This historic 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. 1855. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIX. LETTERS APOSTOLIC OF OUR MOST HOLY LORD PIUS IX, BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE POPE, CONCERNING THE DOGMATIC DEFINITION OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER OF GOD. Pius, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God. For the perpetual remembrance of the thing. The Ineffable God, whose ways are mercy and truth, whose will is omnipotence, and whose wisdom reaches powerfully from end to end, and sweetly disposes everything, when He foresaw from all eternity the most sorrowful ruin of the entire human race to follow from the transgression of Adam, and in a mystery hidden from ages determined to complete, through the incarnation of the Word in a more hidden sacrament, the first work of his goodness, so that man, led into sin by the craft of diabolical iniquity, should not perish contrary to His merciful design, and that what was about to befall in the first Adam should be restored more happily in the second; from the beginning and before ages chose and ordained a Mother for His only-begotten Son, of whom made flesh, He should be born in the blessed plenitude of time, and followed her with so great love before all creatures that in her alone He pleased Himself with a most benign complacency. Wherefore, far before all the angelic spirits and all the Saints, He so wonderfully endowed her with the abundance of all the heavenly gifts drawn from the treasure of divinity, that she might be ever free from every stain of sin, and all fair and perfect, would bear before her that plenitude of innocence and holiness than which, under God, none greater is understood, and which, except God, no one can reach even in thought. And indeed it was most becoming that she would shine always adorned with the splendor of the most perfect holiness, and free even from the ...