The good pleasure of God is an act of the divine will freely and effectively determining all things.

From faith, hope, and love, the virtues of religion referring to God, there arises a double act which bears on the spiritual communion exercised between God and us; the hearing of the word and prayer.

The efficiency of God may be understood as either creation or providence.

The first act of religion, therefore, concerns those things which are communicated to us from God. The other concerns those things which we yield to God.

Although the whole man partakes of this grace, it is first and most appropriately in the soul and later progresses to the body, inasmuch as the body of the man is capable of the same obedience to the will of God as the soul.

The starting point of sanctification is the filthiness, corruption, or stain of sin.

Faith is the virtue by which, clinging-to the faithfulness of God, we lean upon him, so that we may obtain what he gives to us.