"Who can doubt of the abundance of the means of salvation, since we have so great a Saviour, for the sake of whom we have been made, and by whose merits we have been ransomed. For He died, for all, because all were dead, and His mercy was more far-reaching when He built up anew the race of men than Adam's misery when he ruined it. "Indeed, Adam's sin was so far from quenching God's love for mankind, that, on the contrary, it stirred it up, and invited it. So that by a most sweet and loving re-action, love was quickened by the presence of sin, and as if re-collecting its forces for victory over evil, made _grace to superabound where sin had abounded_.[2] Whence, Holy Church, in an excess of devout wonder, cries out (upon Easter-eve), 'O truly necessary sin of Adam, which was blotted out by the death of Jesus Christ! O happy fault which merited to have such and so great a Redeemer!' Truly, Theotimus, we may say, as did he of old, 'We were ruined, had we not been undone; that is, ruin brought us profit, since in effect human nature, through being redeemed by its Saviour, has received more graces than ever it would have received if Adam had remained innocent.'"[3] One of the marvels of divine Omnipotence is that it knows by a secret power, reserved to itself alone, how to draw good from evil, the contrary from the contrary; water from, fire, as in the furnace of the three children[4] and fire from water, as in the sacred fire which was found in a well, the thick water of which was changed into fire. By this secret power He makes all things work together for good to those who love Him. "Truly," says our Blessed Father, in the same place, "as the rainbow touching the thorn _aspalathus_, makes it more odoriferous than the lily, so our Saviour's Redemption, touching our miseries makes them more beneficial and worthy of love than original innocence could ever have been. "_I say to you_, says our Saviour, _there shall be joy in Heaven upon one sinner that doth penance; more than upon ninety-nine just, who need not penance_,[5] and so the state of redemption is a hundred times better than that of innocence. "Verily, by the watering of our Saviour's Blood, made with the hyssop of the Cross, we have been re-clothed in a whiteness incomparably more excellent than the snowy robe of innocence. We come out, like Naaman, from the stream of salvation more pure and clean than if we had never been leprous, to the end that the divine majesty, as He has ordained also for us, should not be _overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good_,[6] _that mercy_ (as a sacred oil) should keep _itself above judgment_,[7] and _God's tender mercies be over all His works_."[8] [Footnote 1: Book ii. chap. 4.] [Footnote 2: Col. i. 16.] [Footnote 3: _The Love of God_. Book ii, c. 5.] [Footnote 4: Daniel iii. 50.] [Footnote 5: Luke xv. 7.] [Footnote 6: Rom. xii.] [Footnote 7: James ii. 13.] [Footnote 8: Psalm cxliv. 9.] UPON CONFESSION AND COMMUNION.