The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

—;278 OF ORIGINAL SIN.each other are situated the primal fountains of truth anderror ! Like twin sources on the summit of some Alpinechain, which a few yards only divide, yet lying on oppositesides of the summit, the flow of the one is determined towardsthe frozen shores of the north,—the current of theother to the aromatic climes and calm seas of the southso between the Popish and the Protestant ideas on the doctrineof the Fall there is no very great or essential differencewhich strikes one at first sight. The sources of the twosystems lie close beside each other ; but the line that dividestruth from error runs between them. From the first,therefore, they take opposite directions; and what was scarceperceptible at the outset becomes plain and palpable in theissue : the one results in the Roman papacy ; the other isseen to be apostolic Christianity.The divines of the Church of Rome conceive of humanityas existing, or capable of existing, in three states. The firstis that of fallen man, in which we now exist ; the second isthat of simple humanity, or, as they terra it, puris naturalilus,in which man, they affirm, onight have been made ; thethird is that of supernatural humanity, or man clothed withthose special gifts with which God endowed Adam. By hisfall man brought himself down from the third or higheststate to the first or lowest. But the theologians of the Romanschool teach that man's condition now is in no respectworse than if he were in the middle state, or in puris naturalihts,except that ho once was in a higher, and has fallenfrom it. His nature is not injured thereby : he has lost theadvantages which he enjoyed in his higher condition ;he isto blame for having thrown away these advantages ; but asto any injury, or disorder, or ruin of nature, by the Fall, thathe has not sustained ;—he has come scathless out of thecatastrophe of Eden. Of two men totally destitute of clothing,—touse Cardinal Cajetan's illustration,—the one is notmore nude than the other; but the difference lies here,the one never had clothing,—the other had, but has lostit, and therefore suffers a want he did not feel originally,