To sum up: the special quality of the Catholic doctrine of justification lies on the one hand in its clear and consistent emphasis on grace, on the unmerited nature of the new life and the new love, and on the other hand in its decisive summons to man’s religious and moral powers to play their part in the work of grace. The unmerited character of justification is manifested in the Church’s sacramentalism. The decisive word of sanctification is not spoken by man, but by God, in the sacrament’s visible sign of grace.

On the other hand grace is a dynamic force which sets free all man’s religious and moral powers to take their share in the work of salvation. So that the sacramental and divine factor is joined by the moral and human factor, that is to say by man’s personal initiative set free and controlled by grace. In the work of salvation God and man, grace and nature, sacrament and moral effort are united. We have therefore in justification a repetition of the fundamental mystery of Christianity, the condescension of God to man and the raising of man to God. The acts of a justified man are neither purely divine nor purely human, but a compound of divinity and humanity.

And from this we may understand how far the sanctifying action of the Church apparently moves along two distinct lines, being sacramental and mystical on the one hand, and moral and ascetical on the other. In reality these two lines do not run parallel to each other, still less in opposite directions; they run in each other, and are mutually interlaced. There is no sanctity in the Church which is not sacramental, and there is no sacramental act which is not at the same time a striving after sanctity. In the next Chapter, when we describe the sanctifying powers and means of grace to be found in “Holy Church,” we shall note that point. In accordance with the Catholic conception of justification these powers and means will be found to lie partly in the religious and sacramental sphere, and partly in the domain of the ethical and ascetical. For the present let us be content to describe the sacramental effectiveness of the Church.