Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/65

All nations have had some comprehension of this greatest of all Catholic dogmas; as they have possessed a knowledge more or less correct, more or less complete, of other Catholic dogmas. In every zone, in all ages, and among every human race, an immortal belief has been preserved of a future transformation, which will be so radical and supreme that it will forever unite the creature to the Creator, the human to the divine nature. Even in the paradisiacal era, the enemy of mankind spoke to our first parents of their being gods. Since the prevarication and the fall, this wonderful tradition. has everywhere been prevalent, and every scholar will find traces of its existence in all theologies, however slight may be his investigations. The difference between the pure dogma, as preserved in Catholic theology, and the dogma as corrupted by human traditions, is in the manner in which this supreme transformation and sovereign end is attained. The angel of darkness did not deceive our first parents, when he affirmed that they would become as gods. The fraud consisted in hiding from them the supernatural way of love, and revealing to them the natural way of disobedience. The error committed by pagan theologians was not in asserting that humanity ought to be elevated to a union with God, but their error consisted in having considered the divine and human natures as nearly identical; while Catholicism regards them as essentially distinct and arrives at unity through the supernatural deification of man. This pagan superstition is manifest in the divine honors paid to the earth, as the immortal and prolific mother of the gods; and likewise in the worship of various creatures, whom they confounded with their gods. Lastly, the difference between Pantheism and Catholicism is not, that the one