You will allege that my indignation is reasonable enough against the supralapsarians, who believe that the king of Morocco begot these five hundred children only for his glory; and that he had always the intention to torture and burn them, except two, who were destined to reign.
But I am wrong, you say, against the infralapsarians, who avow that it was not the first intention of Muley Ismael to cause his children to perish; but that, having foreseen that they would be of no use, he thought he should be acting as a good father in getting rid of them by torture and fire.
Ah, supralapsarians, infralapsarians, free-gracians, sufficers, efficacians, jansenists, and molinists become men, and no longer trouble the earth with such absurd and abominable fooleries.
SECTION IV.
Holy advisers of modern Rome, illustrious and infallible theologians, no one has more respect for your divine decisions than I; but if Paulus milius, Scipio, Cato, Cicero, Cæsar, Titus, Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius, revisited that Rome to which they formerly did such credit, you must confess that they would be a little astonished at your decisions on grace. What would they say if they heard you speak of healthful grace according to St. Thomas, and medicinal grace according to Cajetan; of exterior and interior grace, of free, sanctifying, co-operating, actual, habitual, and efficacious grace, which is sometimes inefficacious; of the sufficing which sometimes does not suffice, of the versatile and congruous—would they really comprehend it more than you and I?
What need would these poor people have of your instructions? I fancy I hear them say: "Reverend fathers, you are terrible genii; we foolishly thought that the Eternal Being never conducted Himself by particular laws like vile human beings, but by general laws, eternal like Himself. No one among us ever imagined that God was like a senseless master, who gives an estate to one slave and refuses food to another; who orders one with a broken arm to knead a loaf, and a cripple to be his courier."
All is grace on the part of God; He has given to the globe we inhabit the grace of form; to the trees the grace of making them grow; to animals that of feeding them; but will you say, because one wolf finds in his road a lamb for his supper, while another is dying with hunger, that God has given the first wolf a particular grace? Is it a preventive grace to cause one oak to grow in preference to another in which sap is wanting? If throughout nature all being is submitted to general laws, how can a single species of animals avoid conforming to them?
Why should the absolute master of all be more occupied in directing the interior of a single man than in conducting the remainder of entire nature? By what caprice would He change something in the heart of a Courlander or a Biscayan, while He changes nothing in the general laws which He has imposed upon all the stars.
What a pity to suppose that He is continually making, defacing, and renewing our sentiments! And what audacity in us to believe ourselves excepted from all beings! And further, is it not only for those who confess that these changes are imagined? A Savoyard, a Bergamask, on Monday, will have the grace to have a mass said for twelve sous; on Tuesday he will go to the tavern and have no grace; on Wednesday he will have a co-operating grace, which will conduct him to confession, but he will not have the efficacious grace of perfect contrition; on Thursday there will be a sufficing grace which will not suffice, as has been already said. God will labor in the head of this Bergamask—sometimes strongly, sometimes weakly, while the rest of the earth will no way concern Him! He will not deign to meddle with the interior of the Indians and Chinese! If you possess a grain of reason, reverend fathers, do you not find this system prodigiously ridiculous?
Poor, miserable man! behold this oak which rears its head to the clouds, and this reed which bends at its feet; you do not say that efficacious grace has been given to the oak and withheld from the reed. Raise your eyes to heaven; see the eternal Demiourgos creating millions of worlds, which gravitate towards one another by general and eternal laws. See the same light reflected from the sun to Saturn, and from Saturn to us; and in this grant of so many stars, urged onward in their rapid course; in this general obedience of all nature, dare to believe, if you can, that God is occupied in giving a versatile grace to Sister Theresa, or a concomitant one to Sister Agnes.