Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/26

 SIMPSON

SIN

longer in existence. Pope Leo II (682-683) trans- lated their relics to a church which he had built at llonir in honour of St. Paul. Later the greater part of the relics of the martyrs were taken to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. St. Simplicius is represented with a pennant, on the shield of which are three lilies called the crest of Simplicius; the Ulies are a symbol of purity of heart. St. Beatrice has a cord in her hand, because she was strangled. The feast of the three saints is on 29 July.

Acta SS.y Julv, VII, 34-37; BibUotheca hagiographica latina (Bru-fsela, 1S98-1900), 1127-28.

Klemens Loffler.

Simpson, Richard, b. 1820; d. near Rome, 5 April, 1S70. He was educated at Oriel College, O.xford, and took his B.A. degree, 9 Feb., 1843. Being or- dained an Anghcan clergyman, he was appointed vicar of Mitcham in Surrey, but resigned this in ■ 1845 to become a Catholic. After some years spent on the continent, during which time he became remarkably proficient as a linguist, he returned to England and became editor of "The Rambler". When this ceased in 1862 he, with Sir John Acton, began the "Home and Foreign Review", which was opposed by ecclesiastical authority as un.sound and was discontinued in 1864. Afterwards Simpson de- voted himself to the study of Shakespeare and to music. His works are: "Invocation of Saints proved from the Bible alone" (1849); "The Lady Falkland: her life" (1861); "Edmund Campion" (1867), the most valuable of his works; "Introduction to the Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets" (1868); "The School of Shakespeare" (1872); and "Sonnets of Shakespeare selected from a complete setting, and miscellaneous songs" (1878). Though he remained a practical Catholic his opinions were very liberal and he assisted Mr. Gladstone in writing his pamphlet on "Vaticanism". His papers in "The Rambler" on the English martyrs deserve attention.

Cooper in Did. Nat. Biog., s. v.; Gillow, BM. Diet. Eng. CaLh., 3. v.; Ward, Life and Times of Carduml Wiseman (Lou- don. 1S97); Gasquet, Lord Acton and His Circle (London, 1906).

Edwin Burton.

Sin. — The subject is treated under these heads: I. Nature of Sin; II. Division; III. Mortal Sin; IV. Venial Sin; V. Permission and Remedies; VI. The Sense of Sin.

I. N.\TDRE OF Sin. — Since sin is a moral evil, it is necessary in the first place to determine what is meant by evil, and in particular by moral evil. Evil is de- fined by St. Thomas (De malo, Q. ii, a. 2) as a priva- tion of form or order or due measure. In the physi- cal order a thing is good in proportion as it possesses being. God alone is essentially being, and He alone is essentially and perfectly good. Everything else pos.sesses but a limited being, and, in so far as it pos- sesses being, it is good. When it has its due propor- tion of form and order and measure it is, in its own order and degree, good. (See Good.) Evil implies a deficiency in perfection, hence it cannot exist in God who is essentially and by nature good; it is found only in finite beings which, because of their origin from nothing, are subject to the privation of form or order or measure due them, ancl, through the opposition they encoimter, are liable to an increase or decrease of the jx'rfection they have: "for evil, in a large sense, may be p('riy so (tailed; it is but the negation of a greater goiid, or the limitation of finite beings by other finite Ijeings. Physical evil deprives the subject alTeeled by it of .some natural good, and is

adverse to the well-being of the subject, aa pain and suffering. Moral evil is found only in intelligent beings; it deprives them of some moral good. Here we have to deal with moral evil only. This may be defined as a privation of conformity to right reason and to the law of God. Since the morality of a hu- man act consists in its agreement or non-agreement with right reason and the eternal law, an act is good or evil in the moral order according as it involves this agreement or non-agi-eement. When the intelligent creature, knowing God and His law, dehberately re- fuses to obey, moral evil results.

Sin is nothing else than a morally bad act (St. Thomas, "De malo", Q. vii, a. 3), an act not in ac- cord with reason informed by the Divine law. God has endowed us with reason and free-will, and a sense of responsibility; He has made us subject to His law, which is known to us by the dictates of conscience, and our acts must conform with these dictates, other- wise we sin (Rom., xiv, 23). In every sinful act two things must be considered, the substance of the act and the want of rectitude or conformity (St. Thomas, I-II, Q. Ixxii, a. 1). The act is something positive. The sinner intends here and now to act in some deter- mined matter, inordinately electing that particular good in defiance of God's law and the dictates of right reason. The deformity is not directly intended, nor is it involved in the act so far as this is jihysical, but in the act as coming from the will which has power over its acts and is capable of choosing this or that particular good contained within the scope of its adequate object, i. e. universal good (St. 'Thomas, "De malo", Q. iii, a. 2, ad 2um). God, the first cause of all reality, is the cause of the physical act as such, the free-will of the deformity (St. Thomas, I-II, Q. Ixxxix, a. 2; "De malo", Q. iii, a. 2). The evil act adequately considered has for its cause the free-will defectively electing some mutable good in place of the eternal good, God, and thus deviating from its true last end.

In every sin a privation of due order or conformity to the moral law is found, but sin is not a pure, or entire privation of all moral good (St. Thomas, "De malo", Q. ii, a. 9; I-II, Q. Ixxiii, a. 2). There is a twofold privation; one entire which leaves nothing of its opposite, as for instance, darkness which leaves no light; another, not entire, which leaves something of the good to which it is opposed, as for instance, disease which does not entirely destroy the even balance of the bodily functions necessarj' for health. A pure or en- tire privation of good could occur in a moral act only on the supposition that the will could incline to evil as such for an object. This is impossible because evil as such is not contained within the scope of the adequate object of the will, which is good. The sin- ner's intention tenninates at some object in which there is a particijiation of God's goodness, and this object is directly intended by him. The privation of due order, or the deformity, is not directly intended, but is accepted in as much as the sinner's desire tends to an object in which this want of conformity is in- volved, so that sin is not a pure privation, but a human act deprived of its due rectitude. From the defect arises the evil of the act, from the fact that it is voluntary, its imputability.

II. Division of Sin. — .\s regards the principle from which it proceeds sin is original or actual. The will of Adam acting as head of the human race for the conservation or loss of original justice is the cause and source of original .sin (q. v.). Actual sin is coiamitted by a free personal act of the indivitlual will. It is divided into sins of commission and omission. A sin of commission is a positive act contrary to some pro- hibitor>' precept; a sin of omission is a failure to do what is commanded. .\ sin of omission, however, requires a positive act whereby one wills to omit the fulfilling of a jirecept, or at le;ust wills something in-