'
"Such is the way in which our doctors have discharged men from the
painful obligation of actually loving God. And this doctrine is so
advantageous that our Fathers Annat, Pintereau, Le Moine, and Antony
Sirmond himself, have strenuously defended it when it has been
attacked. You have only to consult their answers to the Moral
Theology. That of Father Pintereau, in particular, will enable you
to form some idea of the value of this dispensation, from the price
which he tells us that it cost, which is no less than the blood of
Jesus Christ. This crowns the whole. It appears, that this
dispensation from the painful obligation to love God, is the privilege
of the Evangelical law, in opposition to the Judaical. 'It was
reasonable,' he says, 'that, under the law of grace in the New
Testament, God should relieve us from that troublesome and arduous
obligation which existed under the law of bondage, to exercise an
act of perfect contrition, in order to be justified; and that the
place of this should be supplied by the sacraments, instituted in
aid of an easier disposition. Otherwise, indeed, Christians, who are
the children, would have no greater facility in gaining the good
graces of their Father than the Jews, who were the slaves, had in
obtaining the mercy of their Lord and Master.'"
"O father!" cried I; "no patience can stand this any longer. It is
impossible to listen without horror to the sentiments I have just
heard.
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