Laws, however, are formally distinct not because they are made by different authorities; the same sin of theft is against the natural, divine, ecclesiastical, and civil law. But when the motives of two laws are different, and the legislators wished to impose on their subjects the obligation of the special motive which they had in view, the laws will be specifically different, and sins against them will be specifically distinct. Thus the Church commands her children to abstain from flesh meat on Fridays, in order to exercise themselves in the virtue of temperance by curbing their appetite; she forbids anyone to receive Holy Communion who has not been fasting from midnight, out of reverence to the Blessed Sacrament; these two laws, then, are formally different laws, and violations of them are specifically distinct sins. Sometimes the Church, in forbidding an action, does not choose to clothe her precept with the obligation of the motive which induced her to make the law, and then violations of the law will be simply sins of disobedience. Thus bad books are frequently forbidden with a view to safeguarding the faith, but one who reads such books unlawfully does not thereby and necessarily sin against the faith.
