Title IV: The Punishments and Extinction of Sin

Usefulness. It is not for us to treat expressly either of the punishment or of the remission of sin, since those parts are taken up in the dogmatic treatise on Penance and on the Last Things. Yet because, that we may be more averse in soul from sin, it is of no small profit to know the harms and deadly consequences which are brought on by sin; and because the knowledge of the reason by which sins are extinguished illumines the ways of salutary penance: therefore, not only for possessing more adequately the doctrine concerning sins, but also for suggesting opportune admonitions to the Confessor and spiritual Father, it will be worth while here summarily to embrace the golden judgments of St. Thomas concerning each argument, that of the punishments and that of the remission of sins. And concerning the punishments of sins we shall adhere more closely to the exposition of Card. Billot in the little work De Peccato personali.