This one true God of His goodness and by His omnipotent power, not in order to increase His happiness, not to acquire perfection, but to manifest it by the good which He imparts to His creatures, in accordance with His ab solutely free decree, at once from the beginning of time framed out of nothing as to the whole of their substance, two kinds of creatures, spiritual and material, the angels and the world, and then man, in whom spirit and matter were united. God preserves and governs by His providence all things that He has created.
To the angels He gave sanctifying grace and with it the power to merit eternal happiness by free service. Many of them rebelled and were cast into everlasting fire, the rest were con firmed in grace and admitted to the beatific vision of God. God °formed the body of the first man out of the slime of the earth?" He created his soul immediately, as He creates the soul of every man; the soul is a spirit, endowed with intellect and free-will and immortal. All men are descended from Adam (q.v.) and Eve. Like the Angels, our first parents were also i raised to a supernatural state by the infusion of sanctifying grace into their souls, being made adopted children of God, destined to the en joyment of the beatific vision. This is the prin ciple of supernatural life, whereby man can produce works that merit a heavenly reward. Moreover, God bestowed on man other preter natural gifts: great powers of mind and in fused knowledge, complete control of the pas sions, immortality and exemption from suffer ing and decay. This original justice our first parents lost by mortal sin, that is, by a grievous, wilful violation of God's law; in consequence of Adam's sin all of his descendants were deprived of those privileges, are conceived in original sin and cannot of themselves enter the kingdom of heaven.
To atone adequately for the grievous insult to God and to repair the evil done to mankind, the second person of the Trinity became man. Jesus is true God and true man, one Divine Person subsisting in two natures, divine and human, not by the conversion of Divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of humanity unto God. He was born of the Virgin Mary, who was truly the Mother of God and remained a Virgin in conceiving and bearing her divine Son and ever after till the end of her life. By singular privilege of God through the merits of Christ, the Redeemer, the Blessed Virgin was preserved free from original sin (q.v.), that is, in the first moment of her conception, when her soul was created, it was endowed with sanc tifying grace. By further privilege she was never guilty of any actual sin, mortal or venial.
See MARY ; IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.
Christ, the God-man, became our Redeemer, not by the mere effect of His preaching and example, but by His bloody death on the cross. He made Himself our mediator with His Father, offering atonement for the sins of all men. This use is not applied to those who have use of reason without their free em ployment of the means ordained by Christ. He merited for us the remission of sins, sanctify ing grace and all other graces conferred on man. After His death, He rose again on the third day, ascended into Heaven, where He sits at the right hand of the Father, whence He shall come with glory to judge the living and the dead, and of His kingdom there shall be no end. He founded a Church and confided to it the task of teaching His doctrines and apply ing to men's souls the means of sanctification. This Church is the guardian and interpreter of revelation; for though the existence of God can be known with certainty by the light of reason, it has pleased the Divine Wisdom to reveal many natural truths as well as all those that regard our supernatural life. This revela tion is contained both in written books and in unwritten traditions. The books of the Old and New Testament, held by the Church to be sacred and canonical, were written by the in spiration of the Holy Ghost and have God as their author. In matters of faith and morals the true meaning of Scripture is that which is maintained by the Church. All interpretations at variance with the unanimous consent of the Fathers, when they speak as witnesses of tradi tion, are false and forbidden.
Whatever is presented to us by the Church as revealed truth must be accepted by the free assent of the intellect, not because of its in trinsic truth seen by the light of reason, but on the authority of God who has given the revelation, and who can neither be deceived nor deceive. This divine revelation has been made credible by external proofs, especially by mir acles and prophecies; yet as faith is a super natural virtue, the act of faith requires the assistance of divine grace, enlightening the in tellect and strengthening the will and making our act supernatural. Without faith there is no justification, but as God wishes all men to be saved, all receive, either proximately or re motely, the grace to believe. Among revealed truths some are mysteries that cannot be demonstrated by human reason, but must be believed. The demonstrations of reason can not contradict revelation, hence any assertions of human science that are at variance with what the Church teaches to be revealed must be false.