[Objection:]
[26] Furthermore, if Christ made satisfaction enough for the sins of the human race, it seems unjust that men still suffer the penalties which were brought in, Scripture says, by sin. Summa Contra Gentiles 4.53.26.
[Rebuttal:]
[29] Granted, of course, that Christ has sufficiently satisfied for the sins of the human race by His death, as the twenty-sixth argument proposed, every single one, for all that, must seek the remedies of his own salvation. For the death of Christ is, so to say, a kind of universal cause of salvation, as the sin of the first man was a kind of universal cause of damnation. But a universal cause must be applied specially to each one, that he may receive the effect of the universal cause. The effect then, of the sin of the first parent comes to each one in the origin of the flesh, but the effect of the death of Christ comes to each one in a spiritual regeneration in which the man is somehow conjoined with Christ arid incorporated into Him. And for this reason each must seek to be regenerated through Christ, and must himself undertake to do those things in which, the power of Christ’s death operates. Summa Contra Gentiles 4.55.29. [Underlining mine and bracketed inserts mine.]
[1) For further explication, compare Ursinus, and Davenant, or Dabney. 2) In short, Aquinas here affirms that while Christ is the cause of salvation for all men, and in other places that Christ suffered for all men, nonetheless, the application of the benefit of Christ’s passion is conditional. Therefore, if someone for whom Christ suffers fails to meet the requisite condition, that man will be punished in his own person for his own sin. Hence, there is no injustice in the second punishment for the same sin.]