Biel ( Sent ., 3, dist. 40, q. 1):
The opinion of the Scholastics about the distinction of Law and Gospel.
§ 58. The Scholastics follow these unfortunate statements of the ancients and argue that the old Law teaches imperfect commandments only about external works which are to be done out of fear and that it has only corporeal or temporal promises; but that the new Law teaches more perfect, excellent, and severe commandments which provide those who do them with a righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees and which have the promise of salvation and eternal life. Thus in this way the Law and Gospel differ in: (1) time, (2) commandments, (3) promises, and (4) sacraments. Lombard (Sent., 3, dist. 40, letter A): “The command not to commit adultery has an addition to it in the Gospel, where every desire to commit adultery is forbidden. That the Law is said to restrain the hand but not the mind is said about the Law in regard to ceremonial but not moral matters, or because in the Law there is no general prohibition of every death-dealing concupiscence.” [Lombard again] (letter B): “The letter of the Gospel is far removed from the letter of the Law because they are different in regard to promise. In [the Law] earthly things are promised; in the [Gospel], heavenly. Their sacraments are also different, because those of the former only signified grace while those of the latter confer it. Their commandments are also different as regards ceremonial things, but they are the same as far as moral commands are concerned. But the commandments are contained more fully in the Gospel.”
Thomas Aquinas (on Matthew 5): “Here the explanation of the new Law is contained, which also consists of inner work: ‘Furthermore, I say to you’; that is, I add to this command which you think must be kept only in action, and I explain that you must also keep it in intent.” [Aquinas again] ([ST,] 1.2., q. 91, art. 5): “The old and new Laws are as different as perfect and imperfect. First, the old Law was appointed for a sensible and earthly good; the new Law for an intelligible and heavenly good. Second, the old Law restrains the hand; the new Law, the mind, that is, its inner emotions. Third, the old Law leads to an observance of the Commandments through fear of punishment; the new Law does this through love, which is infused in hearts through the grace of Christ.”
Scotus (Sent., 3, dist. 40): “The new Law contains all the moral laws which the old Law has and adds others, or at least adds some explanation of some of them to which they were perhaps not bound, and thus far the new Law is much more burdensome than the old.” In the same place: “There is doubt as to whether the Jews were bound to all the moral Commandments as we are bound and in the same way as it was explicated for us; because if they were bound to those precepts only as the Jews were interpreting them, then they were permitted to love a friend and to hate an enemy and to divorce their wives, for that is what the Pharisees taught the simple among the people.”
** Antoninus ([Summa theologica,] part 1, title 15, c. 1, § 3): “The new Law is different from the old in another way, because the old Law is a tutor for children, and the new Law is the law of perfection because it is the law of love. All the differences which theologians set between the old and new Law show that they differ as perfect and imperfect.” **
Biel (Sent., 3, dist. 40, q. 1):
The new Law differs from the old in commandments, sacraments, and promises. This is proved as concerns the commandments in that, though they have the same moral [commands], the ceremonial and judicial [commands] are revoked in the new Law; as far as sacraments are concerned, in that in the old there was only one—circumcision—or, as others say, two—marriage and circumcision—which nevertheless do not confer as much grace as the sacraments of the new Law; and as far as the promises are concerned, in that in the new Law eternal goods are clearly promised while in the old these are promised only under certain figures.
[Biel again] (art. 3, dub. 2, from Bonaventure): “[The term] ‘life-giving’ is appropriate to the new Law in three ways: formally, by reason of sacramental grace; in affection, by reason of the spiritual love to which the promises stir us up; practically, by reason of the manifold character of the good operation both of the commandments and of the [evangelical] counsels. Furthermore, in the old Law the promises were temporal, the Commandments outwardly controlling, and the sacraments figurative.”