IF, in the vulgar [common] manner, we should call “betrayal [proditio]” any action whatever which is adverse to the temporal safety of the city and to the public [order], and [which] is established amicably with the enemy — [then] to excuse Rahab from betrayal will not be so easy. For she knew them [to be] enemies and spies; yet she received them with hospitality, treated [them] kindly, [and], interrogated about them by the King, did not respond as truth and the public safety of the fatherland demanded; she hid them in her own house, sent them down safe and unharmed from the wall, and taught [them] by what means they could escape the hands of the royal guards, and indicated the time and the place in which they might lie hidden. Let any one even of these [acts] make [her] guilty of betrayal — what then [do] all [of them together]? Let that first law be read which is in the Code, “On those who [are] robbers [de his qui latrones].”
But if we speak of betrayal a little more diligently with the Theologians, “betrayal” is to be called not any action of that kind, but a vicious one, and one joined to sin — and therefore [it] is required [that one] could and ought to have done otherwise; and if either of these [conditions] be absent, sin cannot be present. For “no one is obligated to the impossible”; and if someone omits [what] he ought not do, [there] is no fault. That Rahab indeed could have done otherwise cannot be doubted. But whether she ought [to have] — that is [the point] about which [there is] difficulty. For a love toward the fatherland [is] implanted by nature in all nations, [and] a piety toward the same, sanctioned by divine and human laws, seemed to demand of Rahab that she not receive the enemy into [her] house, or that she at least indicate [them once] received — most of all since in the King’s name this very [thing] was sought from her, and likewise that she impede their return to their own [people] and, [as far as lay] in her power, avert the destruction of the fatherland.
Calvin says: “Only the knowledge which God put into her mind exempts her from fault, as [being] released from the common law.” But of what knowledge does he speak? Of that of which Rahab herself speaks [in] v. 9? “I know that the Lord has delivered the land to you”? But certainly that knowledge alone could not exempt her from fault. For [it] is agreed — as Abulensis rightly argues, quaest. 38 — [that it] is not necessary that we simply will what God wills, e.g. [that] my father be killed, [my] fatherland laid waste, temples burned, these and those consigned to eternal punishments. For CHRIST the Lord too, although he certainly knew the destruction of Jerusalem, nonetheless did not will it, and therefore, “when he approached the city, he wept over it,” Luke 19. Or does he [Calvin] speak of a more perfect knowledge, by which Rahab might know both this and at the same time all the circumstances and modes of this matter, by which she could rightly, in this affair, conduct herself? And then he says [something] true indeed, but [it] does not yet remove the difficulty. For [it] is asked: are there any such circumstances and modes, and which [are] they? Obscurely indeed — but unless he wishes [it] to be a new response — [Calvin] seems a little later to subjoin one circumstance and mode, [when] the same Calvin says: “Although up to that day she had been bound to her compatriots, yet when she was co-opted into the body of the Church, [it] was a new condition — a certain manumission from the law of society by which citizens are bound together among themselves.” But this assertion [is] false and dangerous. For grace does not take away nature, nor [does it take away] the divine or human natural law—
(col. 356)
—as Cajetan discusses in a similar argument of betrayal, 2.2, ad quaest. 33, a. 7. And does it not avail to kindle hatred against the Christian religion, to teach [that] they — all who are Christians — are freed from every law by which they are bound to [their] Princes and cities? Otherwise indeed [taught] St. Paul, Rom. 13; otherwise St. Peter, 1[Pet.] ch. 2; otherwise all the Fathers. Namely, Calvin, acting as it were [an advocate], wished in this place to patronize [give cover to] his own iniquitous and violent seizure of so many citadels and cities — Geneva especially — [and to] so many and so nefarious betrayals of the Calvinists, and civil wars. For as soon as [a man] becomes, from a Catholic, a Calvinian, he is co-opted (forsooth!) into the body of the true Church, and therefore is now, by no law, bound to the society of all [his fellow] citizens.
Abulensis quaest. 37 & 38, and Masius, also drive off the crime of betrayal from Rahab, because she had divinely known [that] the city was to be captured by the Israelites. But they add [that] she knew at the same time [that] whatever she herself might do — whether she disclosed or concealed the spies — [it] could not be done otherwise, and therefore [that it] was better that, amid the common ruin of the whole fatherland (which by [her] information and effort she could in no way impede), she should at least save both herself and her own and her [goods]. Nor indeed is this passed over by Abulensis — [that] she conformed her own will to the divine, as regards this: that she was borne by a natural and honest charity toward [her] fatherland, and therefore bore this destruction of it with grief, and would have desired, if it could be [done], that it stand and flourish — [but] so that Rahab [is] not guilty of betrayal, because by an altogether certain knowledge she had foreseen that the fatherland, whatever finally strove against them, was to be overthrown; and [because], out of the impulse of the natural law, she grieved over so sad a case. Another reason — and, as I at least think, a firmer [one] — will be brought forward [in] the question now [immediately] following. Scripture assuredly, when [in] ch. 6 v. 17 & 25 it praises this deed of hers, pronounces her free from all betrayal. And [such] is the opinion of the experts in Law: “He who betrays [his] fatherland — not out of hatred of the prince principally, nor that the city be taken from him, but toward that [other] end — does not fall into the crime of high treason [maiestas].” See Cephalus decis. 76, 661; Pierre Ayrault [Aerodius] bk. 2 decr. 9; and others, on the Julian law of majesty [treason].