“Stay there,” he replied; “they have always all that is necessary for observing the commandments, or at least for asking it of God.”
“I understand you,” said I; “they have all that is necessary for praying to God to assist them, without requiring any new grace from God to enable them to pray.”
“You have it now,” he rejoined.
“But is it not necessary that they have an efficacious grace, in order to pray to God?”
“No,” said he; “not according to M. le Moine.”
To lose no time, I went to the Jacobins,[[91]] and requested an interview with some whom I knew to be New Thomists, and I begged them to tell me what “proximate power” was. “Is it not,” said I, “that power to which nothing is wanting in order to act?”
“No,” said they.
“Indeed! fathers,” said I; “if anything is wanting to that power, do you call it proximate? Would you say, for instance, that a man in the night time, and without any light, had the proximate power of seeing?”
“Yes, indeed, he would have it, in our opinion, if he is not blind.”
“I grant that,” said I; “but M. le Moine understands it in a different manner.”