Title I: The Notion of the Virtue and Its Elicited Acts

Utility. - It greatly concerns the moral theologian to acquire for himself an accurate notion of a virtue whose very mention, in the present manner of treating honesty, is too often passed over, so that he himself may esteem it more and preach it more efficaciously.

Taken not as a form of worship commonly imposed on several persons (the Catholic religion), but as a virtue, religion is the moral virtue by which the interior and exterior worship which is owed to God is truly exhibited. Most noble after the theological virtues, religion is joined to justice, but as a potential part, because we can never render to equality what we owe to God the Creator, Lord, and universal Benefactor, and because God is also worshiped by free acts. - The material object of this virtue is the various acts of worship, to the doing of which it inclines on account of the special honesty of observing that divine excellence which infinitely transcends every other.

It is immediately clear how religion differs formally from charity. While charity loves, religion adores; the former observes unity, the latter distance and dependence: the former is of an equal friend, the latter of a creature and an inferior. Yet there is no opposition between the two; for is not the miracle of goodness which overcomes the distance between God and us most apt for kindling and nourishing love and at the same time the will of every submission?

Religion, a virtue of the will, has in the will its internal or strictly elicited act. And it is that very affection by which the soul submits itself to that infinite excellence, and intends or seeks the honor of God.

This same affection inspires Christian humility, which, not content with a moderated pursuit of one's own excellence, reveres God's excellence by contempt itself for earthly sublimity. Cf. below, the treatise on Humility.

Whatever acts break forth from that affection of subjection, strictly speaking, are commanded acts of religion. Among them, however, some, by their own nature, signify our affection toward God in such a way that, whether they are interior or even exterior, they contain divine worship per se and are referred among the proper acts of the virtue of religion. These, by a certain broader usage, are also called elicited acts of religion. They are: devotion, adoration with sacrifice, prayer, praise, vow, oath, sanctification of feasts, pious offerings of things or persons. But because all good acts glorify God, we can also perform all from the intention of religion: such acts are then said to be commanded by the virtue of religion. Thus the whole life of religious, morally considered, is made honorable by a general intention of religion.

N.B. - The logical division of the present treatise would be that in a former section we should treat of the individual or singular exercise of the virtue of religion, in another of its collective or social exercise. This latter is performed both by the profession of common religious life and by the sanctification of feasts. - But both arguments must be postponed. Therefore we shall treat only of the individual exercise of religion. Hence first we must treat of the positive acts of the worship of God, which we shall set forth according to the order of the divine precepts to which they correspond, and then of sins against the virtue of religion.

— Religion is here understood as the moral virtue by which the interior and exterior worship owed to God is exhibited. Worship denotes the reverent execution of the offices which we have toward God as He is our Lord. The honesty of rendering the things which are owed to the Lord under this title is the formal object of religion; the material object is the various acts of worshiping. The very interior affection toward worshiping God is the strictly elicited act of religion; more broadly elicited are acts, whether interior or exterior, which contain divine worship per se; commanded are other good acts which have been performed from the intention of divine service.