According to that teaching, if Adam had been originally constituted in a state of pure nature, devoid of supernatural gifts and graces, his spiritual condition might be described as naked nudus. On the other hand, man as now born is nudatus, stripped of those gifts and graces, suffering the penal privation of them on account of Adam's sin.
"I would have received them readily enough. Why, the book I took to Concord to study was the Catechism of the Council of Trent, which has the strongest kind of statement of that doctrine. Bellarmine's formula of nudus and nudatus would have opened my eyes amazingly to a solution of the whole difficulty."*
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