COROLLARY IX.
Having set forth the consequences by which the way toward estimating, as is fitting, the doctrine of the Fathers and Catholic tradition is laid and leveled, I come to those things which I called καταφατικά, affirmative1, and which pertain to this: that they exhibit and represent the unanimous faith and judgment of the Christian name as if depicted upon a certain tablet. Now the first thing which presents itself and comes to mind is of what kind that disposition must be believed to have been which then existed between God and our first parents, when these first came forth into the light and before they were turned away from God by transgression and guilt. But this is the concordant response of tradition and of all the Fathers2: that it must be believed to have been a disposition of a certain incredible love and eminent charity. God created man only when moved by love; it belonged to love that he increased man with the preternatural gifts of immortality and integrity; and it must be attributed to love that he enriched man with the supernatural ornaments of heavenly likeness, grace, and divine filiation. In this first stage of humanity, love alone reigned; and God, who is love, placed his glory in this: that he should disclose himself most splendidly as efficacious and beneficent love. He became known as efficacious and beneficent love in creating man; and he shone much more splendidly still as efficacious and beneficent love when he enriched the man created by him not only with native endowments, and those eminent, but also with others both—
—preternatural and supernatural, to such a degree that in man there appeared a living likeness of himself, an adoptive son, and one destined for paternal beatitude.