Johannes Capreolus, Defensiones theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis, ed. Paban–Pègues, Tours 1900, vol. 2, pp. 94–95, Dist. XVII q.2 art.1
Again, concerning the seventeenth distinction it is asked: whether charity can be increased.
And it is argued that it cannot: because nothing simple and invariable can be increased; but charity is of this kind; therefore, and so on. The major is plain: because to be increased is to be varied, and moved, and made greater, which is repugnant to what is simple. The minor is plain: because charity is a certain accidental form; and an accidental form is simple and invariable, according to the Author of the Six Principles. On the opposite side it is argued from the Master and from the saints.
In this question there will be two articles. In the first it will be considered whether and how charity is increased. In the second, whether it can be increased to infinity.
First conclusion: that created charity can be increased. It is proved from Augustine, on John […], who says that charity merits to be increased so that, having been increased, it may merit to be perfected. Again, everything in which progress is observed according to different degrees is increased. But charity is of this kind. For Augustine says (on 1 John, tract. 5): Charity, when it has been born, is nourished; when it has been nourished, it is strengthened; when it has been strengthened, it is perfected. Again, charity is divided into charity beginning, charity advancing, and charity perfected, as is recited at Sentences III, distinction 29, last chapter.
The second conclusion is that although the intensification of some qualities comes about through the removal of a contrary, the intensification of charity does not come about in that way. St Thomas lays this down, Sentences I, distinction 17, question 2, article 2, in reply to […] From which it is plain that the intensification of charity does not arise from the removal of a contrary, as happens in some qualities, as he shows in De veritate, question X […] From which it is plain that contrary forms can exist together in the second way and in the first way; and how, in such cases, as one of them is successively diminished or corrupted, the other is increased — which is what was intended.
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Johannes Capreolus, Defensiones theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis, ed. Paban–Pègues, Tours 1900, vol. 2, pp. 94–95, Dist. XVII q.2 art.1 · pd
Capreolus asks the increase question in the Master's own words and answers it in two steps that are easy to miss as one. First, that created charity can be increased — proved from Augustine, not from Aristotle, and not from Thomas. Second, and this is the step the whole fourteenth-century argument turns on, that charity is not intensified in the way some qualities are, by the removal of a contrary. Everything staged against him in this question, by Gregory, by Wodeham, by Scotus, attacks that second conclusion, and attacks it in the physics rather than in the theology: the disputed claim is whether whiteness and blackness can be in one subject at once in remitted degrees. Charity is the case; contrariety is the argument. ⛔ His proofs of the second conclusion are two long quotations of Thomas, elided here at […] under the via rule. The article numerals are elided too: the 1900 OCR gives them as ad :5'" and art. li, and a guessed citation number is worse than an admitted gap.