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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow QUESTION XCII.: OF VICES OPPOSED TO RELIGION, AND FIRST OF SUPERSTITION. - Aquinas Ethicus: or, the Moral Teaching of St. Thomas, vol. 2 (Summa Theologica - Secunda Secundae Pt.2)

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Subject Area: Philosophy
Subject Area: Religion

QUESTION XCII.: OF VICES OPPOSED TO RELIGION, AND FIRST OF SUPERSTITION. - St. Thomas Aquinas, Aquinas Ethicus: or, the Moral Teaching of St. Thomas, vol. 2 (Summa Theologica - Secunda Secundae Pt.2) [1274]

Edition used:

Aquinas Ethicus: or, the Moral Teaching of St. Thomas. A Translation of the Principal Portions of the Second part of the Summa Theologica, with Notes by Joseph Rickaby, S.J. (London: Burns and Oates, 1892).

Part of: Aquinas Ethicus: or, the Moral Teaching of St. Thomas, 2 vols.

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QUESTION XCII.

OF VICES OPPOSED TO RELIGION, AND FIRST OF SUPERSTITION.

Article I.—Is superstition a vice opposed to religion?

R. Religion is a moral virtue. Now every moral virtue lies in some golden mean. And therefore two manner of vices are opposed to moral virtue, one by excess, and one by defect. Now the golden mean of virtue may be exceeded, not only in the circumstance of quantity, but also in other circumstances. Hence in some virtues, as munificence and magnanimity, the vice exceeds the mean of the virtue, not because it tends to a greater height than the virtue does—very possibly it tends to less—but it oversteps the mean of virtue, inasmuch as it does something to the wrong person, or at the wrong time, or something of that sort. Thus then superstition is a vice opposed to religion in point of excess, not that it renders more to divine worship than true religion does, but because it pays divine worship either to the wrong object, or in some way in which it ought not to be paid.