That sanctifying grace is a permanent state of the soul may also be inferred from the Catholic teaching that the grace which Baptism imparts to children does not differ essentially from that which it imparts to adults. True, this teaching was not always regarded as certain;(979) but at the Ecumenical Council of Vienne, A. D. 1311, Pope Clement V declared it to be “the more probable opinion,”(980) and it was rendered absolutely certain by the Tridentine decision that infant Baptism results not only in the remission of sins, but likewise in an infusion of sanctifying grace. This being so, there can be no essential difference between the justification of children and that of adults. Now it cannot be actual grace which renders children righteous in the sight of God, for they are unable to avail themselves of actual grace on account of the undeveloped state of their intellect. The grace that Baptism imparts to them is consequently a _gratia inhaerens et informans_, that is, a permanent state of grace; and it must be the same in adults.(981)
Peter Lombard(982) identified sanctifying grace with the _gratia increata_, _i.e._ the Person of the Holy Ghost. This notion was combatted by St. Thomas(983) and implicitly rejected by the Tridentine Council when it declared that sanctifying grace inheres in the soul and may be increased by good works.(984) To say that the Holy Ghost is poured forth in the hearts of men, or that He may be increased by good works, would evidently savor of Pantheism. The Holy Ghost pours forth sanctifying grace and is consequently not the formal but the efficient cause of justification.(985)
b) The _gratia inhaerens permanens_ is not a mere relation or _denominatio extrinseca_, but a positive entity productive of real effects,(986) and must consequently be conceived either as a substance or as an accident. We have shown that it is not identical with the uncreated substance of the Holy Ghost. Neither can it be a created substance. The idea of an intrinsically supernatural created substance involves a contradiction.(987) Moreover, sanctifying grace in its nature and purpose is not an entity independently co-existing with the soul but something physically inherent in it. Now, a thing which has its existence by inhering in some other thing is in philosophic parlance an “accident.” St. Thomas expressly teaches that, “since it transcends human nature, grace cannot be a substance nor a substantial form, but is an accidental form of the soul itself.”(988) Agreeable to this conception is the further Thomistic teaching that sanctifying grace is not directly created by God, but drawn (_educta_) from the _potentia obedientialis_ of the soul.(989) Not even the Scotists, though they held grace to be created out of nothing(990) claimed that it was a new substance.