Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/107

great questions which form the subject of this chapter. Let those who ask why this tremendous gift has been bestowed of choosing between good and evil, sanctity and sin, life and death, deny its existence but for a moment, and in this very moment they render altogether impossible the separate creations of angels and men. If in this faculty of choice lies the imperfection of liberty, you have but to take away this power, and you remove the only obstacle to entire freedom; and when this is effected, there would exist a simultaneous perfection of the will and the understanding. This perfection is in God, but if we likewise place it in the creature, God and the creature are then one and the same. All is God, or nothing is God; and in this way we fall into pantheism, or into atheism, which is the same thing expressed under another name. Imperfection is a condition so natural to the creature, and perfection is so natural to God, that we cannot deny either the one or the other without an incongruity of terms, a real contradiction, and an evident absurdity. To affirm of God that he is imperfect, is to deny his existence; to affirm of the creature that he is perfect, is to deny his existence also; from which we perceive that if this mystery is above reason, the denial of it is contrary to reason; and in rejecting one for the other, we abandon the obscure and accept the impossible.

As the negations of rationalism are false, contradictory, and absurd, the affirmations of Catholicism are simple, natural, and logical. Catholicism affirms of God that he is absolutely perfect; and, of created beings, that they have a relative perfection and an absolute imperfection; and that they are perfect and imperfect in so excellent a manner that their absolute imper-