The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1902-07-19
unele Jack and
Bis ElepDew. By Byp SSss,'s H.

His body was held in subsection to his
soul, and his soul in subsection to the
law of God. Explain to me, then. how
he could sin? Do not tell me of Satan.
VINO tempted him, for Satan was him
self created pure and holy, and the
same question will recur as to him -
You mistake the point of my OBJ
lection. You assert the impecca bility
OF man my nature, and assert the suf-
hclency of nature for herself You
assert that nature tends always to her
true good, and, if left to herself, will
always go right; and yet are obliged to-
concede that she has gone wrong from
The beginning. According to you, she
was and always has been left to her.
self, for whatever has controlled or
attempted to control her you must re-
gard as having been her own spon-
laneouS production; therefore, as nat
ural, included in nature, not some
thing foreign or extrinsic to her, 1t
IS, therefore, impossible for you to ex-
plain the origin of evil, of wrong, of
sin, or iniquity; for on your principles
nothing could possibly go wrong I
nave no difficulty of this sort to solve
Neither man nor the angels We're ere
ated impeccable. They were created
free, with free will, and, therefore ca
pable of obeying or disobeying, of
standing or falling. When we say man
was created perfect we mean that he
was perfect of his kind, perfect as
man, not as God. His nature and
faculties are limited, and this limita-
ton is an imperfection of his being
imperfect as being, and endowed with
Tree will, he could sin and err. He
was created with all his present ma
ture, his present appetites and pas
SionS, in so far as they are natural;
but they were not then morbid, as
they have since become, and were held
by the supernatural grace of God in
subsection to reason, and moved only
as reason, itself conformed to the will
of God, moved and directed them
Having sinned, he forfeited and lost
that grace; the appetites and passions
then escaped from their subsection to
reason, and, operating each according
to its special nature, carried away
both reason and will into captivity.
There was no physical change or cor
ruption of mans nature. The nature
of the appetites and fashions was not
altered; they only escaped from their
subsection to reason and the law of
God, and followed what was their
original natural tendency, or what
would have been their natural ten
dency if they had not been restrained
by the gifts and graces with which
man was favored. The flesh tends nat
urally, when left to itself, to the
creature and, therefore, from God.
If from God, certainly from good; for
God is the supreme and only good. As
evil is the privation of good, so man
abandoned to his appetites and pas
sions to the empire of the flesh, tends
continually to evil. He can, then, tend
to good only in breaking the empire of
the flesh, in restraining his appetites
and passions, notifying his lusts,
emancipating the soul, and walking
according to the spirit. A little re-
Election ON these points must convince
you that your retort is not admissible,
and that, though the origin and con-
tinuanee of evil are easily explained on
Christian principles, they are wholly
inexplicable on yours, or on the as
sumption of the divinity of the flesh.
The very way to continue and aggra-
Vate the evils man endures is to eman-
cipate the flesh from the restraints
imposed by Christianity, and to give
loose reinS to appetite and passion.
You and your party are, in fact, under
the pretext of reforming society and
improving mans earthly condition,
really laboring to increase the evils
now suffered: and if you could sue
coed, we should have only those works
which st. Paul enumerated as the
works of the flesh -
you do not seem to me, Uncle Jack,
to explain the doctrine of total de-
pravity in the sense I was taught it
by my old Puritan pastor