Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/301

limits of this book, has been somewhat prolix, has clearly proved the following truths: First, that the negation of any Catholic dogma brings with it the negation of all other Catholic dogmas, and that the affirmation of a single Catholic dogma involves the affirmation of all. This is an invincible demonstration that Catholicism is an immense synthesis placed beyond the laws of space and time; and, secondly, that no rationalist school denies all Catholic dogmas at once, for which reason all those schools are condemned to inconsistency and absurdity; and, thirdly, that it is impossible to escape this inconsistency and absurdity, without the absolute acceptance of every Catholic dogma, or without denying them all with so radical a negation as would result in nihilism.

Finally, after having separately examined each of those dogmas which refer to the universal order and the human order, we have considered their harmonious and magnificent combination in the institution of bloody sacrifices, whose origin is traced to that first era immediately succeeding the paradisiacal catastrophe. This mysterious institution was not only the commemoration of that great tragedy, and of the promise of a Redeemer made by God to our first parents, but it was also the incarnation of the dogmas of solidarity, of reversibility, of imputation, and of substitution. Finally, it was the perfect symbol of the future sacrifice, which was afterward realized in the fullness of time. When the nations forgot the biblical traditions, they lost the proper signification of the institution of bloody sacrifices. By the corruption of this dogma is explained the universal institution of human sacrifices, which universality attests both the truth of tradition and the fatal mistakes which men commit when they for-