Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/219

that by which I am distinguished from others in that by which I resemble others; the particular in the common, the individual in the human. And as that which I have of human, and which assimilates me to others, is that which is essential in man, and that which I have as an individual and distinct from others, is only an accident, therefore what man receives from God through Adam is that which constitutes his essence, and what he receives from God through his father is that which constitutes his form; consequently there is no man whatever whose being, considered as a whole, does not more closely resemble Adam than his own father.

As to the question of penalty, it is solved from the moment that we accept as established the transmission of sin; as the one cannot be comprehended without the other, on account of their mutual dependence. If it is certain that I am guilty, it is just that I should be punished; and as in these matters what is just is necessary, it follows that what I suffer is, without ceasing to be a misfortune, necessarily a penalty. Penalty and misfortune differ in a human point of view, but are identical in a divine point of view. Man calls misfortune the evil produced as the inevitable effect of a second cause, and he designates as penalty the evil that a free being voluntarily imposes on another in punishment of a voluntary fault. But as all that takes place necessarily happens by the will of God, so all that takes place by his will necessarily happens. God is the supreme equation between the necessary and the voluntary, and these things which for a man are different are in God one and the same. Therefore it is manifest that under the divine point of view all misfortune is a penalty, and all penalty a misfortune.