truly to be convinced that God hears us, and to expect the aid of God
in death and in all afflictions; finally, it requires obedience to
God, in death and all afflictions, so that we may not flee from these,
or refuse them when God imposes them.

Here the scholastics, having followed the philosophers, teach only a
righteousness of reason, namely, civil works, and fabricate besides
that without the Holy Ghost reason can love God above all things.
For, as long as the human mind is at ease, and does not feel the
wrath or judgment of God, it can imagine that it wishes to love God,
that it wishes to do good for God's sake. [But it is sheer hypocrisy.
] In this manner they teach that men merit the remission of sins by
doing what is in them, i.e., if reason, grieving over sin, elicit an
act of love to God, or for God's sake be active in that which is good.
And because this opinion naturally flatters men, it has brought
forth and multiplied in the Church many services, monastic vows,
abuses of the mass; and, with this opinion the one has, in the course
of time, devised this act of worship and observances, the other that.
And in order that they might nourish and increase confidence in such
works, they have affirmed that God necessarily gives grace to one
thus working, by the necessity not of constraint, but of immutability
[not that He is constrained, but that this is the order which God
will not transgress or alter].

In this opinion there are many great and pernicious errors, which it
would be tedious to enumerate. Let the discreet reader think only of
this: If this be Christian righteousness, what difference is there
between philosophy and the doctrine of Christ? If we merit the
remission of sins by these elicit acts [that spring from our mind],
of what benefit is Christ? If we can be justified by reason and the