, which varies too much, than the natural and mutual relation of ends, they have final causality with respect to several sins.

³ 1, 2, q. 84 art. 3, ad 1. - (4) 1 Tim. c. ult. 10. - (5) S. Th. l. c.

¹ Ibid. art. 2. - (2) Cf. De civ. Dei, L. 14, c. 28 (P. L. 41, 436). - (3) 1, 2, q. 84, art. 3, ad 1.

— III. Explanation. St. Thomas, art. 4, hands down this explanation of the sevenfold number, which is sought from the threefold good which man principally seeks, and the twofold yoke of evil with which good is joined. Those three positive and inordinate pursuits are: of honor and praise through vainglory; of bodily delight through gluttony and luxury; of exterior goods through avarice. But through sloth we flee the labor with which one's own good is joined; through envy, however, another's good insofar as it stands in the way of our excellence; but if this is done through insurrection toward revenge, anger is had.

By the indication of these vices we are also taught what dispositions, in the spiritual combat, we have to fight down. They are: love of glory or human praise, which is cultivated by pride; love of exterior goods, which avarice nourishes; love of delights, which luxury and gluttony betray; self-love, which begets envy; love of one's own honor, which excites anger; love of one's own convenience, to which sloth yields.

The individual vices are designated, each by its own first letter, and are numbered in the customary order by the word Saligia (Noldin, Princ., n. 335).