The least movement affects all nature; the entire sea changes because of a rock. Thus in grace, the least action affects everything by its consequences; therefore everything is important.
In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
506
Let G.o.d not impute to us our sins, that is to say, all the consequences and results of our sins, which are dreadful, even those of the smallest faults, if we wish to follow them out mercilessly!
507
The spirit of grace; the hardness of the heart; external circ.u.mstances.
508
Grace is indeed needed to turn a man into a saint; and he who doubts it does not know what a saint or a man is.
509
_Philosophers._--A fine thing to cry to a man who does not know himself, that he should come of himself to G.o.d! And a fine thing to say so to a man who does know himself!
510
Man is not worthy of G.o.d, but he is not incapable of being made worthy.
It is unworthy of G.o.d to unite Himself to wretched man; but it is not unworthy of G.o.d to pull him out of his misery.
511
If we would say that man is too insignificant to deserve communion with G.o.d, we must indeed be very great to judge of it.
512
It is, in peculiar phraseology, wholly the body of Jesus Christ, but it cannot be said to be the whole body of Jesus Christ.[191] The union of two things without change does not enable us to say that one becomes the other; the soul thus being united to the body, the fire to the timber, without change. But change is necessary to make the form of the one become the form of the other; thus the union of the Word to man. Because my body without my soul would not make the body of a man; therefore my soul united to any matter whatsoever will make my body. It does not distinguish the necessary condition from the sufficient condition; the union is necessary, but not sufficient. The left arm is not the right.
Impenetrability is a property of matter.
Ident.i.ty _de numers_ in regard to the same time requires the ident.i.ty of matter.
Thus if G.o.d united my soul to a body in China, the same body, _idem numero_, would be in China.
The same river which runs there is _idem numero_ as that which runs at the same time in China.
513
Why G.o.d has established prayer.
1. To communicate to His creatures the dignity of causality.
2. To teach us from whom our virtue comes.
3. To make us deserve other virtues by work.
(But to keep His own pre-eminence, He grants prayer to whom He pleases.)
Objection: But we believe that we hold prayer of ourselves.
This is absurd; for since, though having faith, we cannot have virtues, how should we have faith? Is there a greater distance between infidelity and faith than between faith and virtue?
_Merit._ This word is ambiguous.
_Meruit habere Redemptorem.
Meruit tam sacra membra tangere.
Digno tam sacra membra tangere.
Non sum dignus.[192]
Qui manducat indignus[193]
Dignus est accipere.[194]
Dignare me._
G.o.d is only bound according to His promises. He has promised to grant justice to prayers; He has never promised prayer only to the children of promise.
Saint Augustine has distinctly said that strength would be taken away from the righteous. But it is by chance that he said it; for it might have happened that the occasion of saying it did not present itself. But his principles make us see that when the occasion for it presented itself, it was impossible that he should not say it, or that he should say anything to the contrary. It is then rather that he was forced to say it, when the occasion presented itself, than that he said it, when the occasion presented itself, the one being of necessity, the other of chance. But the two are all that we can ask.
514
The elect will be ignorant of their virtues, and the outcast of the greatness of their sins: "Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered, thirsty?"
etc.[195][196]
515
Romans iii, 27. Boasting is excluded. By what law? Of works? nay, but by faith. Then faith is not within our power like the deeds of the law, and it is given to us in another way.
516
Comfort yourselves. It is not from yourselves that you should expect grace; but, on the contrary, it is in expecting nothing from yourselves, that you must hope for it.