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Ordinary science is acquired by observation, study, reasoning, information. The supernatural science of God in faith is different. It is the gift of God, not dependent on our abilities or our efforts, unintelligible to those who do not possess it. The habit or potentiality must first be infused into the soul from above; and this, in the ordinary course, is effected by Baptism, which therefore is called an Illumination. The habit may exist independently of its exercise, as the habit or potentiality of reason exists in infants who have not yet arrived at the use of it. The genesis of faith proceeds in three stages with those who have the power of putting it into action by means of conscious knowledge and the assent to it.
1. The truth has to be proposed as reasonably credible through the voice of God speaking in Scripture or the Church.
2. This external grace is accompanied by an inward illumination of the intellect and an impulse towards the truth impressed on the will.
3. Then follows the consent of the will, and the harmony of the human with the divine action. The two former elements are from God; the last is from man, and is influenced by the character which he has formed for himself by his habits of action. By being unfaithful in small things, man prepares himself to be unfaithful in that which is great; and he may so harden his heart as to make it impervious to divine influences like the heart of Pharaoh. God "will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. ii. 4). Thank Him for the light and be faithful to it.
