HKB
Identity de numers in regard to the same time requires the identity of matter.
Thus if God 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 God has established prayer.
(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._
God 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.
517
Every condition, and even the martyrs, have to fear, according to Scripture.
The greatest pain of purgatory is the uncertainty of the judgment. Deus absconditus.
518
John viii. Multi crediderunt in eum. Dicebat ergo Jesus: "Si manseritis* ... VERE *mei discipuli eritis, et VERITAS LIBERABIT VOS." Responderunt: "Semen Abrahæ sumus, et nemini servimus unquam."
There is a great difference between disciples and true disciples. We recognise them by telling them that the truth will make them free; for if they answer that they are free, and that it is in their power to come out of slavery to the devil, they are indeed disciples, but not true disciples.
519
The law has not destroyed nature, but has instructed it; grace has not destroyed the law, but has made it act. Faith received at baptism is the source of the whole life of Christians and of the converted.
520
Grace will always be in the world, and nature also; so that the former is in some sort natural. And thus there will always be Pelagians, and always Catholics, and always strife; because the first birth makes the one, and the grace of the second birth the other.
521
The law imposed what it did not give. Grace gives what is imposes.
522
All faith consists in Jesus Christ and in Adam, and all morality in lust and in grace.
523
There is no doctrine more appropriate to man than this, which teaches him his double capacity of receiving and of losing grace, because of the double peril to which he is exposed, of despair or of pride.
524