Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/289

of this virtue of purification, it is evident that blood acquired this virtue as a consequence of this cause, at an epoch anterior to that of bloody sacrifices; and as these sacrifices were instituted from the time of Abel, it is certain that both the cause and the virtue of which we speak were anterior to Abel, and contemporaneous with a great event in paradise, from which this virtue and its cause must have necessarily originated. This great event was the Adamic prevarication. The flesh being guilty in Adam, and in the flesh of Adam that of all the species, in order that the punishment should be proportioned to the fault, it was necessary that the penalty should affect the flesh, even as the sin had done, from whence the necessity of the perpetual effusion of human blood. But the promise of a Redeemer had followed the sin of Adam, and this promise substituted the Redeemer for the guilty, and suspended the execution of the sentence until the coming of the Saviour. This is why Abel, who was the depositary through Adam, both of the condemnatory sentence and of the promise which suspended its execution until the coming of the substitute who was to suffer for the guilty, instituted the only sacrifice which could then be acceptable to God, the commemorative and symbolical sacrifice.

The sacrifice of Abel was so perfect that it comprised in an extraordinary manner all the Catholic dogmas. As a sacrifice in general, it was an act of thanksgiving and adoration toward the omnipotent and sovereign God. As a bloody sacrifice it proclaimed the dogma of the Adamic prevarication, and that of the free will of the prevaricator, who could not have been guilty if deprived of the exercise of free will. It likewise proclaimed the