"But," I resumed, "how comes it about that your community is bound
to admit this grace?" "That is another question," he replied. "All
that I can tell you is, in one word, that our order has defended, to
the utmost of its ability, the doctrine of St. Thomas on efficacious
grace. With what ardor did it oppose, from the very commencement,
the doctrine of Molina? How did it labor to establish the necessity of
the efficacious grace of Jesus Christ? Don't you know what happened
under Clement VIII and Paul V, and how, the former having been
prevented by death, and the latter hindered by some Italian affairs
from publishing his bull, our arms still sleep in the Vatican? But the
Jesuits, availing themselves, since the introduction of the heresy
of Luther and Calvin, of the scanty light which the people possess for
discriminating between the error of these men and the truth of the
doctrine of St. Thomas, disseminated their principles with such
rapidity and success that they became, ere long, masters of the
popular belief; while we, on our part, found ourselves in the
predicament of being denounced as Calvinists and treated as the
Jansenists are at present, unless we qualified the efficacious grace
with, at least, the apparent avowal of a sufficient. In this
extremity, what better course could we have taken for saving the
truth, without losing our own credit, than by admitting the name of
sufficient grace, while we denied that it was such in effect? Such
is the real history of the case.
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