God our enemy by committing mortal sin; and hence it still preserves its right, according to its measure and degree, to the eternal joys of heaven. The accounts between God and us are not regulated as they are between men; in the latter case the receipt is compared with the expenditure, the debt with the payment; thus, for instance, I have lent you twenty shillings, and you owe me twenty shillings. On the other hand I have on a certain occasion received goods from you to the amount of ten shillings, so that that sum has to be deducted from your debt, and you owe me only ten. Again, you have in my name given six shillings to Peter; thus your debt is lessened again, and you owe me only four, and so on. This, I say, is not the way in which God reckons with us; He keeps two different books; in one He writes down the merit of our good works, for which He has bound Himself to give us heaven as a reward; in the other He writes down our daily faults and venial sins, as well as the mortal sins we have repented of, for which we deserve some punishment. Neither of these books has anything to do with the other. God does not say: you have done so many good works, and therefore I owe you such and such a reward in heaven; but you have often offended me by venial sin, and you have not yet satisfied for the mortal sins you have blotted out by repentance, so that I shall strike out some of your merit and only give you so much. No, my dear brethren, that is not the way; otherwise what on earth would become of us poor mortals? And how would we fare in the summing up of accounts, with the repeated sins and short-comings that we are guilty of day by day? How could our sanctifying grace ever increase if it were constantly lessened? and what sort of a reward could we expect in heaven? No; praised and blessed a thousand times be the loving arrangements of divine Providence! He assures to us forever the whole capital of grace and merit so that we can never lose any of it. In the book of thy debts, O man! (so will the Almighty reckon with us) I find so many thousand venial sins, and so many mortal sins that have been blotted out by repentance; for all these thou must pay me to the last farthing, either by satisfaction in this life, or by suffering in the next. In the book of My debts, on the other hand, I find so many thousand good works that thou didst perform in the state of grace; for all these I owe thee so many degrees of eternal glory; and these thou shalt receive without the least diminution in the king-
