passage 143 of 360 · book with much acrimony. But the accused won his case in a Synod. > Act, the permanent act and the successive act. The permanent or lasting act is nothing but the Substantial or Accidental Form: the substantial form (as for example the soul) is altogether permanent, at least according to my judgement, and the accidental is only so for a time. But the altogether momentary act, whose nature is transitory, consists in action itself. I (6/9)
shall reach years of discretion, suffices to damn this child beforehand. Those who maintain the one and reject the other do not preserve enough uniformity and connexion in their dogmas.
- There is scarcely less difficulty in the matter of those who reach years of discretion and plunge into sin, following the inclination of corrupt nature, if they receive not the succour of the grace necessary for them to stop on the edge of the precipice, or to drag themselves from the abyss wherein they have fallen. For it seems hard to damn them eternally for having done that which they had no power to prevent themselves from doing. Those that damn even children, who are without discretion, trouble themselves even less about adults, and one would say that they have become callous through the very expectation of seeing people suffer. But it is not the same with other theologians, and I would be rather on the side of those who grant to all men a grace sufficient to draw them away from evil, provided they have a sufficient tendency to profit by this succour, and not to reject it voluntarily. The objection is made that there has been and still is a countless multitude of men, among civilized peoples and among barbarians, who have never had this knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ which is necessary for those who would tread the wonted paths to salvation.
But without excusing them on the plea of a sin purely philosophical, and without stopping at a mere penalty of privation, things for which there is no opportunity of discussion here, one may doubt the fact: for how do we know whether they do not receive ordinary or extraordinary succour of [176]
kinds unknown to us? This maxim, Quod facienti, quod in se est, non denegatur gratia necessaria, appears to me to have eternal truth. Thomas
Aquinas, Archbishop Bradwardine and others have hinted that, in regard to this, something comes to pass of which we are not aware. (Thom. quest. XIV,
De Veritate, artic. XI, ad I et alibi. Bradwardine, De Causa Dei, non procul ab initio.) And sundry theologians of great authority in the Roman
Church itself have taught that a sincere act of the love of God above all things, when the grace of Jesus Christ arouses it, suffices for salvation.
Father Francis Xavier answered the Japanese that if their ancestors had used well their natural light God would have given them the grace necessary for salvation; and the Bishop of Geneva, Francis of Sales, gives full approval to this answer (Book 4, On the Love of God, ch. 5).
HKB