"It is a gift of Almighty God, a ray, as it were, coming direct from the divine goodness and filling the soul, which makes those who receive it pleasing to God and justified in his sight.
"The grace of justification produces a change affecting the soul of the regenerate by its presence, elevating and perfecting it. By this grace the likeness of God is brought out in them, and they are raised to a state of friendship with him, and of divine sonship.
"The Catholic church teaches that the grace of justification not merely covers sin, but blots it out; that is, blots out the guilt and stain arising from sin, and remits the everlasting punishment due to it.
"Justifying is not dressing splendidly a dead man's body, it is vivifying it. It is not covering a leprosy with a beautiful shining dress, it is curing it thoroughly. It is not gilding a piece of coal, leaving it inwardly black, but it is transforming it into a brilliant diamond.
"What unspeakable regrets it would leave in the justified man if he had ever to see his soul, indeed magnificently arrayed, still in itself stained with sin, deformed, corrupt, black, and horrible as before.
"Merely covering sin is a human way of forgiving, which consists in passing over the crime of a sinner, and in treating him outwardly as if he had not committed it, and as if no stain were in the soul in consequence of it, though the guilt and the stain are still there.
"God's way of pardoning a sinner is very different, and wholly divine. It is a way worthy of his infinite goodness, sanctity, omnipotence and worthy too of the immense efficacy of Christ's blood, and of his superabundant redemption, and of his infinite merits.
"God's way of pardoning is to cleanse away entirely the guilt and stain of sin, so that instead of it, God sees in the pardoned sinner the "charity of God poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost" (Rom. v:5), which, like a fire, has destroyed all the dross of sin, and rendered man pure, upright, and holy.
"Hence the justification of a sinner is represented in Scripture as the putting on of the new man who is "created in justice, and holiness of truth" (Ephesians iv:24): the "renovation of the Holy Ghost" (Titus iii:5).
"In the case of the grown-up persons, some dispositions are required on the part of the sinner in order to be fit to obtain this habitual and abiding grace of justification. A man can only dispose himself by the help of divine grace, and the dispositions which he shows do not by any means effect or merit justification, but only serve to prepare him for it; and for that reason are simply called dispositions or preparations. This is the teaching of the Council of Trent, which declares: "We are said to be justified gratuitously, because none of the things which precede justification, whether it be faith or good works, can merit this blessing for us." (Session VI, chapter viii.) The same holy council declares that sins are remitted gratuitously by the mercy of God through the merits of Jesus Christ (Session VI, chapter vii).