Page:Studies of a Biographer 2.djvu/274

 If not, the change must be supernatural. Nothing but divine grace can make the man good. St. Paul and Augustine and Calvin have given definite form to this result by the doctrine of predestination. What, then, becomes of the freewill which, it was urged, was essential to merit? You give a higher place to morality by making it a function of the heart instead of a restraint upon actions; but in doing so you have made it unattainable by man, and therefore destroyed his responsibility. The theory of grace, as St. Paul put it, makes man the pot in the hands of the potter. The Creator and not the creature is the true cause both of vice and virtue. Admit that man can do nothing without grace, and he becomes a mere automaton moved by the arbitrary power of God. Suppose him, on the other hand, able to do something, and that God will always help him, and then you virtually make him do everything; for the grace of God is, so to speak, a constant condition which will be an inevitable consequence of the man's freewill. Pascal, of course, was sensible of this logical difficulty, and in dealing with it falls into subtleties resembling those of his enemies. It indeed appears to be impossible, except by the help of merely verbal distinctions, to divide the