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.

But here again the old question of man's legal capacity to deserve eternal bliss before God is raised. Merces, a reward, a payment, according to the understanding of the Catholic theologians themselves,[81] is that which is paid for someone's work or work, as if at a certain price of the latter. Hence, As to give a just price for a thing received from someone is a matter of justice, so to give a reward for a deed or work is a matter of justice." The relation of work and reward, in order to be a matter of justice, requires first of all equality, while the relation of human good deeds and eternal bliss does not represent this equality. The main thing is that no matter how zealous a person may be in doing good, he will always remain a sinner before God, he must first be forgiven, and only then think about the reward; and his deeds will always bear the traces of his imperfection and sinfulness. Merit, therefore, is out of the question. Catholicism thinks to remove this perplexity by its teaching on the difference between de condigno merits and de congruo merits. In the first case, merit in the proper sense, and in the second only in the figurative sense. The former are possible with complete equality of relations. But there is no equality of relations between God and man, therefore there is only quiadam modus iustitae (a kind of justice) between them,82 and therefore human merit can only be de congruo,83 Nevertheless, it is a merit. But against this Protestantism sharply and quite justly objected that it was only a trick devised to conceal its Pelagianism; The essence of the case remains exactly the same, whether a human action is recognized as a merit de condigno or de congruo in both cases, the reward equally necessarily follows the work, the legal significance of the case remains in all its force. Consequently, the question of man's legal capacity for merit before God is by no means eliminated.

Catholics try to remove this obstacle by ascribing to human action a Divine character: the work of man, after justification, is the work of the righteousness of Christ poured into him, and, consequently, Divine. At the same time, the Divinity of this action is protected from all impurities, from any touch of human impurity, since the will is recognized only as the receiver, and not as the real creator of spiritual holiness. In this case, the deeds of a person can acquire the meaning of merit, as divine deeds, and can be merit, moreover, not only de congruo, but also de condigno [85]. In such a formulation, the recognition of man's merit does not contradict salvation by Christ alone, since it leaves the power and significance of the merit of Jesus Christ in its complete inviolability. "Just as," says Perrone, "how nothing is diminished from the glory of the vine, if its branches bear great fruit; on the contrary, the more fruit the branches bear, the more praise the vine deserves, because all the life-giving juice and moisture that is only in the branches comes from the vine; in the same way, the glory of Christ's merits does not diminish from our merits in the least, since the latter come from the former (Christ); on the contrary, the merits of Christ through our merits become more and more evident (commendantur)" [86].

But here again the question arises: if man's deeds are not essentially his deeds, then what can there be about man's merit and his right to a reward? In order to evade this objection, the Catholics admit the following conditional device: they recognize the will as the second cause of good works. "Human merit to speak more closely, if we define it more closely, is not at all absolutely pure merit, since the grace of God is the first and main cause of the good done in man and through him, but it is not completely absent, because man is nevertheless the second cause of the good done in him and through him" [87]. Let's consider this statement. The will may be recognized as the second cause of action, in the sense that it receives and contains the righteousness of its actions poured into it through itself. If a good deed is accomplished, it means that the grace that dwells in a person strives to accomplish this deed, and since this striving is accomplished in a person, then, naturally, for his consciousness it appears to be his own deed, and he decides, as it were, arbitrarily whether to actually perform a certain good deed. Everything is from grace: to it belongs the beginning of movement [89]; and the will is the conductor of that current of grace which, so to speak, moves man's hands to a good deed, no more than in this sense alone the will can be called the helper and servant of grace. This idea of the illusory nature of the active participation of the will in good deeds is beautifully expressed by Klee himself, who says: "(Man) must do what he can, and what he can and how he can, God does" [91]. Translating this Orthodox expression into Catholic language, we get that a person must do what seems possible to him, and he will do it, recognizing himself as the cause of his actions, but in fact, his ability to perform a certain action and the very way of revealing this ability is not his – this belongs to the grace that lives and acts in him.

Thus it is evident that the recognition of the will as the second cause of good deeds does not at all resolve the question posed, but only rejects it; that even after this it is impossible to understand on what basis a good deed is known by the merit of a person, when the will of the latter serves only as a conductor of the influence of grace that is alien to it. True, the Catholics answer for this, that the recognition of the complete absence of merit on the part of man rests on the false assumption that man is completely deprived of freedom in relation to the divine life, and that in the matter of sanctification and justification he acts only sufferingly"; and that, "on the contrary, with the recognition of the truth that man freely goes to meet the excitation, direction and every action of grace, and then, after its action and together with it, independently participates in the accomplishment of good, with the recognition of this truth, the merit of man must be consistently established as possible and admissible, as really existing" [92]. But we have seen how fair it is to call the deeds of a Catholically justified person "free participation." By this name they can only be called by those who forget or try to forget what has been said before about the essence and consequences of Catholic justification. Righteousness infused into man, this self-moving and self-acting property, or appendage of his spirit, tolerates freedom side by side only as the second cause described, and consequently admits only the phantom of freedom, at the same time the possibility of merit on the part of man is completely denied.

Catholics, after all, themselves had to realize the inadequacy of their legal point of view and its inadequacy to explain the salvation of man. Here, for example, is how the possibility of merit is proved. Council of Trent: "Although Christ Himself, as head in the members or as a vine in a branch, constantly pours out virtue in the justified themselves (which precedes and accompanies the good works of the righteous and concludes the procession of works, and without which in no case can works be pleasing to God and deserving), nevertheless it must be believed that there is no harm to the justified themselves; it must be thought that nevertheless by these works, which are accomplished in God, they have satisfied the Divine law for the state of this life, and have truly deserved eternal life, which must follow in due time, if, however, they have departed into union with grace" [93]. In other words: although a man's deeds are not his works, and, consequently, cannot be his merit, nevertheless one must believe"... "must think" that they "truly deserve." Why do they deserve it? This cannot be explained by a council and must demand only blind faith, based on nothing, hiding behind its external right. All Catholic theologians must and do come to the same end. Let us recall the words of Perrone quoted above [94]: "God did not want the merits of Christ to benefit us without any assistance on our part"; or more clearly and more clearly Klee: "Inasmuch as God was pleased to acknowledge the good, begun by his grace and accomplished with the assistance of man, by man's own work, he was pleased to recognize in it the character of merit, and to recognize the increase of active and intermediary grace and, in the end, eternal life as a reward, a recompense, a fruit, and an inheritance, and the reward being a matter of righteousness and faithfulness of God; – then the validity of human merit can by no means be denied. Thus, neither Klee nor Perrone, remaining true to their point of view, can in any way justify the necessity of human participation in salvation: Christ's merit, as a magnitude as a value, is too sufficient to satisfy God's truth for any other human merits to be needed, the very possibility of which, moreover, is still subject to strong doubt. Why, then, are these merits required for salvation, and why can they be recognized as merits? "So it pleased God," Catholic scholars are forced to answer. But why did He favor? After all, there must be any meaning in this God's determination? Surely it cannot be only an empty, causeless desire, as if it were a whim? For Catholics, however, the will of God is precisely the will, the command of the Lord of the world. They, as true adherents of the law, bow down only before the right of God to command the universe and do not think to find consolation for themselves in the fact that God, although He "possesses the kingdom of man," does not arbitrarily – that He desires goodness and holiness, not because He wills, but because "He Himself is holy", because holiness is an immutable law of world life, that it is good itself. "For Thy power is the beginning of righteousness, and the very fact that Thou hast dominion over all, disposes Thee to spare all" (Wis. 12, 16).

Thus, Catholic dogmatics, which tried to build the doctrine of salvation on legal principles, resorted to all sorts of tricks for this purpose, finally came to the realization of the impossibility of doing this, and to all the objections of reason only blindly points to the demand of revelation, and this requirement it hastens to misinterpret in its legal sense: it cannot be proved that works are merits, but the Word of God tells us that works are necessary for salvation and do save – consequently (conclude the Catholics, making a logical leap), works, be that as it may, have the meaning of merit.

Such is the conclusion to which Western Christianity leads with inexorable necessity by its fundamental lie, the legal understanding of salvation and of all religious life in general.