519. John 8. Multi crediderunt in eum. Dicebat ergo Jesus: "Si manseritis...
VERE mei discipuli eritis, et VERITAS LIBERABIT VOS." Responderunt: "Semen
Abrahae sumus, et nemini servimus unquam."[87]
There is a great difference between disciples and true disciples. We
recognise them by telling them that the truth will make them free; for if
they answer that they are free and that it is in their power to come out of
slavery to the devil, they are indeed disciples, but not true disciples.
520. The law has not destroyed nature, but has instructed it; grace has not
destroyed the law, but has made it act. Faith received at baptism is the
source of the whole life of Christians and of the converted.
521. Grace will always be in the world, and nature also; so that the former
is in some sort natural. And thus there will always be Pelagians, and always
Catholics, and always strife; because the first birth makes the one, and the
grace of the second birth the other.
522. The law imposed what it
Some seek good in authority, others in scientific research, others in
pleasure. Others, who are in fact nearer the truth, have considered it
necessary that the universal good, which all men desire, should not consist
in any of the particular things which can only be possessed by one man, and
which, when shared, afflict their possessors more by the want of the part he
has not than they please him by the possession of what he has. They have
learned that the true good should be such as all can possess at once,
without diminution and without envy, and which no one can lose against his
will. And their reason is that this desire, being natural to man, since it
is necessarily in all, and that it is impossible not to have it, they infer
from it...
426. True nature being lost, everything becomes its own nature; as the true
good being lost, everything becomes its own true good.
427. Man does not know in what rank to place himself. He has plainly gone
astray and fallen from his true place without being able to find it again.
He seeks it anxiously and unsuccessfully everywhere in impenetrable
darkness.
428. If it is a sign of weakness to prove God by nature, do not des