CCXLIII. Corollary XXXIX

COROLLARY XXXIX.

The necessity of perishing having been excluded, the power of attaining salvation having been asserted, and the origin from which each must be derived having been disclosed, it is not only expedient but altogether necessary, lest in an inquiry of the greatest importance we be deceived by a preposterous confusion of the most diverse things, that we distinguish from the attainment of salvation itself the power and faculty of obtaining it. Thus no one fails to know that there is an immense interval by which potentiality and the act of potentiality differ from one another, and that plainly different conditions are required for constituting potentiality and for its act and completion. But the interval and distinction which separate these things likewise divide and separate from one another the attainment of salvation and the faculty and opportunity of attaining it. The former can neither be thought in the soul nor conceived in the mind without the latter; but the latter without the former is both properly understood by the soul, and nothing prevents it from subsisting divided from the former.