Thus,
essential corruption of our nature and perpetuity of punishment,
except in the case of redemption through voluntary participation
in Christ's sacrifice,--such is, in brief, the evolution of the
theological idea. The second affirmation is a consequence of the
first; the third is a negation and transformation of the two
others: in fact, a constitutional vice being necessarily
indestructible, the expiation which it involves is as eternal as
itself, unless a superior power comes to break destiny and lift
the anathema by an integral renovation.
The human mind, in its religious caprices as well as in its most
positive theories, has always but one method; the same
metaphysics produced the Christian mysteries and the
contradictions of political economy; faith, without knowing it,
hangs upon reason; and we, explorers of divine and human
manifestations, are entitled to verify, in the name of reason,
the hypotheses of theology.
What was it, then, that the universal reason, formulated in
religious dogmas, saw in human nature, when, by so regular a
metaphysical construction, it declared successively the
INGENUOUSNESS of the offence, the eternity of the penalty, the
necessity of grace? The veils of theology are becoming so
transparent that it quite resembles natural history.
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