Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/214

of sin, also to deny the dogma of imputation, or the transmission of the penalty. For what is thus rejected as a penalty must still be accepted, under another name, as a misfortune. Those who make this denial are unwilling to admit that the misfortunes which we suffer are a penalty, because the idea of punishment implies a voluntary infraction on the part of the person who receives it, and a voluntary determination on the part of the person who imposes it. But our sorrows and misfortunes are none the less certain and inevitable, and those who will not admit these misfortunes to the legitimate consequence of sin, are nevertheless obliged to admit them as a natural consequence of the necessary relations between cause and effect. According to this system, the radical corruption of their nature was a penalty our first parents merited, because they voluntarily sinned. This voluntary disobedience merited the penalty of depravity which was imposed upon them by an incorruptible judge. This same corruption of our nature is in us only a misfortune, as it is not imposed upon us as a penalty, but is imputed to us as heirs of a nature radically corrupted. And this misfortune is so deplorable that even God could not decree our exemption from it, without altering by a miracle one of the laws which govern the world, and in virtue of which effects result from their causes. This miracle was performed in the fullness of time, in so excellent and exalted a manner, by a means so hidden and supernatural, and by an act of wisdom so sublime that this ineffable work of god was to some a scandal, and to others a foolishness.

The transmission of the consequences of sin is thus explained according to this system. the first man was, at his creation, endowed with inestimable privileges.