Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/156

by natural, but also by supernatural ties. And as on the one side the divine will might fail to be accomplished through the voluntary refusal of intelligent and free beings, and on the other the liberty of the creature was essential to this voluntary choice, so the great problem rests in conciliating these things, which are to a certain point contradictory, in such a way that neither the liberty of the creature be destroyed, nor the will of God fail to be accomplished. The possibility of a separation from God being necessary, as an evidence of angelical and human freedom, and a union with God likewise essential as an evidence of the efficacy of the divine will, the difficulty consists in proving how the liberty of the creature and the will of God, the separation which the creature chooses, and the union which God desires, can be made compatible with each other, so that the creature neither ceases to be free nor God to be sovereign.

To show this it is requisite that the withdrawal from God should be in a certain respect real, and in another only apparent; that is to say, that the creature may be able to withdraw himself from God, but in such a way that this separation unite him to God in a different manner. Intelligent and free beings were born united to God by an effect of his grace. By sin they really separate themselves from God, because they really and truly break the bond of his grace, which unites them to him; and they thereby give testimony to his having made them intelligent and free beings. But this separation is, if we attentively regard it, only a new kind of union; since, in withdrawing from God by the free renunciation of his grace, they are drawn back to him by falling into the hands of his justice, or by becoming the objects of his mercy. In this way the separation