Catholic Religion

Book may have numerous typos missing text images or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1894. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... God. We may understand this image of God to be in the threefold structure of the soul the memory the understanding and the will. The image of God which includes these three great powers of the soul is the natural preparation for His likeness which is supernatural or above nature. This image can never be effaced however marred; it remained stimped upon the soul after the fall. We are all born in the image of God. The likeness of God is mans correspondence with His will and depends upon the right use of the gift of grace. A soul in grace bears the likeness of God; the higher the state of grace the closer the likeness. The likeness was well nigh if not altogether lost at the fall. In creating man God formed a being capable of knowing serving and loving Him. To do these things is the end of man. That this purpose might be intelligently fulfilled He gave man like the angels moral freedom. 5. The Fall of Man. Man was put on his trial in the garden of Eden. To test him God forbade his eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The devil came and tempted man to disobey. He yielded and so fell away from God.1 The act implies much more than at first sight appears for it was the deliberate sin of a being created in a state of grace and possessed with full knowledge and clear light. By his sin man lost that likeness of God in which he had been created and his whole moral being fell into disorder. The nature thus disordered he passed on to all his successors. It 1 Gen. ii. and iii. is true of every child born after the fall -- "Behold I was shapen in wickedness; and in sin hath my mother conceived me." 1 All people to be born in the future were "in Adam" when he fell and they too fell in him. Adam lost the guiding light of Gods likenes...