It
follows from this that grace is necessarily PRE-MOVING, that
without it man is capable of no sort of good, and that
nevertheless free will accomplishes its own destiny
spontaneously, with reflection and choice. In all this there is
neither contradiction nor mystery. Man, in so far as he is man,
is good; but, like the tyrant described by Plato, who was, he
too, a teacher of grace, man carries in his bosom a thousand
monsters, which the worship of justice and science, music and
gymnastics, all the graces of opportunity and condition, must
cause him to overcome. Correct one definition in Saint
Augustine, and all that doctrine of grace, famous because of the
disputes which it excited and which disconcerted the Reformation,
will seem to you brilliant with clearness and harmony.
And now is man God?
God, according to the theological hypothesis, being the
sovereign, absolute, highly synthetic being, the infinitely wise
and free, and therefore indefectible and holy, Me, it is plain
that man, the syncretism of the creation, the point of union of
all the potentialities manifested by the creation, physical,
organic, mental, and moral; man, perfectible and fallible, does
not satisfy the conditions of Divinity as he, from the nature of
his mind, must conceive them.
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