Now, taking this for granted, because I know that you and those who agree with you maintain it as well as we do, I ask, Was not Mary as fully endowed as Eve? is it any violent inference that she, who was to co-operate in the redemption of the world, at least was not less endowed with power from on high, than she who, given as a helpmate to her husband, did in the event but co-operate with him for its ruin? If Eve was raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had a greater grace? And this consideration gives significance to the angel's salutation of her as "full of grace"--an interpretation of the original word which is undoubtedly the right one, as soon as we resist the common Protestant assumption that grace is a mere external approbation or acceptance, answering to the word "favor;" whereas it is, as the fathers teach, a real inward condition or superadded quality of soul. And if Eve had this supernatural inward gift given her from the moment of her personal existence, is it possible to deny that Mary too had this gift from the very first moment of her personal existence? I do not know how to resist this inference--well, this is simply and literally the doctrine of the immaculate conception. I say the doctrine of the immaculate conception is in its substance this, and nothing more or less than this (putting aside the question of degrees of grace); and it really does seem to me bound up in that doctrine of the fathers, that Mary is the second Eve.