Question IX. Of what kind was Achan's sin?

I have hitherto indeed called [it] “theft,” as the Lord also calls [it] (v. 11), because Achan took away another’s property against the Lord’s will, and indeed as secretly as he could — although nothing is secret from Him whose eye penetrates and discerns all things, of which more [in] q. 21, Abulensis. But this name of “theft” is less and milder than the magnitude of the crime bears; and therefore it is rather to be called “sacrilege.” For all the things Achan took were sacred and devoted to God, as was understood from the questions of the previous chapter. But since by St. Thomas (2a-2ae, q. 99, a. 3) three species of sacrilege are established — namely, of person, of place, and of thing — of which species [is] this sacrilege? Of the third. For things which are sacred, [and] which for that reason [were] either to be consumed for God’s honor (like the mantle), or to be set apart and preserved (like the silver and gold), were irreverently and unworthily taken away for another use. But in this species of the sacrilege of things the same St. Thomas enumerates about seven degrees, of which it can be disputed whether they are specific — namely, so that those three species are, as it were, three genera, under which are other species — or only accidental, just as, in the same lowest species of quantity and quality, [there are] more intense and more remiss degrees. But omitting these, I say, first, that the sacrilege of the mantle is properly in none of those seven degrees. For the first is [the sacrilege] of the sacraments; the second, of the sacramental vessels; the third, of sacred images; the fourth, of relics; the fifth, of the ornaments of the Church; the sixth, of the ornaments of its ministers; the seventh, of the goods, whether movable or immovable, that are decreed for sustaining the ministers of the Church. I say, secondly, that the gold and silver pertained to the fifth degree — although they could be applied to those things which are of the sixth and seventh degrees. I say, thirdly, [that] if things are referred to this or that degree in so far as they could or ought to be such-and-such (if indeed they existed in the nature of things), thus the sacrilege of the mantle could be reduced to the fifth and sixth degree.