[Footnote 7:  Hall, Dogmatic Theology, V, 263.]

Our purpose does not require us further to particularize these gifts and our time does not permit it.  We are concerned with this:  the effect of man’s sin was, what the effect of sin always is, to separate man from God.  To sin, man has to put his will in opposition to the will of God.  This our first parents did; and the result of their act was the destruction of their union with God and the loss of their supernatural endowments.  They lapsed into a state of nature, only it was a state in which they had forfeited what had been conferred upon them at their creation.  This state of man, with only his natural endowments, is the state into which all men, the descendants of Adam, have been born.  This is the state of original sin.  “Original sin means in Catholic theology a state inherited from our first human parents in which we are deprived of the supernatural grace and original righteousness with which they were endowed before they sinned, and are naturally prone to sin.” (Hall, Dogmatic Theology, Vol.  V, p. 281.) We can state the same fact otherwise, and more simply for our present purposes, by saying that by sin was forfeited the grace of union or sanctifying grace; and when we say that a child is born in sin we mean that it is born out of union with God, or without the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace.  You will note here no implication of original sin as an active poison handed on from generation to generation.  It will be important to remember this presently.

When, therefore, the thought of the Church began to follow out what was involved in its belief in the actual sinlessness of blessed Mary, in its holding to the fact that her relation to God was of such a close and indeed unique character that her actual sinfulness would be incomprehensible; it was at length compelled to ask, What, in that case are we to think of original sin?  If the first Eve was created in innocence and endowed with supernatural gifts, are we to think that she whom the Fathers of the Church from the earliest times have constantly called the second Eve, she whom God chose to be the Mother of His Son, should be less endowed?  Is it a fact any more conceivable that the virgin Mother of God should be born in original sin than that she should be the victim of actual sin?  If by the special grace of God she was kept from sin from the time that she was able to know good and evil, is it not probable that the freedom from sin goes further back than that, and is a freedom from original as well as from actual sin?  What is the meaning of the Angelic Salutation, “Hail, thou that art full of grace,” unless it refer to a superadded grace, to such donum supernaturale as the first Eve received?  There is indeed no precedent to guide in the case:  the prophet Jeremiah and S. John Baptist had been preserved from sin from the womb, but this did not involve freedom from original sin.  Still the