Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/211

The sin of the first man sufficiently explains the great disorder and formidable confusion into which all things fell soon after their creation: a disorder and confusion which was changed, as we have seen, without things ceasing to be what they were, into elements of a higher order and harmony; through that secret and incommunicable virtue which is in God, and by which order is brought out of disorder, harmony out of confusion, good out of evil, by a pure act of God's sovereign will. But sin does not adequately explain the perpetuity and constancy of that primitive confusion which yet subsists in all things, and particularly in man.

In order to explain the continuance of effects, it is necessary to suppose the continuance of the cause; and in order to explain the duration of the cause, it is essential to suppose the perpetual transmission of the offense.

The dogma of the transmission of sin, with all its consequences, is one of the most fearful, incomprehensible, and obscure of the mysteries which have been taught by divine revelation. This sentence of condemnation passed in the person of Adam, against all the generations of