UNITARIANISM

PHILOSOPHICALLY AND THEOLOGICALLY EXAMINED.

No. III.

SUBJECT CONTINUED.

SECTION XVIII.

XLV. What has brought this great evil on Mankind?

I reflect, whence so great a corruption, such a dismal disorder, so universal and total a derangement should have come upon all mankind; but I find nothing positive that can tranquilize and satisfy my mind. One thing I clearly understand, and it is this: that I have not assuredly received this corruption, this ruin from my Creator, from God; first, because I clearly perceive the basis of that happy, true, and natural state, which is proper to man, and which nature does not cease, although in vain, to reclaim and to point out; and next, because it is evidently repugnant, that rational beings created by God, should have received from the same God an intrinsic corruption and perverseness, which, besides its being contrary to order, vilifies man, degrades him, and withdraws him from God, and makes him, in a certain measure, opposed to God, and contrary to the essential perfection of God. But if it be not from God, I cannot conceive, how a created being of a different nature can act upon another external independent being, and thus ruin the work of the Supreme Creator; or next, why the disastrous consequences ought not rather to fall back upon the mischievous corruptor than upon innocent man. I cannot, I say, reconcile these things; and much less can I reconcile the justice and providence of a Supreme God with the innocency and misery of man.

God, provident and just, and man, miserable and innocent: these two ideas cannot stand together, they evidently contradict each other.

It is certainly clearer than noon-day, that God rules and governs all his creatures with an admirable providence; it is clear likewise, that God, the uncreated justice itself, can neither intend nor permit, such afflictions and penalties to befal his creatures, as are inevitable and con-natural to them, when those creatures are innocent.

It is proved, to a demonstration, that man is necessarily and inevitably in the midst of troubles, of labours, of miseries; it is, therefore, likewise certain and self-evident, that man is not innocent.

But how! Man not innocent? Behold here another rock! Man is corrupted; and, precisely because he is corrupted, on account of that corruption, as we have seen, he is miserable. He, therefore, is not innocent, in this his corruption; he, therefore, must have had no hand in that natural disorder, in that inward derangement of himself; but I know, for certain, that I have not, in any wise, contributed to this my corruption; and I know, too, that I have brought this corruption, and the penalty and chastisement of it, together with my existence into this world: how, then, am I, how are all other men, guilty of this corruption? Every action necessarily supposes an agent. If, therefore, I-if all other men, my fellow-creatures, did not exist prior to this general and individual corruption, how is it possible that we should have concurred in it? How, then, does it come, that man is not innocent?

XLVI. I well perceive, that a state of the pre-existence of our souls, before our bodies may be supposed, it might perhaps be said, that, in such a state, our souls had lost their innocence, and concurred to their natural ruin.* But besides the con

*So thought many ancient philosophers, and, generally, all those of the Platonic and Pythagorean sects. They, penetrating to the inmost recess of human nature by dint of their deep meditations, and clearly discovering that man was not such as he ought to be, could not extricate themselves in any other way, than by forming and maintaining the above supposition. ST. AUG. &c.

sideration that the hypothesis is but a mere gratuitous supposition, I conceive it to be very improbable; because, it seems to me altogether impossible, that all these souls, without excepting a single one, should have lost their innocence, and should have co-operated towards the intrinsic ruin of all mankind, and that not only all should have lost their innocence, and concurred to that common ruin, but that all should have lost it, and that all should have co-operated towards it, in the same degree, and after the same manner, because it is obvious, that all men, of all ages, of all nations, and of all climes, are born substantially the same, with the same tendencies, with the same passions, with the same corruption. How, then, and after what manner, does it come to pass, that man is not innocent? I know not: every thing presents itself wrapt up in an impenetrable obscurity, my ideas are bewildered and confounded.

I, therefore, raise my voice and exclaim: man is not innocent! How was thy work spoiled, O! Lord? What share had I in my corruption? When did I lose my innocence? Is there any remedy for me? What shall become of me? Of whom shall I ask the unravelling of mysteries so obscure, so important, so decisive of my eternal lot? Nature is silent, and I find myself in obscurity and confusion.

But whilst thus surrounded on all sides with awful darkness, a divine ray, suddenly breaking through the dark cloud, beams down upon my depressed soul, and informs me, that it is reve

St. Augustin thus relates their opinion: (Lib. 4, contra Julian, cap. ult.) "Hujus evidentia miseria, Gentium philosophos, nihil de peccato primi hominis sive scientes, sive credentes, compulit dicere, ob aliqua scelera suscepta in vita superiore pœnarum luendarum causa nos esse natos, et animos nostros corruptibilibus corporibus, eo supplicio, quo Hetrusci prædones captos affligere consueverant, tanquam vivos cum mortuis esse conjunctos."

"The sight of this undeniable misery of man, brought the Gentile philosophers, who were either ignorant of the sin of the first man, or who believed nothing of it, to say, that we are born for the purpose of atoning for the crimes committed in a former life, and that our souls are united to corruptible bodies, and thus are punished with nearly the same kind of chastisement, as the Hetrusians were used to inflict on highway-men, in tying them alive to dead bo dies."

lation only that can furnish men with the clue to this mystery; a mystery, the existence of which, reason alone, manifested by divine revelation, as we have seen hitherto, establishes nearly beyond the possibility of a doubt, but the development of which is reserved to the religion of Jesus Christ only: reason proves, I might almost say, to a demonstration, that man is not such as he was created; that he is not such as he ought to be; that he is not in his true and primitive state; and, what is still more, that he cannot possibly return to it; that he is miserable and necessarily, and inevitably miserable, and that, of course, his nature has been disordered, spoiled, and corrupted. Revelation steps in, and, favouring us with a light, which in vain we expected to derive from nature, clearly points out to us, after what manner this universal disorder, the source of all our evils, was brought upon the unhappy children of Adam. "Wherefore, (says she by the mouth of the Apostle,) as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned." St. Paul, Epist. ad Rom. cap. 5, v. 12.

XLVII. General objection against the above dissertation, deriv

ed from the possibility of the state of pure nature.

I see not what can be objected against the above dissertation, except it be, that, from the mode of reasoning, which runs through the whole, there would follow too much, and, of course, according to the maxims of the schools, nothing: for the preceding observations might seem to show, that, what is called by divines, the state of pure nature, that is to say, that state in which men would not have been elevated to a supernatural end or felicity, is impossible, and that God could not have created man such as he is at present.

This objection, however plausible it might appear at first sight, will dwindle away by the following explanatory remarks: 1st. Therefore, we maintain, that, from the preceding mode of reasoning, it can, by no means, be inferred, that God could not have created man in the state of pure nature, and that it is so far from our intention to deny the possibility of that state,

that, on the contrary, we solemnly make profession of believing, that the present elevation of human nature, to a supernatural destination, to the possession of God by the beatific vision, was no wise due to human nature, and that it must be considered as a special and gratuitous benefit of the divine bounty, not as a natural appendage due to the exigency of the nature of man; accordingly, we most readily believe and grant, that God, instead of creating man immortal, and exempt from miseries, such as he created Adam, might have created him subject to death and to the other miseries of this life; nay, we go still farther, and sincerely declare it to be our firm impression, that we do not conceive it to be, absolutely speaking, repugnant to the perfections of God, even to create man subject, in some degree, to rebellious concupiscence, which the creator might permit in the nature of man, for the wise purpose of affording him an opportunity of increasing his merit ; but what we deny with the best philosophers and divines, and what sound reason itself denies, as appears from the above discussion, is this: that God, consistently, not only with his absolute power, but also with his infinite wisdom, goodness, and sanctity, could have created man, such as he is now, viz: not only subject to death and to the other evils of this world, but also and chiefly such as he ought not to be, and in a manner opposite to what he ought to be, that is to say: with such a mass of moral corruption and disorder, as he brings with him into the world, with such a violent inclination to evil, and such an utter abhorrence from the practice of virtue; with such a furious rebellion of the flesh, which, as the Apostle laments, (Epist. ad Rom. 7, v. 7,) drags him, as it were by force, to do the evil which he would not wish to do, and not to do the good which he would wish to do. With such a contradiction to himself, with such an opposition to his last end, in fine, with such a mass of intrinsic corruption, man, we think, could not come from the hands of that Supreme Creator, who is wisdom, sancty, and purity itself.*

The degradation of man is more strikingly discoverable in such as are deprived of the light of religion, and its salutary lessons. In the savages, for