The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1902-08-16

Gel ld1n faculty III UGllGNlLS WIdI COu
reveals and the church teaches. We
are aided, not forced, by it. If we for
mally refuse, we lose that power and
facility, and our understanding be-
comes darkened. We then lose not only
our love, but even our perception of the
truth, as is perhaps always the case
with confirmed heretics and aposta ties.
They fall anew under the power of
satan, and become the prey to all his
delusions so that it is really possible
that they persuade themselves that
their errors are truths, and become so
deluded as to actually believe lie, that,
having pleasure in iniquity, they are
damned. This explains how men who
have received the gift of faith may
lose 1t, and become heretics and apoS-
tates. But generally, perhaps always,
the refusal to elicit the act TO faith is
preceded by the act of justice. Sancti-
tying grace, when no obstruction is
offered on our part, places US in
state of justice, but it does not compel
us to remain in that state. We are
still free agents, and, therefore, may,
instead of eliciting acts Of holiness, re-
| slst the grace of God, and fall into
mortal sin. By mortal sin we lose that
| grace, all that it gave us, and come
| again under the power of satan. Thus
nothing prevents the Catholic, if he
| chooses, from rejecting all the graces
of the sacramento, all the aid his
| church affords him, and running a wild
| career of incredulity and iniquity. All
| in the church are not of the church.
| She is that gospel net, which, if cast
| into the sea, gathered fishes of all sorts,
both good and bad, and hence we find
among Catholics all sorts of persons,
| good, bad and Indifferent. We should
| be not, therefore, surprised to find many
| passing for Catholics, who yet, in real
lty, nave not more faith than Protest
ants, and not more virtue than heath
ems. This makes nothing against the
church, if you once understand that
grace does not take away free will, and
| is not inadmissible.''
can understand all that, but it
does not remove my whole difficulty.
| II people can, with the church, lose
their faith and their virtue, do not
see what mighty advantage she is to
mankind
| mat is only because you are think
ing only of good or evil in relation to
the natural and temporal order, and do
not at all take into account the super
natural providence of God, and mans
supernatural destiny, in the world to
come; but also in some respects be-
cause you have no conception of free
will. Your humanists, who worship a
| people-god, to use the barbarous ex-
preston of an Italian chief, have no
just conception of the dignity and free
dom of man. You do not, perhaps you
cannot, understand the immense SUI
per1ority of a being endowed with a
tree will over a creature that acts
solely from intrinsic necessity. Your
highest conception of liberty is free
dom from coercion, or from external
restraint or compulsion. You never
rise above the conception of the ami
NAL man. Man is for you only a SUI
perior sort of animal, standing at the
| head of the order of the mammalia,
and it is only for man as an animal
| that in all your plans of reform you
seek to provide. You recognize in him
no rational soul, and you place, as you
have avowed, his highest worth in his
instructive and involuntary activity
Hence you place instructive and i'm
pulsive love above duty. With these
low and groveling conceptions of man
it is not easy for you to understand the
Importance which is to be attached to
free will. But you would prize an
homage freely and voluntarily offered
to you by one of your friends, more
than an homage offered you through
compulsion or necessity. You should
know that:
God made thee perfect. not immutable;
And good he made thee. but to persevere.
He left it in thy power, ordain'd thy
viii
BY nature free. not overruled by fate
IRextricable. or strict necessity;
Our voluntary service he requires
Not our necessitated such with him
Finds no acceptance. nor can find for
how
Can hearts not free be tried whether
Willing or no. who will but what they
must
By destiny, and can no other choose?"
without free will man would not
rise to the scale of being above the
OK or the hog, the beaver or the ant,
and virtue would not differ in prin-
ciple from gravitation or chemical af-
finity. The freedom you talk so much
about, and for which you set at de-
fiance the laws of God and man, would
be but an unmeantng word. There is
freedom only for being possessing
free will which is the highest express
sion of his radical nature, partaking
at once of intellect and wolition. This
free will God himself respects, and
never does or suffers violence to be
done by it. God redeems man, and
governs him as endowed with free
will. The grace he confers. the aid he
vouchsafes in the church, are all
granted and operate in accordance
. with it, and therefore may be resisted.
But this does not imply that the
church is of no value. If she furnishes
the aid needed to enable man to be
and do what were impossible without
it, you cannot say that she is of no
Importance because man willfully re-
jects depriving man of his free will.
that is, without making them cease
to be men. That is all that she ever
promised to do, and all that is or can
be required of her. You have but to
listen and obey, and even not that in
your own strength, and the end is
gained Your objection is futile. for
it is always something that help is at
hand
CTo be Continued.)