Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/161

the deluge, could likewise dry the sad valley filled with our tears. Man endured bodily anguish because God could free him from pain; he suffered great misfortunes because God had still greater rewards in store for him. He went forth from Eden, endured death, and was laid in the tomb, because God had power to vanquish death, to deliver him from the grave, and to raise him to heaven. Thus, as the angelical and human prevarications enter into the elements of universal order, in consequence of an admirable divine action, in the same manner the liberty of the angel and the liberty of man, which caused their fall, are necessary elements of that supreme and universal law to which all things are subject—all creations, all worlds, moral, material, and divine According to this law absolute unity, in its infinite fecundity, perpetually produces diversity, which as perpetually returns to its prolific source, the bosom of God, which is absolute unity. Considered as the Father, God draws from himself eternally the Son by way of generation, and the Holy Ghost by way of procession, and thus the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit eternally constitute the divine diversity. The Son and the Holy Spirit are eternally identical with the Father, and eternally constitute with him an indestructible unity. Considered as creator, God brought things out of nothing by an act of his will, and established in this way a physical diversity. He afterward subjected all things to certain eternal laws and to an immutable order, and in this way diversity in the physical world was only the exterior manifestation of absolute unity. Considered as Lord and legislator, God conferred