Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/369

336 with each other, even in the schools, of which kind are the following:

1. Neither the merits of an angel or of the first man still undefiled are rightly called grace. 2. As a bad work is of its nature deserving of eternal death, so a good work is of its nature deserving of eternal life. 3. Both to good angels and to primitive man, if he had persevered in that state, even to the last period of life, happiness would be reward, and not grace. 4. Life eternal was promised to man yet pure, and to the angel, in regard of good works; and good works by the law of nature are sufficient of themselves to attain it. 5. In the promise made to the angel and to the first man are contained the natural constitution of justice, by which for good works, without any other respect, life eternal is promised to the just. 6. By the natural law it was ordained for man that, if he persevered in obedience, he should pass on to life eternal, in which he could not die. 7. The merits of the first man intact were the gifts of the first creation; but, according to the mode of speaking the Sacred Scriptures are not rightly called grace; whence it comes, that they ought only to be named merits, not grace. 8. In those redeemed by the grace of Christ, no good merit can be found, which is not conferred gratuitously on an unworthy object. 9. Gifts granted to man in a state of purity, and perhaps to an angel, may be called grace, for a reason not to be disapproved; but because, according to the use of Sacred Scripture, those gifts only are understood by the name of grace, which are conferred through Jesus Christ on those ill-deserving and unworthy; for this reason, neither merits, nor the reward which is rendered to them, ought to be called grace. 10. The payment of the temporal penalty, which often remains after the sin is remitted, and the resurrection of the body, is to be ascribed properly to the merits of Christalone. 11. That we attain eternal life, in this mortal life, being preserved piously and justly even to the end, is to be set down not properly to the grace of God, but also to the natural ordinance established at the commencement of creation, by the just judgment of God; nor in this retribution of the good is respect had to the merit of Christ, but only to the first institution of mankind, in which it has been established by the natural law, that by the just judgment