Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/380

 prehend what is meant by the statement that grace is necessary for salvation, and that man cannot be saved by good works without the sanctification through sacraments. Without the teaching about the sacraments a man will strive to become better. According to the doctrine of the hierarchy that is not necessary; what is needed is nothing but grace. To seek grace means to seek the sacraments. To seek the sacraments means to accept the sacraments from the priest. The concluding words of this article are important, because they strikingly confirm the proposition which I have enunciated that the dogma of redemption is one of the foundations of the sacerdotal institution, of the hierarchy:

“The reestablishment or redemption is nothing but the reduction of man to his original condition, in which he was before the fall. But before the fall man was actually innocent, righteous, and holy. Consequently it is necessary for him through this reëstablishment to return to precisely the same condition. In other words, if those who are reëstablished, or justified, remain as before in sin, without righteousness or holiness, and receive only a remission of sins, and externally cloak themselves in the righteousness of Christ, there is in that case no reëstablishment properly speaking, and it is nothing but a phantasm or a seeming reestablishment.” (p. 297.)

Reëstablishment is man’s elevation to the former state of innocence. Redemption, according to the assertion of the hierarchy, has done that. But the hierarchy itself sees that nothing of the kind exists: redemption has done nothing of the kind. In what, then, is this reestablishment to be assumed? It is impossible to recognize that the reëstablishment consists in this, that actually good men, having learned the law of Christ, do more good than evil, because in that case only good men would be redeemed, and bad men would be in perdition. Nor is it possible to assume that the bad men are no longer bad,