The Subject of Sin

The principle of human acts is the will, and sins are human acts; hence the will is the principle of sin. Now, the principle of sin is called the subject of sin. Hence the will is the subject of sin. St. Augustine says (Retract. i): “It is by the will that we sin, and by the will that we live righteously.”

The will elicits some of its acts (completing them within itself) and commands others (which are carried out by subordinate powers of mind or body or both). Hence the total subject of sin includes, with the will itself, all the powers which can be put into operation, or restrained from operation, bythe will.

Therefore, even sensitive or sensual powers may be the subject of sin inasmuch as their exercise is voluntary, that is,willed.

Yet mortal sin is never, properly speaking, in the sensitive part of man, but in reason which disposes the order ofhuman acts in accordance with sensual bent or tendency.

Sin is in the reason (that is, the intellectuallyenlightened and counseled will) when the sin results from ignorance of what the sinner could and should know and has neglected to know,and also when reason commands inordinate movement in the lower powers, or fails to check such movement.

When reason permits the lower powers or appetites to move inordinately, and dwells upon the pleasure of their avoidablemovement, without, however, carrying into action what is thus dweltupon, it is guilty of the sin of morose delectation. One commits the sin of morose delectation by dwelling pleasurably orconsentingly upon unlawful movements or imaginings of lust,revenge, envy, covetousness, or other vice.

St. Augustine draws a distinction between the higher reason which contemplates eternal truths, and the lower reason which deals with temporal things. Now, the consent which sinful reason gives to a sinful act is of the higher reason, for it is the higher reason which knows the divine and eternal law against which the sin offends.

Delight in the thought of what is gravely sinful is itself a grave sin when reason consents to this delight,envisioning and tending towards the sin itself. In a word, it is gravely sinful to consent to the inclination to grave sin.

Consent to the sinful act is a sin of the higher reason. It is mortally or venially sinful, according as the actconsented to is mortally or venially sinful.

In its own domain, the higher reason may be guilty ofvenial sin as well as of mortal sin. We say “in its own domain,” to indicate the excluding of the pull of lowerappetites. For example, a sudden movement of unbelief might be avenial sin if it came from a momentary carelessness of the higher reason itself.