SECTION II.

All nature, all that exists, is the grace of God; He bestows on all animals the grace of form and nourishment. The grace of growing seventy feet high is granted to the fir, and refused to the reed. He gives to man the grace of thinking, speaking, and knowing him; He grants me the grace of not understanding a word of all that Tournelli, Molina, and Soto, have written on the subject of grace.

The first who has spoken of efficacious and gratuitous grace is, without contradiction, Homer. This may be astonishing to a bachelor of theology, who knows no author but St. Augustine; but, if he read the third book of the "Iliad," he will see that Paris says to his brother Hector: "If the gods have given you valor, and me beauty, do not reproach me with the presents of the beautiful Venus; no gift of the gods is despicable--it does not depend upon man to obtain them."

Nothing is more positive than this passage. If we further remark that Jupiter, according to his pleasure, gave the victory sometimes to the Greeks, and at others to the Trojans, we shall see a new proof that all was done by grace from on high. Sarpedon, and afterwards Patroclus, are barbarians to whom by turns grace has been wanting.

There have been philosophers who were not of the opinion of Homer. They have pretended that general Providence does not immediately interfere with the affairs of particular individuals; that it governs all by universal laws; that Thersites and Achilles were equal before it, and that neither Chalcas nor Talthybius ever had versatile or congruous graces.

According to these philosophers, the dog-grass and the oak, the mite and the elephant, man, the elements and stars, obey invariable laws, which God, as immutable, has established from all eternity.