Such is the rudimental view, as I have called it, which the fathers have given us of Mary, as the second Eve, the mother of the living. I have cited ten authors. I could cite more were it necessary. Except the two last, they write gravely and without any rhetoric. I allow that the two last write in a different style, since the extracts I have made are from their sermons; but I do not see that the coloring conceals the outline. And, after all, men use oratory on great subjects, not on small; nor would they, and other fathers whom I might quote, have lavished their high language upon the Blessed Virgin, such as they gave to no one else, unless they knew well that no one else had such claims as she had on their love and veneration. And now I proceed to dwell for a while upon two inferences, which it is obvious to draw from the rudimental doctrine itself; the first relates to the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin, the second to her greatness. 1. Her _sanctity_. She holds, as the fathers teach us, that office in our restoration which Eve held in our fall. Now, in the first place, what were Eve's endowments to enable her to enter upon her trial? She could not have stood against the wiles of the devil, though she was innocent and sinless, without the grant of a large grace. And this she had--a heavenly gift, which was over and above and additional to that nature of hers, which she received from Adam, as Adam before her had also received the same gift, at the very time (as it is commonly held) of his original creation. This is Anglican doctrine as well as Catholic; it is the doctrine of Bishop Bull. He has written a dissertation on the point. He speaks of the doctrine which "many of the schoolmen affirm, that Adam was created {63} in grace--that is, received a principle of grace and divine life from his very creation, or in the moment of the infusion of his soul; of which," he says, "for my own part I have little doubt." Again, he says: "It is abundantly manifest, from the many testimonies alleged, that the ancient doctors of the church did, with a general consent, acknowledge that our first parents, in the state of integrity, had in them something more than nature--that is, were endowed with the divine principle of the Spirit, in order to a supernatural felicity."