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The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

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original energies of the constitution, all medicines, <strong>and</strong> all physicians.<br />

14. Whatever be the philosophy of morbus, the great facts are<br />

indisputable. Men may wrangle as to how <strong>and</strong> why it is, but they cannot<br />

deny that it is. <strong>The</strong>y may believe that they relieve difficulties by<br />

ab<strong>and</strong>oning the old phraseology <strong>and</strong> coining new; but all the resources of<br />

language leave the facts <strong>and</strong> the difficulties substantially where they were.<br />

<strong>The</strong> medical theorists have new names, new theories, new medicines, but<br />

men have continued to die, <strong>and</strong> will continue to die. <strong>The</strong> theological<br />

charlatan may try a new nomenclature, <strong>and</strong> assail with sugar- <strong>and</strong> rosewater<br />

what the old doctors treated with the most potent medicines, but sin<br />

will reveal itself in the world with the old signs of virulence, <strong>and</strong>, trifled<br />

with, will work death.<br />

15. He who has false views of morbus, is not likely to obtain a<br />

thorough cure of it. His determination to call a plagueboil a pimple, will<br />

not make it a pimple; tubercular consumption is not a trifling cough, nor a<br />

cancer a corn, because men may think them such. We can neither think<br />

facts out of being, nor into being.<br />

16. Morbus is ordinarily relieved by means. Sickness cannot heal<br />

itself, nor is it ordinarily healed by miracle.<br />

17. <strong>The</strong> wrong remedy will not cure morbus, however sincere the<br />

misguided physician may be in recommending it, <strong>and</strong> the deluded patient<br />

in using it. It is the dream of a Rationalism close upon Deism, that error is<br />

practically as good as truth, if a man heartily believes it to be the truth; that<br />

you can substitute arsenic for salt with safety, if you believe it to be salt.<br />

<strong>The</strong> kingdom of nature <strong>and</strong> of grace are both under law. Things will be<br />

done after God's ordinance, or they will not be done at all.<br />

Analogies between Vitium <strong>and</strong> Original Sin<br />

<strong>The</strong> analogies between Vitium <strong>and</strong> Original Sin are also many <strong>and</strong><br />

obvious.<br />

1. Vitium is universal. Every body has some defect. Thrasea (Pliny's<br />

Epistles 8, 22,) was wont to say, "Qui vitia doit, homines odit," "Who hates<br />

faults, hates all mankind."

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