The doctrine we have laid down detracts in no way from the merits of Christ. Christ alone has the principle of merit in his own person as an original source. He alone has merited of condignity grace to be bestowed on others. His merits alone are the cause of the remission of sins, and the bestowal of regenerating, sanctifying, saving grace. His merits merits of the saints as the head is superior to the inferior members of the body. His incarnation, life, and death are, in a word, the radical meritorious cause of human salvation from the beginning to the end; and, in their own proper sphere or order of causation, are entirely alone. Christ is the only mediator of redemption and salvation between God and man, in whom the Father is reconciling the world to himself. His acts alone are referable to no principle higher or more ultimate than his own personality. All merely human grace, sanctity, or merit is, therefore, to be referred to him as its chief author, and to merely human subjects only as recipients or secondary and concurrent causes. It is easy to understand, therefore, what is meant by presenting the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints before God as a motive for bestowing grace. The saints have not merited anything over and above that which Christ has merited, nor have they merited, by a merit of condignity, even the application of the merits of Christ to others. Through their personal merits, they have obtained a kind of right of friendship to ask in a specially efficacious manner for graces and favors to be conferred on those for whom they intercede. Their mediation and merits are, therefore, only efficacious by way of impetration and prayer, and not by virtue of a right which they have obtained by a title of justice. This is what is meant by merit of congruity, which denotes a certain fitness in a person to obtain from God the favors for which he asks. This merit of congruity is all that is ascribed to the Blessed Virgin or the saints, as a groundwork of their intervening power, by any Catholic theologian. It is the same in kind with that which the just on earth possess, by virtue of which they obtain, through their prayers, blessings and graces for other persons. It is easy to see, therefore, how completely the Catholic doctrine is misunderstood by those who imagine that it either places man in the room of Christ, as his own Saviour, or substitutes the mediation of the Blessed Virgin and the saints for the mediation of Christ. -------- {129} Full Of Grace.