The habit of sinful indulgence of any sort is to be extirpated by unrelenting vigilance and the performance of contrary acts over a space more or less protracted according as the vice was more or less inveterate. Even though the sin be removed by God the vice, if there was one, may still remain, just as failure to act in any direction does not necessarily and straightway destroy the habit which perchance existed. Thomas Aquinas that, absolutely speaking, the sin surpasses the vice in wickedness. Such guilt as he may have contracted in any case is charged directly to the sinful act, not to the vice. Hence a man may have vices and yet be at times guilty of no sin, and conversely the commission of isolated sins does not make him vicious. They differ as the habit of doing anything is distinguished from the act of that thing. It is manifest that its employment to designate the individual wicked act is entirely improper. Its specific characterization in any instance must be gathered from the opposition it implies to a particular virtue. It is the product of repeated sinful acts of a given kind and when formed is in some sense also their cause. vitium, any sort of defect) is here regarded as a habit inclining one to sin.
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