If we look at the matter more broadly, this point becomes still plainer. When we define justification as an “infusion of charity” it follows, in the fourth-place, that this love can be lost again, and that even the justified are amenable to the apostles’ words: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. ii, 12). The justified man has indeed an absolute certainty of faith, but he has no unconditional certainty of salvation, that is to say that he does not know with unconditional certainty whether he is permanently worthy of love or of hatred. It is true that he can by certain subjective signs and by earnest self-examination ascertain with moral certainty whether he is at the moment impelled by the new love, and so whether he is a child of love and a child of God. But without a special divine revelation he has no unconditional guarantee that he is at any given moment in the grace of God, nor has he any unconditional certainty that he may not in the future, by misusing his freedom, by his own fault, be deprived of the love of God. However solid his piety may be, however magnanimous and courageous, yet he avoids above everything spiritual pride and overweening presumption. His piety gives him humility, the vivid consciousness that he abides wholly in the hands of God and must always pray humbly with the publican: “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner!” The accusation is leveled against the Church that this teaching of hers concerning the uncertainty of salvation she harasses the Catholic conscience, and that she has made the malady of scrupulosity endemic in Catholicism.[1] This reproach is a gross exaggeration. It is true that there are pathological states, especially at the time of adolescence, which feed for choice on religious conceptions. And such states are especially dangerous when religious instruction is defective or where it is in the hands of clumsy directors. But Protestantism also has such scrupulous souls. Goethe himself laments the religious scruples of his youth. And generally speaking such people are not scrupulous because this or that truth of faith terrifies them, but they allow themselves to be terrified by them because they are already scrupulous. Scrupulosity is in fact a condition of psycho-physical infirmity, which is not created, but only disengaged by religious conceptions. The condition shows itself particularly in a lack of vitality and confidence on the one hand, and on the other in an exaggerated self-centeredness. Milder cases will yield to the treatment of the spiritual director, but the more difficult cases require the mental specialist. Catholic pastoral theology, while warning us against presumptuous trust in God’s mercy, insists with quite as much vigor on the immeasurable riches of His goodness—“for He is good.” It is the fault of the invalid, and not of the Church, if he hears only the warning and neglects the assurance.