Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/159

and hell. If the faculty that God has bestowed upon the creature of choosing the manner of approaching him, does not confer sufficient liberty, what extent of liberty would ever satisfy the desire of man?

If we do not accept this explication, there is no possible conciliation between things which we can imagine reconcilable only in an absolute way. But this explanation renders intelligible the secret causes of the most profound mysteries and of the most elevated designs. It enables us to comprehend the reason of the angelical and human prevarication, these two greats evidence of the liberty permitted to men and angels. If God permitted the angelical prevarication, it was because he knew the secret mode of reconciling the angelical disorder with the divine order, even as the angels knew how to convert order into disorder. The angel changed order into disorder by transforming union into separation. God changed disorder into order, transforming a momentary separation into an indissoluble union. The angel would not be united to God by way of recompense, and he was eternally united to him by the way of punishment. He refused to listen to the gentle entreaties of grace, and he was forced to hear the stern sentence of justice. He sought an absolute separation from God, but the instant he did so he was united to him in a different manner. He became separated from a gracious God and was united to a just God. He withdrew from God in heaven and was united to him in hell. The order in which things are established does not consist in their being united to God in a certain manner, but simply in their being united to God; as disorder does not consist in their separation from God in a certain way, and in their being united to God in a different