"
This was spoken in such a melancholy tone that I really began to
pity the man; not so, however, my companion. "Flatter not yourselves,"
said he to the monk, "with having saved the truth; had she not found
other defenders, in your feeble hands she must have perished. By
admitting into the Church the name of her enemy, you have admitted the
enemy himself. Names are inseparable from things. If the term
sufficient grace be once established, it will be vain for you to
protest that you understand by it a grace which is not sufficient.
Your protest will be held inadmissible. Your explanation would be
scouted as odious in the world, where men speak more ingenuously about
matters of infinitely less moment. The Jesuits will gain a triumph- it
will be their grace, which is sufficient in fact, and not yours, which
is only so in name, that will pass as established; and the converse of
your creed will become an article of faith."
"We will all suffer martyrdom first," cried the father, "rather
than consent to the establishment of sufficient grace in the sense
of the Jesuits. St. Thomas, whom we have sworn to follow even to the
death, is diametrically opposed to such doctrine."
To this my friend, who took up the matter more seriously than I
did, replied: "Come now, father, your fraternity has received an honor
which it sadly abuses. It abandons that grace which was confided to
its care, and which has never been abandoned since the creation of the
world.
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