Dist. 16, Part 1, Art. 2, Q. 2
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/4/d/16/q/bon-sent-IV-d16-p1-a2-q2
----------------------------------------
### Question II. *Whether it is possible for there to be excess in the pain of contrition.*

Secondly it is asked whether it is possible for excess to occur in the pain of contrition. And that it is so seems [to be the case]:

1. Because every movement to which, in order that it be good, something of its contrary must be mixed in, can be excessive; but joy ought to be mixed into the pain of contrition: therefore it can be intensified excessively.

2. Likewise, every virtue that has a created object can have an excess; for, if it is created, then it has owed to it a limited love and hatred; but contrition or penance is of this kind: therefore it can have excess.

3. Likewise, in contrition the pain is a passion; but every passion, occurring in a corporeal thing, can be intensified more and more, and through its intensity can induce death; and what induces death is superfluous: therefore etc.

**On the contrary:**
1. Contrition is a movement informed by grace; but grace cannot be intensified excessively, nor its movement, because every movement of it is praiseworthy: therefore neither can contrition.

2. Likewise, as much as the presence of some good is to be loved, so much is its loss and absence to be detested; but one cannot love and desire God too much: therefore sin, which separates from God, cannot be too much detested.

3. Likewise, Anselm desired that his inward parts be dried up by the intensity of divine love: therefore it is not evil, out of the intensity of divine love, to desire such things for God's sake: by the same reasoning, neither [is it evil to desire] evil out of the intensity of pain for the recovering of God.

> **Conclusion.** Contrition, as regards the displeasure of reason, cannot be excessive, but as regards the passion overflowing into the sensitive part it could have excess.

**I respond:** As has been said, in contrition there is pain insofar as it is the displeasure of the rational will, and there is the pain-passion overflowing into the sensitive part. As regards, then, the displeasure of reason, I grant that contrition cannot be excessive, because sin cannot displease anyone too much insofar as it is sin. —

But as regards the passion overflowing into the sensitive part, it is scarcely or never excessive; nevertheless the pain could be so great that human weakness could not bear it without great harm; and then I say that it ought to be tempered. — But suppose that one does not temper it, because he does not advert to it and is carried away by fervor; I do not believe that in such a case he would sin, because he would be applying himself to a lawful thing. But if he adverts to it, he ought to temper it; yet to few is this counsel necessary. But if he does not temper it either through the affection of joy or through the consolation of hope, I believe that he would transcend the bounds of virtue, and so too of contrition. For contrition, like charity, names something informed by grace. Hence the pain of contrition, remaining [the pain] of contrition, cannot be excessive, because the displeasure at sin can never be intensified so much that it could be excessive, since it proceeds from right consideration. — Therefore the arguments which prove that the pain can be excessive insofar as it is displeasure must be solved.

**To the arguments for the affirmative side:**
*To 1.* As to the objection that there ought to be joy, I say that if there were pain without joy, as in those who despair, there would indeed be excess; but the movement of contrition is not such, since it is [a movement] with hope of pardon presupposed; hence such a one, when he sees himself grieving, necessarily rejoices; and therefore it is not superfluous.

*To 2, 3.* To the other it must be said that penance is [directed] toward the subject and toward sin; and insofar as it punishes the subject, it could well exceed; but insofar as it detests sin, because it separates from the highest Good, according to that account it regards infinity and has no excess. — The third argument is to be granted: for it proceeds concerning contrition insofar as it names the pain-passion, not the movement of displeasure at sin itself.

**To the arguments for the opposite side:**
*To 1.* To that which is objected to the contrary, that it cannot be excessive because it is informed by grace, it must be said that the displeasure itself is informed [by grace], and consequently the passion of the sensitive part; nevertheless that passion could be so intensified that grace, which moves in an ordered way, would not inform it. — The other reasoning is to be granted, because it speaks of detestation.

*To 3.* To that which is objected concerning Anselm, it must be said that he does not understand that he wills his *inward parts* to be dried up according to literal truth, but he there calls "inward parts" the innermost appetites of the flesh. — Or it must be said that by the drying up of the inward parts he means the wounds of charity, by which the soul languishes from the absence of Christ himself.

---