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 Abrahae 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

The philosophers did not prescribe feelings suitable to the two states.

They inspired feelings of pure greatness, and that is not man’s state.

They inspired feelings of pure littleness, and that is not man’s state.

There must be feelings of humility, not from nature, but from penitence, not to rest in them, but to go on to greatness.  There must be feelings of greatness, not from merit, but from grace, and after having passed through humiliation.

525

Misery induces despair, pride induces presumption.  The Incarnation shows man the greatness of his misery by the greatness of the remedy which he required.

526

The knowledge of God without that of man’s misery causes pride.  The knowledge of man’s misery without that of God causes despair.  The knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course, because in Him we find both God and our misery.