DISPENSATION. — Psychologically and morally dispensation is a positive and direct opposition to supernatural hope.
Psychologically dispensation shares with hope the same presuppositions, namely, in the intellect, the knowledge of man’s supernatural destiny to the beatitude of eternal possession of God; and in the will, the desire to attain II. But dispensation excludes what constitutes the essence of hope, namely, trust in the promises made by Jesus Christ which assure the will of God to give Himself as the reward and the means necessary to merit II. In the contrast between this conscious desire for happiness and the lost confidence in attaining it lies the anguish of the desperate.
At the root of this spiritual attitude there ordinarily stands either a positive doubt about divine forgiveness for one’s past sins, or, for the future, a positive doubt about the efficacy of divine grace in sparing temptations beyond one’s strength or at least in sustaining the weak will against their allure.