Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/312

account of this will being at the same time relative and absolute, contingent and necessary, the coexistence of the sovereign will of God and the liberty of man were rendered possible, and were realized. As a sovereign, God decreed what was to be, and man, as a free creature, determined that the particular manner of being should differ from what it would have been in virtue of the divine decree. The result was that the universal order, decreed by God with an absolute will, was realized by the immediate incarnation of God, since it could not be realized by the immediate deification of man; this deification being altogether impossible, first, with a relative impossibility on account of his free will, and then with an absolute impossibility on account of sin.

I have already fully demonstrated how great is the scope and the universality of the divine solutions, which do not, like the human solutions, overcome one obstacle and leave others of more importance unexplained; nor do they, after solving a difficulty, fall into some other and still greater perplexity; nor do they clear a problem in one point of view, and leave it more embarrassed under other aspects than it had previously been; but the divine solutions at once suppress all obstacles, solve all difficulties, and clear all problems, shedding upon their darkness a full light which dissipates all obscurity. This characteristic of the divine solutions is especially observable in the adorable mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God, because this was at the same time the sovereign means of reducing all to unity, the divine condition of order in the universe; and it was likewise a supernatural means of restoring order to a fallen humanity. The radical impossibility of man to regain, unaided, the friendship and grace of God, after having