first, the grace of God; and secondly, your own cooperation. ” Behold, I stand at the gate and knock: if any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come unto him." (Apoc. iii. 20.) Then, in order that God may enter into us by his grace, we must, on our part, obey his calls, and open our hearts to him. Likewise, St. Paul says, ” with fear and trembling work out your salvation." (Phil. ii. 12.) He says, work out. Then we, too, must cooperate to our salvation by good works; otherwise the Lord will only give us sufficient grace by which we shall be able to save our souls, but by which we certainly will not save them. Behold, the reason: he who is in the state of sin, and continues to commit sin, is daily more and more attached to the flesh, and more removed from God. Now, how can God, by his grace, approach to us, when we withdraw farther from him? He then retires from us, and becomes less liberal of his favours. ” And I will make it desolate and I will command the clouds to rain no rain upon it." (Isa. v. 6.) When the soul continues to offend God he abandons her, and withdraws his helps. Hence she shall cease to feel remorse of conscience; she shall be left without light; and the blindness of her understanding and the hardness of her heart shall be increased. She shall become utterly insensible to the calls of God, to the maxims of faith, and to the melancholy examples of other rebellious souls that have closed their career in hell.
"But who knows," the obstinate sinner will say, "but God will show me the same mercy which he has shown to certain great sinners? ” In answer to this, St. Chrysostom says: "Fortasse dabit, inquis: cur dicis fortasse? Con- tigit aliquando; sed cogita quod de anima deliberas?" (Hom. xxii. in 2 Cor.) You say: ” Perhaps God will give me the grace of salvation. But why do you say perhaps? Is it because he has sometimes given to great sinners the grace of eternal life? But remember, says the holy doctor, that there is question of your soul, which, if once lost, is lost for ever. I, too, take you up, and admit that God has, by certain extraordinary graces, saved some enormous sinners. But these cases are very rare; they are prodigies and miracles of grace, by
