Page:The Eternal Priesthood (4th ed).djvu/55

Rh is to choose out, to try, to train, and so make perfect, the youths who are to be admitted to the priesthood. From twelve years old, as the Council of Trent orders, they should be trained in the seminary, already admitted to the clerical state by tonsure. From twelve to twenty-four they are under the eye and hand of the Bishop, for, though others work under him, he is so the head and source of their training that a Council of Toledo calls the seminary Episcopalis præsentia. So far as human discernment can reach, such youths grow up in grace to interior spiritual perfection. The others who come at the ninth or the eleventh hour must still ascend by the seven steps which lead to the altar. If the time of their training is shorter, not less is required of them—rather more is exacted of them; and until the same interior spiritual perfection is reached, they slowly ascend towards the Holy Sacrifice. The fervour of conversion and the reparation of penance accomplishes in them in briefer time what the innocence of those who have never sorrowed for sin perhaps more slowly reaches. The fervour of S. Paul and of S. Augustine spring from the sævitia in seipsum—the wrath against themselves which is the perfection of penance. S. Gregory says that a soldier who has given way at the outset of the battle will often turn again