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STATE OF rURE NATURE. 279and has acted very foolishly, or, if you will, very sinfully, instripping off* his vestments. ]3ut the loss of raiment is onething,—the injury of his person is another ; and just as aman may bo deprived of his raiment, and yet his body remainsound, vigorous, and active as ever, so our deprivationof the supernatural gifts we enjoyed in innocence, in consequenceof the Fall, has left our mental and moral nature aswhole and sound as before. God might have made us in^uris naturaUhiis at the beginning.And what has the Falldone ? just brought us into that state in which God mighthave created us ;sinexcept it be (and it is in this that originalconsists, according to the only consistent interpretationof the popish scheme)that it is our own fault that we arenot in that higher state still. Whatever powers we wouldhave had in puris naturalibus of loving God, of obeying hiswill, and resisting evil, we have in our fallen state. Weneed assisting grace in our more difficult duties and temptationsnow, and we would have needed it in puris naturalibus.Thus we have fallen, and yet we have not fallen ; forwe are now what God might have made us at the beginning.On this point, as on every other, Rome requires us to believecontradictions and absurdities :her doctrine of the Fallis a denial of the Fall.God might have made man, say the divines of the RomanChurch, in a state of simple nature. We will not answerfor' the idea which Romanists may attach to this state ; butit is not difficult to determine what only that state can be,A state of positive corruption it cannot be ; for Romanistsrefuse this in the case even of fallen man. Neither can itbe a state of positive grace, for this is the supernatural conditionto which God raised him.*It can only be a state of* Tlieologia Mor. Ludovico Bailly, torn. v. p. 318. "Vel crearetu^[homo] in ordine ad finom naturalem, sine peccato sine gratia. (Idem,toni. V. p, 320.) Possibilis est status naturae pume, niodo homo creari potueritsine gratia sanctificante et sine donis ad finem supernaturalem seuvisionem intuitivara conducentibus." Man, notwithstanding his innocence,Builly holds, might have been liable to many miseries; and he appeals to the