Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/381

348 What else remaineth unto the soul which has lost God and his grace, save only sin, and the consequences of sin, proud poverty and lazy indigence, that is a general incapacity for labour, for prayer, and for every good work. This proposition is found in the moral observations of Quesnell, on Luke xvi. 3. The grace of Jesus Christ, the efficient beginning of good of every kind soever, is necessary for every good work; without it not only nothing is done, but likewise nothing can be done. On John xv. 5. Ed. 1693. In vain, O Lord, dost thou command, if thou thyself givest not what thou commandest. Acts xvi. 10. Thus, O Lord, are all things possible to him, to whom thou makest all things possible, by working the same things in him. Mark ix. 22. When God softeneth not the heart by the inward anointing of his grace, exhortations and outward graces serve not, save to harden it the more. Rom. ix. 18. Ed. 1693. The difference between the Jewish and Christian covenant is, that in the former God requireth the shunning of sin, and the fulfilment of the law from the sinner, by leaving him in his own incapability; but in the latter, God giveth unto the sinner that which he commandeth, by purifying him with his own grace. Rom. xi. 27. What advantage for men is there in the old covenant, in which God left him to his own infirmities, imposing upon him his own law? But what happiness is it not to be admitted into a covenant, in which God doth bestow on us that which he seeketh from us? Hebr. viii. 7. We appertain not unto the new covenant, save in as far as we are partakers of the new grace thereof, which worketh within us that which God doth enjoin unto us. Hebr. viii. 10. The grace of Christ is the supreme grace, without which we are never able to confess Christ, and with which we never can deny him. 1 Cor. xii. 3. 1693. Grace is the operation of the hand of Almighty God, which nothing can hinder or retard. Matt. xx. 34