If any man declares all that is within the range of his own belief, and admits as possible all that is believed by others, he is very near to the realization of Catholicity.

If any man declares all that is within the range of his own belief, and accepts as true all that is authoritatively declared by the representatives of all mankind, he is a Catholic. He may not be able himself to believe, but he believes the measure of truth to be universal and not individual.

This is the function of the Church, to declare authoritatively all truth; and every man is morally bound to accept all as true, some articles because they are within his own apprehension, some because they are within the capacity of others.

CHAPTER XV

THE DOGMA OF GRACE

"To him who will sin, the way is open; to him who will keep the law, divine grace overflows."-TALMUD: SABBATH.

The relation between man and God-Deism admits the relation of origin alone-Pantheism confuses the factors-Christianity preserves the factors and determines the relation-Man free to accept life, reason and grace, or to reject them all or severally-Protestantism vitiates the relations-Catholicism maintains them-The mode of God's operation the same always-Vitally, intellectually, morally-He acts mediately—the medium material--The sacramental system the materialization of grace —Grace given at every time of life to meet all necessities—Loss to the ignorant through the mutilation of the sacramental system.

GOD

OD being the absolute, and man the contingent, God lives as the essence and source of life, and man lives as the effect, and never as the principle. Deriving his life from God, he may become the source of life to another, but not the absolute cause of life.

His life is a reflexion of God's life, and he may reflect it on another, but he cannot constitute himself the ultimate principle from which all life flows.

Such is the relation between God and man, a relation that cannot alter, God the cause, man the effect; God the principle, man the derivative.

The Deist admits this relation as the original, but not as

the permanent condition of man. He allows that man exists through the fiat of the Creator, but there his connexion with God ceases; from the point of junction their respective lines diverge and become more and more distant. The relation is that of son to father. Man receives from the Deity his being; but having received his being, his Father participates no longer in his action and in his life. God is the principle, but not the continuation of his life. Man has his liberty, which he realizes, making it his own in principle and in fact, without the co-operation of God. He individualizes himself, but it is in exile. The intercommunion between him and his Maker is not; for they are separate. Deism may be a philosophy, but it cannot be a religion.

The Pantheist, on the other hand, confounds God and man in an unity of being; not because the absolute is the principle and power of life, and because the life of the contingent is really the life of the Absolute, transformed into another personality; but because all distinction between the cause and the effect is denied or misunderstood; the contingent is in the absolute, and the absolute is in the contingent; they cannot be disengaged, and consequently they cannot be distinguished. The absolute is not one and the contingent another; one is not principle and the other effect, but the All-Being is all in one, cause in effect, and effect in cause; a chaos of relations. If the Pantheist recognizes a distinction, he should recognize that a relation exists between them, that the absolute and the contingent must stand to one another, one as cause, the other as effect, one as principle and force of life, the other as possessed of communicated life, which is nevertheless its own life, because it is life.

The Deist charges the Pantheist with maintaining a

relation without affirming the distinct personalities of those related, and the Pantheist rebukes the Deist with asserting a distinction in personalities and not maintaining their relations.

The Pantheist denies man his liberty, making him but a portion of the тó Пav; or it allows him absolute liberty without responsibility, by absorbing the absolute in the contingent, by sinking God in man.

Christianity alone conserves intact the distinction between the Absolute and the contingent and the perpetuity of their relations.

This is the subject of consideration in this chapter.

We have seen that the dogma of free-will is of the essence of Christianity. God is the author of man's whole being, and He gives to him in potentiâ the faculties of manifesting his complete personality; these faculties he is perfectly free to use or to abuse.

The theory of free-will is the relation between man and God; the relation between God and man is called the theory of grace. At bottom, free-will and grace are only the same idea seen from two different points of view.

The theory of grace, like that of liberty, supposes 1st, a cause, which is God; and 2nd, an effect, which is man. God is always cause, man is always effect. God lives, acts, and wills as cause; man lives, acts, and wills as effect.

Every act of God is causational, every act of man has the character of effect. This is the base of their life, and this is the reason of the operation of God upon man.

When we consider the liberty of man, we see that he is free to accept or to reject the life that has been given to him. He cannot communicate to himself life, because he is not the principle of life, but he can use or abuse

the life which is his, having been given to him, because he is an effect.

He can

It is the same with his intellectual faculties. atrophy them through wilful ignorance, or he can develop them by constant effort. His life and his mental faculties are talents to be put out to usury, or to be buried in the earth; but they are not given man to bury, but to make the most of, and in this consists his duty.

It is the same with his emotional powers. He has the capacity of loving God and loving man. He may concentrate all that love on himself; and destroy its very nature; by so doing he ceases to be religious and social, and thus snaps those cords which would draw him onward to perfection.

Grace is to the moral force what the principle of life is to the living force. Just as man has not the principle of life in himself, is not the cause of life, so he has not in himself the principle of morality, he is not the cause of moral force.

If he is effect in one, he is effect in the other. If he be not the principle of vital force, he is not the principle of moral force. The law is one. God is in all things cause, man in all things is effect.

In science, man is not cause. He does not lay down the laws of nature. He makes his theories, and has to adapt and readapt them as his experience enlarges. There is a law of nature, and towards that law he feels his way; that law may be discovered, but it cannot be imposed. by him.

Grace is the relation of God to man's moral nature, as truth is His relation to man's mental nature, and life is His relation to man's animal nature.

In all these relations man is free, free to interrupt and