Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis I d.17 q.1 a.5 (Parma vol. VI, 1856, archive.org sanctithomaeaqu06thom; text located via Corpus Thomisticum)
To the fifth the procedure is as follows. It seems that charity is not to be loved out of charity. For only four things are to be loved out of charity, as will be said in Book III, distinction 27, sole question, article 5: namely God, neighbour, one's soul, one's body. But charity is none of these. Therefore and so on.
Likewise, no thing names itself, since whiteness is not called white. But the beloved is named from love. Therefore love is not loved, nor is charity loved by charity.
Further, as sense stands to sensing, so the affection stands to loving. But the proper sense does not sense itself sensing. Therefore neither does the affection love its own love. But charity is in the affection. Therefore charity is not loved out of charity.
Further, everything that is loved is loved by some love. If therefore the act of charity is loved, it must be loved by some other act, and that one on the same reasoning will have to be loved. Therefore in this way it is led into infinity, which is not to be posited. Therefore it seems that charity is not to be loved out of charity.
On the contrary is what is held in the letter, from the words of Augustine: whoever loves his neighbour, the consequence is that he should especially love love itself. But the neighbour is to be loved out of charity. Therefore charity also.
Likewise, the neighbour is not to be loved out of charity except inasmuch as he bears the image of God. But charity represents God more expressly than the natural image which is in the soul. Therefore it seems that charity is the more to be loved out of charity.
I answer that something is lovable in two ways: either as the ground of love, or as its object — just as colour is seen as the object, and light as the ground by which colour is actually visible. And just as colour and light are seen by the same act, so also by the same act is loved both what is loved as object and what is loved as the ground of the object. It is to be known, therefore, that charity can be taken in three ways: either for uncreated charity, which is the Holy Spirit; or for habitual charity; or for the act of charity. Now any of these is a ground of loving, and can be the object of love; just as we love our neighbour inasmuch as God indwells in him, and he has the habit of charity, and exercises the act; and so these are loved as the ground of what is lovable. But if they are considered in themselves, then they are still loved as the object of love. Yet the habit or act of charity is not loved in this way by the love of friendship or of benevolence, which cannot belong to inanimate things, as the Philosopher says, but by a love of a certain complacency, according as we are said to love that which we approve, and which we will to be.
To the first, therefore, it must be said that charity is in a certain way a medium between God and neighbour: because it is a likeness of God, and is also the ground of loving the neighbour himself; and therefore it follows upon the love of both.
To the second it must be said that naming is properly according to the relation of an accident to a subject; but the beloved is not named from love in that way, but rather as an object; and therefore the argument does not go through.
To the third it must be said that in material powers it happens that the power is not reflected upon its own act, on account of this, that it is determined according to the make-up of the organ. For a particular sight cannot know anything except that whose likeness can be spiritually received in the pupil; and therefore sight cannot comprehend its own act. But if this were necessary in all cases — that the act of any power should not be known by its own power but by a higher one — then it would follow either that among the powers of the soul one would go on to infinity, or that some act of the soul would remain imperceptible. And therefore it must be said that immaterial powers are reflected upon their own objects; because the intellect understands itself to understand, and likewise the will wills itself to will and to love. The reason for this is that the act of an immaterial power is not excluded from the character of its object. For the object of the will is the good; and it is under this character that the will loves everything it loves; and therefore it can love its own act inasmuch as it is good; and likewise it is on the side of the intellect. And on account of this it is said in the Book of Causes, proposition 15, that whatever thing's action returns into the essence of the agent by a certain reflection, its essence must return to itself, that is, be subsisting in itself, not carried over onto another, that is, not depending on matter.
To the fourth it must be said that the act of love, according as it tends towards another, plainly differs in number from the act of love which is loved in another, whether it be loved as object or as the ground of loving. But since a man can also love his own soul out of charity, he can also love the act of his own charity out of charity. And then a distinction must be made. For either the love is carried onto the proper act of love as onto the ground of love only; and so it is plain that by the numerically same act the lover and his act are loved, and thus the same act is loved through the act which is itself. Or it is loved as the object of love, and so the act of love which is loved and that by which it is loved are different in number; as appears more plainly in the act of the intellect. For since acts are distinguished by their objects, different acts must be said to be terminated at different objects. Whence, just as there are different acts by which the intellect understands a horse and a man, so there are acts different in number by which it understands a horse and by which it understands that act under the character of an act. Nor is it unfitting that in the acts of the soul one should go on to infinity in potency, provided the acts are not infinite in act. Whence Avicenna too grants that it is not impossible that the relations following upon an act of the soul should be multiplied to infinity.
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Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis I d.17 q.1 a.5 (Parma vol. VI, 1856, archive.org sanctithomaeaqu06thom; text located via Corpus Thomisticum) · pd
Thomas answers by distinguishing charity taken three ways — uncreated, habitual, and as an act — and by separating the ground of love from its object, on the analogy of light and colour seen in one act. His sed contra quotes Lombard's own sentence out of the letter, so the Master supplies the argument for the affirmative in the very article that will not follow him. His fourth reply takes the regress the question invites and grants an infinity in potency while denying one in act. ⚠ The article's expositio textus, a further segment in the same source, is a running gloss on Lombard's letter rather than part of this disputed question, and is not built here; it bears on cruxes 1 and 6.