7. Thus then it comes to be, by order of nature and good consequence, that the man who has abandoned God, goes without God; and he who has shunned his last end and final good, arrives not unto it; and he who would not go, when invited, to the feast, eats not of the same: and whoso has withdrawn from God, from him God withdraws. "A curse he loved, and it shall come upon him; and he would not have a blessing, and it shall be far from him. He put on the curse like a garment, and it has gone in like water into his entrails, and like oil into his bones,--like a garment which covereth him, and like a girdle wherewith he is girded continually." (Psalm cviii. 18, 19.) 8. Conversely, we might argue the final happiness which attaches to the observance of the law of nature. (c. ii., s. v., p. 26.) _Readings._--St. Thos., _Cont. Gent._, iii., cc. 140, 141, 143, 145. SECTION II.--_Of the Finality of the aforesaid Sanction_. 1. By a _final_, as distinguished from an _eternal_ state, is here meant the last state of existence in a creature, whether that state go on for ever, in which case it is _final_ and _eternal_, or whether it terminate in the cessation of that creature's being, which is a case of a state _final_, but not _eternal_. Whether the unhappy souls of men, who have incurred the last sentence of the natural law, shall exist for eternity, is not a question for philosophy to decide with certainty. The philosopher rules everything _a priori_, showing what must be, if something else is. Of the action of God in the world, he can only foretell that amount which is thus hypothetically necessary. Some divine action there is, of which the _congruity_ only, not the _necessity_, is apparent to human eyes: there the philosopher can tell with _probability_, but not with _certainty_, what God will do. Other actions of God are wholly beyond our estimate of the reasons of them: we call them simply and entirely free. In that sphere philosophy has no information to render of her own; she must wait to hear from revelation what God has done, or means to do. Philosophers have given _reasons of congruence_, as they call them, for the reprobate sinner not being annihilated, and therefore for his _final_ punishment being _eternal_. Those reasons go to evince the probability of eternal punishment, a probability which is deepened into certainty by revelation. We shall not enter into them here, but shall be content to argue that a term is set to the career of the transgressor, arrived at which he must leave hope behind of ever winning his way to happiness, or ever leading any other existence than one of misery.