Since, then, Christianity--that is, religious humanity--has not
been in error as to the REALITY of a fact essential in human
nature,--a fact which it has designated by the words ORIGINAL
PREVARICATION, let us further interrogate Christianity, humanity,
as to the MEANING of this fact. Let us not be astonished either
by metaphor or by allegory: truth is independent of figures. And
besides, what is truth to us but the continuous progress of our
mind from poetry to prose?
And first let us inquire whether this at least singular idea of
original prevarication had not, somewhere in the Christian
theology, its correlative. For the true idea, the generic idea,
cannot result from an isolated conception; there must be a
series.
Christianity, after having posited the dogma of the fall as the
first term, followed up its thought by affirming, for all who
should die in this state of pollution, an irrevocable separation
from God, an eternity of punishment. Then it completed its
theory by reconciling these two opposites by the dogma of
rehabilitation or of grace, according to which every creature
born in the hatred of God is reconciled by the merits of Jesus
Christ, which faith and repentance render efficacious.
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