Chapter 2. Salvation by Sanctifying Grace

1. To be saved is to be sanctified; for the Sanctifier casts out sin. These two things are distinct, but indivisible. We are sanctified by grace. But grace is not only an influence, or a quality, or a power, or an agency working in us. It is also the action of a Divine Person present with us, dwelling in us, imparting to us an interior, supernatural, spiritual quality of holiness which abides as a habit in those who are sanctified and united with Himself. There is, therefore, an Uncreated Grace or Gift, which is the Sanctifier Himself, for the Holy Ghost is Donum Dei. There is also a created grace, which is the quality of holiness shed abroad by Him in the hearts of all in whom He dwells. And these operations of the Sanctifier are manifold. They begin by lights in the intellect, by stings in the conscience, by impulses in the will, by drops of sweetness in the heart, by which He awakens, rouses, and converts, if they will obey and be led by Him. This is His actual grace. His operations are also per manent, indwelling, and sanctifying, con forming the mind and heart and will to Himself, and reigning over them by the obedience of that conformity. This is His abiding or habitual grace.

2. But there is another distinction of grace. His divine action prevents all our in ward life. It goes before all our supernatural acts. We should never have believed if His light had not illuminated us from our baptism, or guided us through the pre ambles of faith, and moved us with a love of the truth, till we found the Divine Teacher whom till then we did not know. We should never have loved Him if He had not shown Himself to us, and poured out His love into our hearts. S. Paul repeats the words of God by Isaias, ' I was found by them that did not seek Me: I appeared openly to them that asked not after

Me.'1 We love Him because He first loved us. This is His preventing grace. He loved us before we were created, redeemed us before we were born in sin, regenerated us when we were unconscious, sustained us in the innocence of baptismal grace, and converted us after our falls by penance and return to God. In all this the Holy Ghost was first in His divine action. In creation, redemption, regeneration, we had no will of our own as yet. In all the rest of our life and warfare and renewal, the consent and co-operation of our own will is the condition of our sanctification; for our will has the power, as S. Augustine says, 'to accept or not to accept' — that is, to reject — the grace of God. It was by no will of our own that we were elevated to a supernatural state of eternal salvation. It was His sovereign act of grace. But, being once elevated to a supernatural state, every good act we do is prevented by a divine action; * for it is God that worketh in us to will 1 Kom.x. 20.

and to accomplish of His own good will.'*

3. Therefore this divine action of the Sanctifier is not only in the beginning or the outset of our spiritual life. It goes with us through every moment of our probation, aiding, helping, co-operating with our operation, and giving us a constant in crease of grace as we use the grace we have. ' To every one that hath shall be given.'3 Every act of faith obtains an increase of faith; every act of hope ripens it into confidence; every act of charity draws down a larger outpouring into the heart. Every act of piety, humility, self denial, generosity, obtains an increase each in its kind. There are two operations always going on in us: the operation of the Sanctifier, and our co-operation with Him. His divine intelligence elevates, enlarges, and illu minates our intelligence. His will per vades and conforms our will to His own. He presides over our inward life, and, by » Phil. ii. 13. « S. Luke xix. 21.

presiding, perfects it. It is thus that we are sanctified. Every act of co-operation is a merit in God's sight, and every merit is linked by the promise of God to a re ward; and that reward is a constant growth in our spiritual life, and an earnest of the life to come, when every merit shall have its recompense, and measure for measure, every grace shall be changed into glory. 'The just shall shine forth like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.'4 Such is His co-operating grace. In every moment of our life it is pressing upon our will, and waiting for our free correspondence with the divine will, which is always waiting for us. ' Behold, I stand at the gate, and knock. If any man shall hear My voice, and open to Me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.'5 These words were applied by the Council of Sens to the continuity of the presence and the work of the Sanctifier in us.

« S. Matt. xiii. 43. • Apoc. iii. 20.

4. And further. What God begins He perfects. He crowns His own work in us by the sovereign gift of perseverance. * He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved;'6 and he alone. But without a special help of God no one would persevere. On God's part we have given to us grace enough to persevere; on our part there is always a failure. It is physically possible that we may with an arrow strike a mark a thousand times; it is morally certain we should not. It is possible that we should retrace a thousand steps in the snow and leave the same footprints behind us; but it is certain that no man would do it. So, though it be possible for us to co-operate with any grace which the Sanctifier bestows on us, it is certain that we shall not do so. Our want of strength and of vigilance, or our slack correspondence with great graces of the Holy Ghost, and our many sins of omission — these undermine our perseverance, and incline us continually to fail; so • S. Matt. x. 22.

that if there were not a continual support to our weakness, we should not endure to the end. Now this perseverance is twofold: on our part it is a duty, and on God's part it is a gift. On our part it consists in three things, namely, in fidelity to grace, punctuality in duty, and delicacy of conscience; and on God's part it consists also in three things, namely, in a guidance which leads us in the way of His will, a sheltering providence which guards us from dangers, and a continual replenishment of His Holy Spirit, which sustains our spiritual life and strength.

From all this it follows, first, that on God's part our salvation can never fail The Council of Trent teaches that He never forsakes any one who does not forsake Him first;7 secondly, that if we forsake Him it is our own free act; and thirdly, that our own act is by our own free will, so that if we fail of eternal life it is by our own wilful fault; for as it is certain that 7 Sess. VI. c. 11.

no soul can be saved except by the grace of God, so it is certain that no soul will be lost except by the perversity of its own free will.

In our sanctification, then, the first grace and the last are in the hand of God. In all other graces our will must co-operate. And the work of the SanctiHer in us is one, mani fold, and progressive. It is like the growth of a tree springing from a root, spreading into branches, and bearing its leaves and fruits in season. It begins in the grace of regeneration, in faith, hope, charity, and sanctifying grace; it expands into the seven gifts, and bears the twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost, and is made ripe and perfect in the eight beatitudes. As the Church is sanctified, so is the soul of each of its mem bers by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the Giver of light and sanctity, and by the manifold and progressive growth, fruitful-ness, and maturity of our spiritual life from its first consciousness to its last perfection. Thus far we have spoken of grace as the operation of the Sanctifier imparting holiness as a quality infused into the soul. But we shall have to speak with greater exactness of the mode and kind of His various and distinct operations. We shall have to speak of virtues, gifts, fruits, and beatitudes; and it will be therefore best here, at the outset, carefully to define the meaning of these terms, and to distinguish them from each other. We will follow the teaching and the words of S. Thomas. 1. A virtue ig a habit.8 When the power that is in us by nature is put forth into uniform and continuous acts, a habit is formed. The right use of our free-will is a virtue, or, indeed, is virtue in itself. It then becomes a disposition of the intellectual and moral powers to goodness and rectitude, and it is to th« soul what health is to the body. A habit is also an active 'principle. Such are the four cardinal virtues: prudence, which perfects the intellect; justice, which perfects the will; temper- • 8. Thomas, Sum. Theol. 1. 2, q. 55.

o ance, which restrains the appetites for pleasure; fortitude, which sustains the evils of pain and fear. Such are the chief virtues of the natural order.

But we are speaking now of the supernatural order; and the chief supernatural virtues are three — faith, hope, and charity. But these virtues are habits, and active principles not acquired, but superadded to nature, and infused by the Uoly Ghost. In the order of nature the intellect and the will are ordered or directed towards God, as He is the beginning and the end of nature. But the reason and the will cannot be ordered and directed sufficiently by nature towards God, as He is the object of supernatural bliss. The supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity are therefore necessary to elevate the reason and the will to God as the object of supernatural bliss. Faith, then, gives to the intellect a supernatural principle and a supernatural light by which truths, exceeding the order of nature, are seen and believed. Hope gives to the will a direction and a motion towards that supernatural object, and to all possible means of attaining to it. Charity gives a spiritual union by which the intellect and the will are changed and transformed into the likeness of that object of bliss. Faith, hope, and charity there fore are habits which unite the intellect and the will with God, and for that reason are called theological.

2. The gifts of the Holy Ghost are also called virtues; but they are somewhat more. They dispose the reason and the will to a more prompt and perfect conformity to the objects of faith, hope, and charity. They are also habits, for they abide in the reason and the will; and in the measure in which they are obeyed and exercised they perfect the reason and the will. Three are moral — holy fear, piety, and fortitude; and these perfect the will. Four are intellectual — intellect and science, counsel and wisdom; and these perfect the reason in its speculative and its practical operations. They differ from the theological virtues. Both are infused by the Holy Ghost; hoth are directed to the same object; both abide in and perfect the same subject; but the gifts move and guide the intellect and the will in a higher, more special, and more perfect way. They produce heroic acts, and the perfection of the Saints.9

3. The fruits of the Holy Ghost are the acts which are produced by the virtues and the gifts. They are called fruits be cause they come from the substance and the sap of supernatural sanctity in the soul, and because they have in them a sweetness both to those who bear the fruits and to those who partake of them. S. Paul counts up twelve fruits which have three aspects— to God, to our neighbour, and to ourselves. They mortify the flesh, and sanctify the soul.10

4. The beatitudes are eight perfections in which the virtues, gifts, and fruits rise

S. Thom», Summa, 2. 2, q. 68. 10 Ibid. q. 70.

and terminate. They differ from the vir tues and the gifts because they are some times states, as mourning and peace, hunger and thirst after justice; moreover they are sometimes acts, as mercifulness and fortitude in persecution. Nevertheless they move and elevate the will to a higher and nearer approach to the eternal beatitude, and in so doing they have a double reward. They give now in this life a foretaste of the eternal beatitude, and they insure the attainment of its fulness. They thereby beatify the soul even in this evil world.11

0 God, the Holy Ghost, I beseech Thee through the most Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, to sanctify me wholly, that my whole body and soul and spirit may be Thy dwelling-place, and all my words and works may be begun, continued, and ended in Thee, to the glory of the Father and of the Son, who, with Thee, One God, liveth and reigneth for ever.

11 S. Thomae, Sum. Theol. 2. 2, q. 69.