Choose a topic from Part 1:
1. The human soul is not an outpouring or sharing of thesubstance of God. God is pure actuality and absolute simplicity.His substance, therefore, cannot be divided or parceled out. Thehuman soul is not a thing eternally existing in God's being. Itis a creature. It is a thing made.
2. The soul is made by God's creative act. It iscreated; it is made out of nothing. It is a spirit, having initself no material element nor any essential dependence upon whatis material. Now, such a spiritual being can have no possibleorigin but by the direct creative act of God.
3. Since creation is an act proper to God alone, in whichno creature can serve as a medium (such as an instrumental cause ora ministering cause), the soul must be created immediately byalmighty God.
4. The human soul is not created and held in readiness forunion with its body. For every soul is the soul of one definitehuman being, and not just a soul, suitable for any one ofa number of bodies. Thesoul bears a definite real relation toits own body, that is, the body which it is to constitute as theliving body of one individual human being. There is nopre-existence of human souls. Soul and body together make onesubstantial thing, one essence and nature; the soul begins to existwhen this one nature begins to exist. Therefore, the human soul isnot produced before the body.
"There is nothing which gives greater security to our actions, or more effectually cuts the snares the devil lays for us, than to follow another person’s will, rather than our own, in doing good."
St Philip Neri
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"When the devil has failed in making a man fall, he puts forward all his energies to create distrust between the penitent and the confessor, and so by little and little he gains his end at last."
St Philip Neri
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"Spiritual persons ought to be equally ready to experience sweetness and consolation in the things of God, or to suffer and keep their ground in drynesses of spirit and devotion, and for as long as God pleases, without their making any complaint about it."
St Philip Neri
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