law, and it
is given to us in another way.
517. 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.
518. Every condition, and even the martyrs, have to fear, according to
Scripture. The greatest pain of purgatory is the uncertainty of the
judgement. Deus absconditus.86
519. John 8. 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."[87]
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.
520. 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.
521. 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.
522. The law imposed what it did not give. Grace gives what it imposes.
523. All faith consists in Jesus Christ and in Adam, and all morality in
lust and in grace.
524. 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.
525. The philosophers did not prescribe feelings suitable to the two stat