Chapter III: On the Sanction of Law

— Sanction means, first, the act of making a decree or law; hence, in law today, not rarely, by this name is called the act by which a king or the president of a republic, by signing his name, as it were completes the law. Then it signified the law itself or decree, especially one which is urged by a penalty. And because both a penalty and a law are decreed or sanctioned, sanction is used of the penal coercion which is added to law for strengthening the law or for compensating the social detriment brought about by violation of the law.

Penalty, properly, is an evil contrary to the will and inflicted because of fault. It is distinguished as concomitant, which violation of the law brings with itself, by a greater or lesser intrinsic necessity (wherefore it is also called an internal sanction), and external or inflicted, which has an extrinsic cause. Every penalty, as announced, is medicinal; for it is announced so that the law may be better observed. But as inflicted, that penalty is medicinal which immediately tends to the amendment or good of the delinquent himself, while vindicative penalty is imposed in vindication of the violated order.

That sanction of law cannot be confused with its obligation. Obligation pertains to the directive force of the law, sanction to its coercive force. Obligation affects all subjects; sanction affects only transgressors of the law. Obligation requires the free will of the subjects; sanction of itself is repugnant to the will. Obligation is immediately a binding to good order; sanction is immediately the privation of some good.

Of itself, indeed, a good will can be helped both by rewards and by punishments, and the opposition of the passions can be moderated. And thus, in a broader use, the word is taken, for example, by Noldin, Principia n. 108. Human legislators, however, are not accustomed to add the stimulus of rewards to their laws. Nor could they generally do this. For since a sufficiently universal external observance of the law is procured, to which alone the human legislator can attend, most citizens would have to be rewarded. But since he himself would have to draw the aids from the community itself, by a reward too general he could only restore to the community what he had received from the community; that is, citizens would receive as a reward their own gifts. Therefore even for this reason divine law excels human law, because it remunerates virtue with an infinite reward.

— The sanction of law now means the penal coercion by which the law is urged. Penalty, or an evil contrary to the will and inflicted because of fault, is distinguished as concomitant or internal, and inflicted.

God alone at the same time sanctions his law with magnificent rewards.