Dist. 33
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/3/d/33/q/bon-sent-III-d33-littera
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### DISTINCTION XXXIII.

### Chapter I. *On the four principal virtues.*

After what has been said before, we must treat of the four virtues which are called principal or cardinal; which are justice, fortitude, prudence, temperance. Of these Augustine says: «Justice consists in succoring the wretched, prudence in guarding against snares, fortitude in bearing hardships, temperance in restraining depraved delights». Of these it is said in the book of Wisdom: *She teaches sobriety and prudence, justice and virtue.* By sobriety he means temperance, and by virtue he means fortitude. These are called cardinal virtues, as Jerome says, «by which one lives well in this mortality, and afterward attains to eternal life».

### Chapter II. *Whether they were in Christ and are in the Angels.*

These were and are most fully in Christ, *of whose fullness we have all received*; in whom they had the same uses which they have in the fatherland, and also certain uses of the way.

### Chapter III. *On their uses.*

Nevertheless, whether «these virtues, since they too begin to be in the soul — which, although it was before without them, yet was a soul — cease to be when they have brought [it] to the things eternal, is no small question. To some it has seemed that they will cease; and concerning three of them indeed, namely prudence, fortitude, temperance, when this is said, it seems not nothing is said; for justice is immortal and will then rather be perfected in us than cease to be, when we live blessedly in the contemplation of the divine nature, which created all things and established all the other natures, than which nothing is better and more lovable; and to be subject to it as it rules is [the act] of justice. And therefore justice is altogether immortal and will not cease to be in that beatitude, but will be such and so great that it cannot be more perfect or greater. Perhaps the other three virtues also — prudence without any longer peril of error, fortitude without the trouble of evils to be endured, temperance without the resistance of lusts — will be in that felicity, so that it will belong to prudence there to set no good before God or equal to him; to fortitude, to cleave to him most firmly; to temperance, to delight in no harmful defect. But what justice now does in succoring the wretched, what prudence does in guarding against snares, what fortitude does in bearing hardships, what temperance does in restraining depraved delights; will not be there at all, where there will be nothing evil. These works of the virtues, therefore, necessary to this mortal life, like faith, to which they are to be referred, will be held among things past». — Behold, here Augustine plainly says that the aforesaid virtues will be in the future, but will then have other uses than now. With him Bede agrees, speaking thus on Exodus: «The columns, before which the veil was hung, are the powers of heaven, illustrious for four excellent virtues, that is, fortitude, prudence, temperance, justice, which are kept otherwise in the heavens by the Angels and the holy souls than here by the faithful». And consequently Bede assigns the uses of those virtues according to the present and the future state, imitating Augustine in the foregoing assignments.

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