end are miracles and prophecies. For, what other means could take their place? If God appeared in visible form among men, such a form would be an assumed one, and thus the question would again arise, how we are to know that God has assumed this form. If miracles are not sufficient to remove all doubt, there is no means whatever by which God can reveal Himself to us visibly, that is, in a manner suited to our composite nature. Not without reason have men at all times believed a doctrine to be beyond all doubt if it was announced by one who could appeal to miracles in evidence of his mission. God, therefore, would renounce the fittest means of conveying His will to men if He gave a false prophet the gift of miracles in confirmation of his doctrine. For then there would no longer be any means of distinguishing a true from a false revelation, and, consequently, God could not manifest Himself in an evident manner to His rational creatures.

Though miracles and prophecies can never take place to confirm a false doctrine, yet there is no repugnance in the fact that God should work miracles through sinful men for some other end; for instance, to free His servants from suffering (Matt. vii. 22).

Hence deism is irrational in rejecting revelation on the plea that it cannot be known; while indifferentism is equally absurd in maintaining that the form of religion is a matter of indifference, on the pretence that a true revelation cannot be distinguished from a false

one.

CHAPTER II.

PRE-CHRISTIAN REVELATION.

I. PRIMITIVE REVELATION.

12. The primitive revelation was supernatural in form and substance.

I. Our first parents received a revelation supernatural in form and substance; supernatural religion, therefore, reaches as far back as the creation of man.

Supernatural in substance is that revelation which communicat truths inaccessible to human reason, imposes obligations, holds or rewards and punishments depending solely upon God's free choic or extending beyond the teachings of reason. Such were the truth, commandments, rewards, punishments contained in the religion communicated to our first parents. But if the primitive revelation was supernatural in substance, it was likewise supernatural in form; for supernatural truths can only be made known in a supernatural manner. Besides, the Sacred Writings expressly record that God conversed supernaturally with our first parents and made His will known to them by a positive revelation.

1. Truths regarding his origin and condition were communicated to our first father which he could have learned only from revelation. Even though he had known by the light of reason that God was his Creator, yet reason could not tell him that God had directly created his body as well as his soul; nor could reason teach him how his body had been formed by God. But from the words: "Till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken; for dust thou art, and into dust shalt thou return (Gen. iii. 19), we see that Adam was informed of both these facts. The same applies to the creation of Eve, as may be seen from the words: "This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh" (Gen. ii. 23). Moreover, the supernatural gift of the immortality of his body was made known to Adam by revelation; for the threat of losing it by disobedience clearly implies its possession.

2. A positive command is involved in the words: "Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat" (Gen. ii. 16, 17).

3. A supernatural retribution is implied in the threat and subsequent execution of a supernatural punishment (Gen. ii. 17). Death, it is true, is natural as resulting from the nature of man; but the privation of the supernatural gift of immor tality was a supernatural punishment, as it proceeded from the free design of God. Not without reason does Holy Writ mention in particular the physical effects and penalties of sin. For, although these penalties were less than those affecting the soul, viz., the loss of sanctifying grace and of the right to eternal happiness, yet they were, for the moment, more keenly felt and more appalling; and thus they may be considered as a foretaste of the future punishments to be inflicted upon the soul.

II. After the fall the former supernatural state of friendship with God is restored; the conqueror of mankind himself is conquered; and thus is again opened to man the prospect of future supernatural happiness. All this is contained in the solemn promise of a Redeemer. "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel" (Gen. iii. 15). This promise, justly called the Protoëvangel (first gospel), henceforth forms the germ of supernatural religion.

13. God exercised a special providence towards the preser vation of supernatural religion.

1. Though it was easy in the beginning, owing to the lengtl. of human life, to transmit to posterity the supernatural revelation once given, God nevertheless, to insure its preservation, continued His supernatural intercourse with the human race. With threats and punishments He rebuked the wayward Cain (Gen. iv.); and subsequently, when moral corruption prevailed, His admonitions were conveyed through Noe to all mankind. Then followed the deluge--that great catastrophe which impressed itself indelibly upon the memory of man

Kind, and became to succeeding generations a striking evidence of God's retributive justice.

2. After the deluge God kept up an intimate intercourse with Noe, the head of our rescued race. As to our first parents, so also to this new race He gave a positive law: "Flesh with blood you shall not eat" (Gen. ix. 4). He made a new covenant with man, and chose the rainbow as its everlasting memorial. Through Noe God pronounced a blessing upon Sem and Japheth, and cursed Canaan, the son of Cham.

The period from Adam to Abraham is called that of the natural law, because positive laws and supernatural revelations were not numerous during that time, and because there was as yet no proper code of laws, such as was afterwards given to God's people. At no time, however, was man exclusively under the natural law.

3. But the promise of a Redeemer made to Adam and Eve was renewed and more definitely expressed in the blessing pronounced by Noe on his sons, Sem and Japheth. "Blessed be the Lord God of Sem, be Canaan his servant. May God enlarge Japheth and may he dwell in the tents of Sem, and Canaan be his servant" (Gen. ix. 26, 27). Sem is especially blessed by the fact that he is chosen to be the ancestor of the Messias. Japheth is blessed, inasmuch as his descendants, who were scattered chiefly over Europe, have reaped the blessings given to Sem. Here there is evidently a question of spiritual blessings, of spiritual goods, and of a spiritual dwell ing in the tents of Sem; for, if the descendants of Japheth had taken actual possession of the tents of Sem, or had seized on his material goods, the blessing of Japheth, contrary to the intention of the giver, would have been a curse to Sem.

14. Yet a universal apostasy from natural as well as supernatural religion ensued under the form of paganism and idol-worship.

1. Notwithstanding the chastisement inflicted by the delage, man soɔn returned to his evil ways. Once more God revealed Himself, as it were, visibly, when, by the confusion of tongues, He prevented the completion of the tower of Babel, which was the goal of man's ambition and was in

tended to be the proud monument of his power. Yet corruption continued to increase. A second and almost universal apostasy from God ensued. Man disregarded the revealed

truth and all God's commands and threats.

2. Then, as the Apostle says: "God suffered all nations to walk in their own ways" (Acts xiv. 15). From this time He does not, as a rule, employ any extraordinary measures fo their rescue, but leaves them partly to their religious tradi tions, until these became entirely disfigured; and partly to that voice which, through God's creatures and human reason, speaks to every individual, proclaiming that there is a Lord of heaven and earth, a supreme Law-giver and Judge, a searcher of hearts. Thus God, even after men had rejected the gift of revelation, "did not leave Himself without a witness" (Acts xiv. 16). If there were individuals among the heathens (by this name we distinguish those nations who did not possess the clear light of revelation) who knew and worshipped God as the Author of nature, we may suppose that in His goodness He contrived a means to manifest Himself to them also as the Author of grace, and thus to bring them to salvation.

3. This natural testimony concerning God, however, though it could not be disregarded, was misinterpreted, and thus, to come extent, rendered ineffectual. In the place of the one true God other divinities were substituted by transferring to visible objects the original, true, though indefinite, idea of God as the sovereign Lord of all things, which is naturally developed in every man by the contemplation of the universe. Such was the origin of idolatry. The sensual nature of man, which leans towards sensible objects; servility towards the mighty of this earth; immoderate attachment to deceased friends and relatives, whose memory was perpetuated by images; finally, the evil one, who tried to rob God of the worship due to Him-such have been the immediate causes of ascribing divine attributes to natural objects, to heroes, to images, and even to demons. Thus arose the various forms of idolatry.