wishes. "All excuse," says St. Alphonsus, "is taken away from those sinners who pretend that they have not the strength to overcome their temptations, because, if they had recourse to prayer and made use of this ordinary grace bestowed on all men, they would obtain all the strength they need to overcome temptation and save their souls. No one is damned for the original sin of Adam, but solely for his own fault, because God refuses to no one the grace of prayer whereby he may obtain His assistance to overcome every passion, every temptation.
"He who prays," says St. Alphonsus, in another place, "is certainly saved; he who prays not is certainly lost. All the blessed (except infants) have been saved by prayer. All the damned have been lost by not praying; had they prayed, they would not have been lost. And this is and will be their greatest torment in hell, to think how easily they might have been saved, had they only prayed to God for His grace; but that is now too late — for the time of prayer is now over for them." We have just seen how effective prayer is, because it is the infallible means of gaining heaven. St. Augustine is, then, right in calling prayer "the key of heaven."
The necessity of prayer is twofold, viz, as a
