Chapter II. On Some Classes of Sins in Particular

I. First, sins are divided:

1. Into original and personal. The former is what we have from Adam; the latter, what we have committed by our own will.

2. Into actual and habitual. Actual sin is a sinful act; habitual sin is the state of the soul remaining from a sinful act not yet remitted.

3. Into sin of commission and omission, insofar as a prohibited act is placed, or a commanded act is omitted.

4. Into internal and external. Internal sin, which is also called sin of the heart, is that which is consummated in the heart alone, such as heresy. External sin is that which is indeed begun in the heart, but completed by an external work, for example, by the mouth or speech, as a lie; or by deed, as theft. Hence external sins are distinguished into sins of the mouth and of deed.

5. Into sin of ignorance, weakness, slothfulness, and malice, insofar as it is committed from culpable ignorance, or from vehement passion, or from slothfulness, or from perversity (nn. 261-264).

6. Into sin against God, neighbor, and oneself, insofar as offices proximately due to God, to one's neighbor, or to oneself are injured.

7. Into spiritual and carnal, insofar as it consists in disordered internal delectation, as pride, or in disordered external delectation, as lust and drunkenness.¹

8. Into mortal and venial, insofar as it overturns the due order as to substance, or only as to integrity (n. 285).

9. Into formal and material. Formal sin is a culpable transgression of law. Material sin is an inculpable transgression of law; this definition of material sin needs a fuller explanation on account of questions to be treated later. It is said:

a) Transgression; by this word an act of the person is designated, not an act, or rather a passion, of nature. Hence a merely natural pollution, as it is called, is not even a material sin. It must be said otherwise if an act of the person is added, as if pollution is excited by the touch of one sleeping. Nor is there material sin if someone by absolute force is compelled, for example, by touch to produce pollution; for then he is a pure and simple instrument of the one compelling, so that the act does not proceed from an intrinsic principle, and therefore cannot be called an act of the person.

b) Of law, i.e., of a law existing here and now with respect to the one who acts. Hence material sin is not had if someone, for example, eats on a fast day, either because he has been dispensed or because he is excused from the law on account of inconvenience.

c) Inculpable, either because the law was entirely unknown, or because someone erroneously thought that he was dispensed or excused from the law.

Corollary I. If someone does not observe a law while in doubt whether it exists or has ceased, it is doubtful whether there is material sin; or material sin is had or not had insofar as the law objectively has been made or has not ceased, or objectively has not been made or has ceased.

Corollary II. It is illicit to induce someone to material sin; for it is dishonorable to induce someone to an act which in first act is prohibited to him, and which you know to be so prohibited.

¹ We use this word because the divisions to be assigned do not in any way constitute just as many species of sins. Namely, the notion of sin is found fully and perfectly only in personal mortal sin; in the others it is found only defectively, so that personal and original sin, and likewise personal mortal and personal venial sin, are called sins not univocally but only analogically (n. 285).

II. Besides these, there are distinguished:

1. Sins against the Holy Spirit, i.e., sins which are more directly directed against the very direction of the Holy Spirit, and from this are graver and more difficultly remitted by God. They are: despair; presumption of arriving at salvation by the mercy of God alone, excluding repentance and cooperation; attack upon the known truth of faith; envy of fraternal charity, namely by which someone is saddened over God's love toward his neighbor; obstinacy in sinning, refusing the influence of grace and counsel; impenitence, or the deliberate exclusion of repentance. These sins are called against the Holy Spirit because through them the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the heart of man is deliberately impeded and repelled (cf. St. Thomas, II-II, q. 14).

2. Sins crying to heaven. Namely, certain crimes are said by Sacred Scripture to cry to heaven; this indicates their special and monstrous gravity in injuring the order constituted by God. First this is said of deliberate homicide: "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the earth";¹ then of the sin of Sodom: "The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah has been multiplied";² of the oppression of the poor, widows, and wards: "You shall not hurt a widow or an orphan. If you hurt them, they will cry out to me, and I will hear their cry";³ "If he," that is, the poor man, "cries out to me, I will hear him, because I am merciful";⁴ "Do not the tears of the widow run down upon her cheek, and her cry against the one bringing them down?";⁵ finally, of the defrauding of the wages of workers: "Behold, the wage of the workers who have reaped your fields, which has been defrauded by you, cries out; and their cry has entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth."⁶

3. Others' sins, which are perpetrated by others but are imputed to us as causes, either because we have cooperated positively in them, or because we have not impeded them although we should have impeded them. The discussion of these will be in the treatises on charity and on justice.

Once these things have been noted in general concerning classes of sins, we shall speak specifically of some of them, because several things must be noted about them; of some, I say, namely of sin of commission and omission, of mortal and venial sin, and of internal sins.

¹ Gen. 4:10.

² Gen. 18:20.

³ Exod. 22:22-23.

⁴ Exod. 22:27.

⁵ Ecclus. 35:18.

⁶ James 5:4.