Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE FIRST AND THE SECOND MAN.61have created human nature in such a state. The "gift of eternal beatitude, arising from the visionof God, which such a creature would not have hadfor its end, is simply and absolutely a gratuitousgift of the divine bounty, which God is not boundto bestow on any creature as such. Secondly, Goddid not in fact so create man.Going on from this state of simple nature, wemay consider another state in man, in which, beyondall his natural faculties,4 he would have acertain special perfection, consisting in the absenceof immoderate concupiscence, or in the perfectsubjection of the sensitive to the rational appetite,so that the inferior appetite should not be allowedto set itself in motion against the superior, or toanticipate reason. .For human nature, regardedin itself as the union of a spirit and a body, isas it were divided in its natural affections, whichtend in diverse directions, and thus totters, so tosay, in its gait; when, therefore, it receives an inwardpeace in its own proper faculties, it is saido be supplemented, or to receive its integrity. Now it is much to be noted that this ggift of integrity would not be connatural to man,that is, not given to him by force of his natureitself. It is true indeed that as such a gift perfectsnature in regard to all natural acts, andsupplies a sort of natural deficiency arising out ofthe combination of a spiritual with a material sub-4 Suarez, de Gratia, Proleg. cap. ii. sec. 3.LIBRARY ST. i M