Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/115

in an infinite degree, or not at all; and infinitude requires a heaven for term on one side, and a hell for term on the other. Any other result would make these attributes useless, which would be equivalent to their non-existence.

If it is conceded that this intricate demonstration proves, on the one hand, that the power to save one's self necessarily implies the power to lose one's self, and, on the other hand, that heaven necessarily supposes hell, so it also follows that he who blasphemes against God because he has made hell, likewise blasphemes against him because he has made heaven. And he who asks to be deprived of the power to lose himself, likewise, asks to be deprived of the power to save himself.

Whatever explanation may be given of free will in man, it will undoubtedly always remain one of our greatest and most fearful mysteries; and we must confess that the faculty granted to man to draw evil out of good, disorder out of order, and to disturb, even though it be accidentally, the perfect adjustment with which God has arranged all things, is a tremendous faculty. If we consider this power in itself, and not relatively to that which limits and controls it, it is almost inconceivable. The free will given to man is a power so high and transcendent, that it would rather seem to be an abdication