“Extremely easy indeed, father,” I observed.
“Yes,” he said, “it is as much as could possibly be done, and I think should be quite satisfactory. For he must be a wretched creature indeed, who would not spare a single moment in all his lifetime to put a chaplet on his arm, or a rosary in his pocket, and thus secure his salvation; and that, too, with so much certainty that none who have tried the experiment have ever found it to fail, in whatever way they may have lived; though, let me add, we exhort people not to omit holy living. Let me refer you to the example of this, given at p. 34; it is that of a female who, while she practised daily the devotion of saluting the images of the Virgin, spent all her days in mortal sin, and yet was saved after all, by the merit of that single devotion.”
“And how so?” cried I.
“Our Saviour,” he replied, “raised her up again, for the very purpose of showing it. So certain it is, that none can perish who practise any one of these devotions.”
“My dear sir,” I observed, “I am fully aware that the devotions to the Virgin are a powerful mean of salvation, and that the least of them, if flowing from the exercise of faith and charity, as in the case of the saints who have practised them, are of great merit; but to make persons believe that, by practising these without reforming their wicked lives, they will be converted by them at the hour of death, or that God will raise them up again, does appear calculated rather to keep sinners going on in their evil courses, by deluding them with false peace and fool-hardy confidence, than to draw them off from sin by that genuine conversion which grace alone can effect.”[[187]]
“What does it matter,” replied the monk, “by what road we enter paradise, provided we do enter it? as our famous Father Binet, formerly our provincial, remarks on a similar subject, in his excellent book On the Mark of Predestination, ‘Be it by hook or by crook,’ as he says, ‘what need we care, if we reach at last the celestial city.’”
“Granted,” said I; “but the great question is, if we will get there at all?”
“The Virgin will be answerable for that,” returned he; “so says Father Barry in the concluding lines of his book: ‘If, at the hour of death, the enemy should happen to put in some claim upon you, and occasion disturbance in the little commonwealth of your thoughts, you have only to say that Mary will answer for you, and that he must make his application to her.’”
“But, father, it might be possible to puzzle you, were one disposed to push the question a little further. Who, for example, has assured us that the Virgin will be answerable in this case?”
“Father Barry will be answerable for her,” he replied. “‘As for the profit and happiness to be derived from these devotions,’ he says, ‘I will be answerable for that; I will stand bail for the good Mother.’”