Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/224

do they desire God nor does he deign to occupy himself with them.

The divine beauty of Catholic dogmas is pre-eminent in the admirable connection which unites them all in such marvelous and profound harmony, that human reason cannot conceive of a more ‘perfect agreement, and is placed in the fearful alternative of accepting or rejecting them altogether. Nor does this difficulty exist because each dogma expresses a different truth, but because they all contain the same truth; the various dogmas simply presenting and corresponding to a diversity of aspects.

Nor have we fully depicted the consequences of the system, which, while it admits the lamentable unhappiness of fallen man, makes an absolute abstraction of penalty. If this unhappiness is simply a misfortune, and not also a punishment—if it is only the inevitable effect of a necessary cause, there can be no way of explaining why Adam should have persevered, or why we should retain any remnant whatever of our primitive condition. For it is worthy of remark, and in opposition to what at first sight would appear, that it is not justice but mercy which is especially conspicuous in that solemn condemnation which immediately followed the commission of sin. If God had refrained from intervening with this condemnation when this tremendous catastrophe occurred, if when he saw man separated from him he had withdrawn himself from man, and entering into the tranquillity of his repose had no longer vouchsafed to think of man, or, to express all in one word, if God in place of condemning man had abandoned him to the inevitable consequences of his voluntary disunion and separation, then the fall of man