Thus, the Protestants, in spite of their sincere desire to be faithful to experience and to give consolation (to the conscience) of believing souls, could not do anything, remaining on a legal basis. Avoiding the extremes of Catholicism, they fell into the other extreme: they completely crossed out the inner side of justification. It is true that Protestants of all times constantly say that they demand good works, that they recognize them as necessary in order for faith to be a living faith, which alone justifies, that the accusation that they preach a doctrine dangerous to morality is based either on "a lack of understanding or on a malicious distortion of Protestant teaching." But all this is only the voice of conscience breaking through, only a concession to the demands of human nature, a concession unjustified in teaching. In spite of all these statements, the necessity of good deeds remains unfounded, since the motives for it are not in salvation, but outside of it: in a sense of duty, gratitude to God, and so on [56] [56].

The life of the justified loses its moral character and the conscience does not receive peace.

Part 2

However unsuccessful the attempt of Protestantism to explain human salvation may be, it nevertheless showed with obvious certainty the weaknesses of the Catholic doctrine of merit. Catholicism, which had seen these aspects in its best representatives before, had to be guided by the conclusions of Protestantism, the more so as the latter threatened the very existence of the former. That human merit in its direct sense is impossible before God, and contradicts the salvation eaten by Christ, Catholicism could not but agree with this. But, on the other hand, it could not sacrifice either the experience or the tradition of all the previous centuries of universal church life – both experience and tradition said with their own lips that good deeds are necessary not only in the sense of the effect, but also in the sense of the condition of salvation. How to reconcile these two apparently contradictory testimonies? How can we understand this conditionality of salvation by good works, if the latter at the same time cannot be merit before God? – This is the question that Catholicism had to resolve. This question was directed to the very essence, demanded a discussion of the very basis, the point of view of salvation that leads Catholicism to false conclusions, the legal point of view. The question was whether we have the right to rebuild Christianity from this point of view. And, without a doubt, Catholicism would have come to the right decision (since it did not want to break its ties with Church tradition) if it had really accepted the challenge and discussed itself impartially. But Catholicism only slipped over the question posed to it, without touching upon it or even trying to answer it: it cared only to reconcile the contradictions of its teaching with religious consciousness and church tradition, without touching upon this teaching itself. Therefore, the Catholic attempt is as unsuccessful as the Protestant one.

If the Protestants quite rightly accused the Catholics of destroying the merit of Jesus Christ with their human merit, then the Catholics, in their turn, just as rightly point out to the Protestants that they contradict the holiness of God by their illusory justification [57]. Justification, according to the teaching of the Catholics, should not be external, not based on the maintenance of the soul, a purely judicial event of imputing someone else's righteousness to a person, but should be an internal change or renewal of a person. In justification there is also an external, judicial side [59], but this is not its only content, and whoever believes its essence only in this, let him be anathema[60]; Justification means not only "to declare righteous" or "to acknowledge as righteous," but "to make righteous," it means the eradication of unholiness and the establishment of holiness in us, true and inward sanctity, making righteous" (Gerechtfertigung) [61].

From the point of view of the legal relationship between these two aspects of justification [62] could only be understood in the sense of merit and reward, i.e. the holiness of man is merit, and the proclamation of justified and acceptance into the sonship of God is the reward for holiness [63]. Now, if we recognize the participation of human freedom in the accomplishment of this holiness, then the absolution of sins and adoption as sons will prove to be a reward for the merits of man, which is directly contrary to the divinely revealed teaching about the One Saviour Christ, as Catholicism is also aware [64]. Consequently, it was necessary, on the one hand, for Catholicism to retain behind justification the full meaning of the deed, and not only to be holy, and at the same time, on the other hand, it was necessary to limit as much as possible man's participation in the acquisition of this original holiness; so that the grace of justification is in fact undeserved. Catholicism thinks to solve this difficult problem by its teaching on the so-called infusion of grace, infusio gratiae.

Whereas for the Protestants the grace of justification was a decision made in the Divine consciousness (actus Dei immanens) and therefore for man was a completely abstract formal action, for the Catholics grace is first of all a supernatural gift (supernaturale donum), or "the action of God in the creature," i.e., a certain movement that takes place in the creature itself, its property or state that God inhabits it and experiences it at a given moment in time. Accordingly, in particular, the grace of sanctification is a gift, an inner and supernatural gift of God, given to the rational creature for the merits of Christ" [68]. So. Justification is transformed into a supernatural action performed by the power of God in the soul of man, an action by which righteousness and holiness dwell in it. And since this holiness appears in the soul as a new state, hitherto untried, and having as yet grounds in it (so that there is no merit), it is so. In addition to the existing spiritual content of man, it is self-evident that the supernaturalness of this action must involuntarily increase in spite of his voluntariness and consciousness. Holiness descends upon the soul, if not completely unexpectedly, then in any case involuntarily or in passing, does not leave a conclusion from the spiritual life, to come to it from outside and apart from its natural development. This complete (in the sense described) involuntariness of sanctification is expressed by the Catholic term gratiae infusio, the infusion of grace. "All justification," says Thomas Aquinas, "consists originally in gratiae infusione." Instead of a judgment external to the soul, we have here a kind of supernatural transformation that takes place in the soul itself. "Sanctification," says Clea, "is true sanctification, accomplished not only through the actual (wirkliche) taking away, the denial of sin, but also through the positive indwelling of new life, through the communication of the Divine Spirit. It is the taking away of the heart of stone and the giving of the heart of the flesh (Tez. XXXVI, 26), the destruction of sin (Ps. L, 3) and the consciousness of the new spirit (v. 12), the death of sin and the life of Christ (Rom. VI, I, etc.), putting off the old and putting on the new man (Eph. IV, 22), the cessation of walking in the flesh and walking in the Spirit (Rom. VIII, Gal. V), walking not in darkness, but in light (Eph. V, 8 et seq.), the burial of dead works (Heb. VI, 1; 1) and the offering of good works (Eph. II, 10)" [70].

Catholicism, apparently, has quite thoroughly solved the task set to it: the merit of Christ has been preserved and justification is not a deception, not a dream, but a real inner change. But this is only an appearance. Not to mention the involuntariness of justification, which, in the essence of the matter, deprives it of the dignity of a moral phenomenon and therefore directly contradicts the religious consciousness and teaching of the entire Word of God and tradition, even Catholic justification taken in itself is very unfounded from its own legal point of view.

In order to avoid this, it was necessary to recognize all people without distinction as undeserving of salvation and justification by an exclusively Divine deed, as the Catholics do. But in this case, why does God renew the one and not the other? Perrone, as we have also seen, is trying, contrary to the clear teaching of the Council of Trent, to recognize as such a foundation or merit "that which precedes justification in man," i.e., faith, etc. But he himself must confess that sanctifying grace does not fit into the concept of merit in the proper sense,[72] that faith, etc., which accompanies it, can never correspond in value to the gift of holiness. given to us in justification. Will not faith then be only a tool for perceiving the merit of Christ, and will not justification be an outward proclamation, a judicial recognition, as the Protestants taught? Catholics are fatally drawn to this conclusion, and they must agree with it if they do not want to renounce their legal point of view on the work of salvation. But Catholicism could not agree to this conclusion: the Word of God, the tradition of the Church, and the voice of conscience were against it, which demanded man's participation in his salvation, and not notification of his salvation, the situation turned out to be completely hopeless: either faithfulness to one's own wisdom, or faithfulness to the truth. Not wishing to abandon the first and not daring to openly contradict the second, Catholicism is forced to resort to a trick: it confuses justification and sanctification, and covers the exceptional appearance of the former with the content of the latter. The method is quite natural on a false basis, and it is not new: Protestantism did the same, trying to give some content to its illusory justification. Just as Protestantism makes faith an instrument for the perception of the power of God, which by itself, apart from man, sanctifies and renews him, so the Catholics have invented their infusio gratiae, which in essence is the same Protestant sanctification, only confined to justification itself and materialized to the extreme: if God acts for man there, then in Catholicism the gift of God is at work: as nothing separate from God and settled in man, but both here and there the will of man does not work. But again, the Word of God, the tradition of the Church, and conscience object that what is needed is not man's inactive consent to salvation, but precisely participation, and without the latter nothing can happen.

Thus, with fatal inevitability, the legal principle necessarily comes to that copper wall which it is unable to cross. If justification is a manifestation of the legal order, it will necessarily remain external to the soul, and this means that it is only a dream, only a phantom of self-deception, and allows... change of the justified only in the form of a supernatural involuntary transformation, essentially devoid of moral character and at the same time completely inexplicable, unjustified from the point of view of the legal principle itself.

Without thus explaining the first initial moment, Catholicism thinks to correct itself in the further course of justification. Let us assume, he says, that the first act of justification is performed apart from man, let us suppose that the holiness received by man is not actually his, but Christ's[73]; This by no means destroys man's personal participation in the work of salvation; on the contrary, the independence of this first act from the human will preserves the greater efficacy and value of human participation – it gives it the force and significance of a condition, if not the only one, then almost equal to grace. This is what the Catholics want to achieve with their theory of increasing holiness obtained in justification through good deeds in the next life.

In justification, a person is undeservedly and, therefore, involuntarily given a certain degree of holiness, sufficient to obtain the right to blessedness beyond the grave. But God "did not wish that Christ's merits should benefit us without any assistance on our part,"[74] and therefore, according to God's determination, human work must have its place and its significance. Holiness, as involuntary, is equal for everyone, but to preserve it in oneself and increase it in order to receive a greater reward for this, this is already a person's business (although, of course, not without God's help). By his efforts, his efforts, or good deeds, a person can add his own merit to the merit of Christ that he has assimilated, and thus increase his own crown on his own. At the same time, the legal point of view manifested itself in a crudely mechanical representation of the further moral activity of man. Man's independent participation is understood exclusively in the sense of certain external actions that serve as a revelation of inner holiness, in the "sense of concrete formations and manifestations of faith, hope, and love,"[75] and not in the sense of these latter taken in themselves. God does not seek holiness as the general constitution of the soul, but precisely the revelation of this holiness externally that justifies man precisely by deeds [76].

Why Catholicism insists precisely on works, on deeds, and in what sense it understands this justification by works, will be clear to us if we remember that, according to Catholic teaching, justification does not mean recognition only by the righteous, but precisely the infusion of righteousness. Justification by works has the following meaning, that works deserve a new supernatural gift (supernaturale donum),[77] i.e., God, seeing a man's good works, adds as a reward for him that holiness and righteousness which He poured into man at the time of justification,[78] and thereby gives man the opportunity to do even more good works, in order to deserve again an increase in holiness, etc. Holiness thus attained in turn deserves blessedness beyond the grave. The righteous, through their good works done by grace, are truly deserving before God,[79] and therefore eternal life is the necessary recompense for their efforts. "The righteous man," Perrone describes the whole course of this increase in righteousness: "sanctified by the inner grace that is present to him as an attribute, he is not only the heir of eternal life, to which he has both the right and the pledge in himself in the most solid way; but he who is planted, as the Apostle says, in Christ Jesus and, so to speak, grafted, bears fruit to God by holy works, which are the fruits of the Spirit. The Apostle enumerates these fruits, saying: the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, etc. (Gal. V, 22. 23). For the grace that sanctifies like the seed or germ of eternal life, which develops in the heart of the righteous and is revealed in the holy works, by means of which he also grows in the sanctification he has attained, and the crown of righteousness promised to him increases more and more, covers him with new adornments and makes him more precious. It is in these actions, performed in a state of righteousness, that deservition (gatio merit) consists, which begins with the very communication of grace, both actual and sanctifying by the power of Christ's merits, and ceases only in eternal life" [80].

Thus, although a person is sanctified involuntarily, it depends on him in the next life to preserve and increase the holiness he has received through his personal labors. With this method, Catholicism wants to close an insoluble problem for it.