Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/178

tion in its political aspect, and shall at present consider it especially under its religious aspect.

Considered in this aspect, it is clear that the system which concedes to reason a universal ability to solve of itself, and unaided by God, all questions respecting the political, religious, social, and human order, supposes reason to possess a complete sovereignty and an absolute independence. This system simultaneously involves three negations—namely, the negation of revelation, the negation of grace, and the negation of providence. It implies that of revelation, because revelation contradicts the universal adequacy of human reason; that of grace, because grace denies its absolute independence; that of providence, because providence likewise denies its independent sovereignty. But these three negations, attentively considered, form but one—the negation of every tie which binds God and man—because if man is not united to God by revelation, by providence, and by grace, he is not united to Him in any way whatever.

Now, to affirm this absolute separation between God and man, is to deny God. To dogmatically affirm the existence of God, after having dogmatically despoiled him of all his attributes, is an inconsistency reserved for the liberal school, which is the most contradictory of all the rationalistic schools. This inconsistency, however, far from being accidental, is essential in that school, which, in whatever light we regard it, 1s an extravagant assemblage of evident contradictions. Its contradictions in regard to God in the religious order, are also exhibited in the political order, in reference to the people and their rulers. The office of this school is to proclaim the existences which it annuls, and to annul the existences which it proclaims. Each one of its principles is asso-