Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/222

Reason, which revolts against the transmission of sin or of penalty, yet receives what is transmitted to us without repugnance, notwithstanding the sorrow which accompanies it, if in place of being designated as sin and penalty it is called inevitable misfortune. It is not, however, difficult clearly to prove that this misfortune could not be changed into happiness, except with the condition of its being a penalty, from which we necessarily conclude that the rationalist solution in its definitive results is less acceptable than the Catholic solution.

If our actual depravity is only a physical and necessary effect of the primitive corruption, and the effect must last so long as the cause remains, it is evident that since there is no means whatever of removing the cause, neither can there be any by which the effect may be prevented. Original corruption, the cause of our actual corruption, is an accomplished fact; and our actual corruption is consequently an established fact, and places us in a state of irrevocable suffering and misfortune.

Moreover, when we reflect upon the radical antagonism between the corrupt and the incorruptible, we must acknowledge that according to the rationalist solution, any union of man with God is rendered altogether impossible not only in the present, but likewise in the future. In effect, since human corruption is indelible and perpetual, and since God is eternally incorruptible,