Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/373

 that, although a man may be able to do good deeds without grace, he loses the possibility of doing good deeds the moment he accepts the teaching of the church, and can only wish for it, by invoking the aid of the hierarchy. But even the desire for grace, as has just been said, is given only by the Holy Ghost, that is, again by grace. The Theology is evidently moving in a magic circle.

“189. If without divine grace man cannot become a believer, or believe in Christ, or do deeds that are worthy of a life according to Christ, it follows naturally that without the cooperation of divine grace man cannot abide in the Christian faith and godliness to the end of his life.”

Here it says that the cooperation of this external grace is not exhausted by baptism and faith, but that for the salvation the constant aid of the hierarchy is needed. All that would seem to be clear, but now follows Art. 190, which refutes the heretics. In this and the following articles the whole disconnection of the teaching becomes manifest.

The hierarchy needs a teaching which would reduce the whole teaching about life to a teaching about the sacraments, but that cannot be expressed outright: the immorality of such a teaching is too obvious. Besides, there have been many controversies in regard to this question. Some reflected consistently: if grace saves, the free efforts of man are useless; others said: if the free efforts of man are needed, the whole thing lies in them, and grace is imparted to them; but our Theology refutes both, and itself becomes entangled and persists in that tangle.

“Contrary to the errors of the Calvinists and Jansenists, which are that God gives his grace only to a few men, whom he has unconditionally preordained to righteousness and eternal bliss, and therefore gives an invincible grace, the Orthodox Church teaches: (a) that divine grace extends over all men, and not only on the preordained to