Brief Exposition (Stanley) n. 61

61. BRIEF ANALYSIS
Who does not know that God is Mercy itself and Clemency, because He is Love itself and Good itself, and that these are His Being (Esse) or Essence? And who does not see from this that it is a contradiction to say that Mercy itself, or Good itself, can view man from anger, become His enemy, turn Himself away from him and determine his damnation, and still remain the same Divine Being (Esse) or God. Such acts can scarcely be attributed to an upright man, but only to a wicked person; nor to an angel of heaven, but only to an angel of hell; wherefore it is abominable to ascribe them to God. That they have been ascribed to Him is evident from the declaration of many of the Fathers, Councils, and thereafter the assemblies of the Christian Church, from the first period to the present day. It is evident also from the inferences which followed of necessity from the first principle into the derivatives, or from the cause into the effects, as from the head into the other parts of the body; such as, that He required to be reconciled; that He is reconciled through His love to the Son, and by intercession or mediation that He required to be appeased by the sight of the extreme misery of His Son, and so to be brought back and, as it were, constrained to mercy, in order that from being an enemy He might become a friend, and adopt the sons of wrath as sons of grace. To impute the justice and merit of His Son to an unjust man, who supplicated it from faith alone, is also a merely human notion, as will be seen in the last analysis in this little work.


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