View Volume II - In Today's Catholic World

Council of Trent teaches :
AND THEIR REFUTATION. 245
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"
Tametsi in eis liberum arbitrium
minime extinctum esset, viribus licet attenuatum, et inclinatum"
(Sess. vi, cap. 1). There is no doubt that God operates every
thing good in us ; but, at the same time, he does along with us,
as St. Paul (I. Cor. xv, 10) says :
"
By the grace
of God I am
what I am but the grace of God with me." Mark this
"
the grace of God with me." God excites us to do what is
good by his preventing grace, and helps us to bring it to perfec
tion by his assisting grace ; but he wishes that we should unite
our endeavours to his grace, and, therefore, exhorts us to co
converted to me" (Zach. i, 3) ;
"
operate as much as we can : Be
" Make unto yourselves a new heart" (Ezech. xviii, 31) ;
" Mor
tify, therefore, your members stripping yourselves of the
old man with his deeds, and putting on the new" (Col. iii, 5, &c.)
He also reproves those who refuse to obey his
How
call :
"
and you refused" (Prov. i, 24) ;
"
I called,
often would I have
gathered together thy children and thou wouldst not (Matt.
xxiii, 37) ;
" You
always resist the Holy Ghost" (Acts, vii, 51).
All these Divine calls and repr ovals would be vain and unjust if
God did everything regarding our eternal salvation, without any
co-operation on our part ; but such is not the case. God does all,
and whatever good we do, the greater part belongs to him ;
but
still it is his will that we labour a little ourselves, as far as we
can, and hence, St. Paul : says
"
I have laboured more abundantly
than all they, yet not I, but the grace of God with me"
(I. Cor.
xv, 10). By this Divine Grace, therefore, we are not to under
stand that habitual grace which sanctifies the soul, but the actual
preventing and helping grace which enables us to perform what
is right, and when this grace is efficacious, it not only gives us
strength to do so, in the same manner as sufficient grace does,
but more it makes us actually do what is right. From this first
error, then, that free will is extinguished in man by sin, the
Innovators deduce other erroneous doctrines that it is impos
sible for us to observe the laws of the Decalogue ; that works
are not necessary for salvation, but only faith alone ; that our
co-operation is not required for the justification of the sinner,
for that is done by the merits of Christ alone, although man
should still continue in sin. We shall treat of those errors
immediately.