These degrees are not types, but apply to each type, making them more or less evil or good. In this case they determine whether adultery of each type is to be regarded as milder or more serious by reason of circumstances and contingent events. It is well known that circumstances and contingent events cause differences in every case.

However, these are regarded in one way by a person acting by the feeble light of his reason, in another by a judge following the law, and in another by the Lord judging the state of a person's mind. This is why we speak of what they are called, how culpable they are and how far they are imputed after death. For what they are called depends upon a person acting by the feeble light of his reason; culpability is determined by a judge following the law; and imputation is by the Lord judging the state of a person's mind. It can be seen without explanation that these three cases are very different. For a person acting on his rational conviction may, depending on circumstances and contingent events, acquit someone, whom a judge sitting in court may not acquit by law. The judge too may acquit someone who is damned after death. The reason is that a judge makes his decision in accordance with the facts, but after death everyone is judged in accordance with the intention formed in the will and thus in the intellect, and the extent to which the will and thus the intellect endorses them. Neither of these can be seen by the judge. But still either judgment is just, one on the basis of the good of the civil community, the other on the basis of the good of the heavenly community.