Project Gutenberg's The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal, by Blaise Pascal

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.



Title: The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Author: Blaise Pascal

Editor: M. Auguste Molinier

Translator: C. Kegan Paul

Release Date: September 21, 2014 [EBook #46921]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THOUGHTS OF BLAISE PASCAL ***




Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, John Campbell and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned
images of public domain material from the Google Print
project.)









  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
  Four oe ligatures have been replaced by 'oe'.
  One superscript was converted to lowercase '23rd'.

  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
  the text and consultation of external sources.

  More detail can be found at the end of the book.




  _THE THOUGHTS OF
  BLAISE PASCAL._

  [Illustration: (Colophon.)]




  _THE THOUGHTS

  OF

  BLAISE PASCAL_

  [Illustration: (Frontispiece--Blaise Pascal.)]




  _THE THOUGHTS OF

  BLAISE PASCAL_

  _TRANSLATED FROM THE TEXT OF

  M. AUGUSTE MOLINIER_

  _BY

  C. KEGAN PAUL_

  _Pendent opera interrupta_

  [Illustration: (Colophon.)]

  _LONDON_

  _KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO._

  _MDCCCLXXXV_




  _CONTENTS._

                                                            PAGE

  _PREFACE_                                                  vii

  _GENERAL INTRODUCTION_                                       1
    Pascal's Profession of Faith                               2
    General Introduction                                       3
    Notes for the General Introduction                        11

  _THE MISERY OF MAN WITHOUT GOD_                             15
    Preface to the First Part                                 17
    Man's Disproportion                                       19
    Diversion                                                 33
    The Greatness and Littleness of Man                       43
    Of the Deceptive Powers of the Imagination                51
    Of Justice, Customs, and Prejudices                       61
    The Weakness, Unrest, and Defects of Man                  73

  _THE HAPPINESS OF MAN WITH GOD_                             89
    Preface to the Second Part                                91
    Of the Need of Seeking Truth                              95
    The Philosophers                                         105
    Thoughts on Mahomet and on China                         115
    Of the Jewish People                                     119
    The Authenticity of the Sacred Books                     125
    The Prophecies                                           131
    Of Types in General and of their Lawfulness              157
    That the Jewish Law was Figurative                       167
    Of the True Religion and its Characteristics             179
    The Excellence of the Christian Religion                 183
    Of Original Sin                                          191
    The Perpetuity of the Christian Religion                 197
    Proofs of the Christian Religion                         203
    Proofs of the Divinity of Jesus Christ                   213
    The Mission and Greatness of Jesus Christ                225
    The Mystery of Jesus                                     231
    Of the True Righteous Man and of the True Christian      237
    The Arrangement                                          253
    Of Miracles in General                                   257
    Jesuits and Jansenists                                   273
    Thoughts on Style                                        301
    Various Thoughts                                         307

  _NOTES_                                                    317

  _INDEX_                                                    339




PREFACE.


Those to whom the Life of Pascal and the Story of Port Royal are
unknown, must be referred to works treating fully of the subject,
since it were impossible to deal with them adequately within the
limits of a preface. Sainte-Beuve's great work on Port Royal,
especially the second and third volumes, and "Port Royal," by Charles
Beard, B.A., London, 1863, may best be consulted by any who require
full, lucid, and singularly impartial information.

But for such as, already acquainted with the time and the man, need a
recapitulation of the more important facts, or for those who may find
an outline map useful of the country they are to study in detail, a
few words are here given.

Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne, on June 19,
1623. He sprung from a well-known legal family, many members of which
had held lucrative and responsible positions. His father, Etienne
Pascal, held the post of intendant, or provincial administrator,
in Normandy, where, and at Paris previously, Pascal lived from the
age of sixteen to that of twenty-five; almost wholly educated by
his father on account of his precarious health. His mother died
when he was eight years old. Etienne Pascal was a pious but stern
person, and by no means disposed to entertain or allow any undue
exaltation in religion, refusing as long as he lived to allow his
daughter Jaqueline to take the veil. But he had the usual faiths and
superstitions of his time, and believing that his son's ill-health
arose from witchcraft, employed the old woman who was supposed to
have caused the malady to remove it, by herbs culled before sunrise,
and the expiatory death of a cat. This made a great impression on his
son, who in the "Thoughts" employs an ingenious argument to prove
that wonders wrought by the invocation of the devil are not, in the
proper sense of the term, miracles. At any rate the counter-charm was
incomplete, as the child's feeble health remained feeble to the end.

Intellectually, Blaise Pascal grew rapidly to the stature and
strength of a giant; his genius showing itself mainly in the
direction of mathematics; at the age of fifteen his studies on conic
sections were thought worthy to be read before the most scientific
men of Paris, and in after years of agonizing pain mathematical
research alone was able to calm him, and distract his mind from
himself. His actual reading was at all times narrow, and his
scholarship was not profound. In 1646, his father, having broken
his thigh at Rouen, came under the influence of two members of the
Jansenist school of thought at that place, who attended him in his
illness, and from that time dated the more serious religious views
of the family. Jaqueline was from the first deeply affected by the
more rigorous opinions with which she came in contact. Forbidden to
enter the cloister, she lived at home as austere a life as though she
had been professed, but after her father's death won her brother's
reluctant consent to take the veil at Port Royal, and became one of
the strictest nuns of that rigid rule.

Blaise Pascal went through a double process of conversion. When the
family first fell under Jansenist influence he threw himself so
earnestly into the study of theology that he seriously injured his
frail health, and being advised to refrain from all intellectual
labour, he returned to the world of Paris, where his friends the
Duc de Roannez, the Chevalier de Mere and M. Miton were among the
best known and most fashionable persons. His father's death put him
in possession of a fair fortune, which he used freely, not at all
viciously, but with no renunciation of the pleasures of society.
There is some evidence of a proposal that he should marry the Duc
de Roannez' sister, and no doubt with such a scheme before him he
wrote his celebrated "Discours sur les Passions de l'Amour." This,
however, resulted only in the conversion of the duke and his sister,
the latter of whom for a time, the former for the whole of his life,
remained subject to the religious feelings then excited.

In the autumn of 1654, whether after deliverance in a dangerous
accident, or from some hidden cause of which nothing can now be even
surmised, there came a second sudden conversion from which there was
no return. That hour wrought a complete change in Pascal's life;
austerity, self-denial, absolute obedience to his spiritual director,
boundless alms-giving succeeded to what at most had been a moderate
and restrained use of worldly pleasure, and he threw himself into the
life, controversy and interests of Port Royal, with all the passion
of one who was not only a new convert, but the champion of a society
into which those dearest to him had entered even more fully than he.
He became, for a time, one of the solitaries of Port Royal before the
close of that same year.

The Cistercian Abbey of Port Royal des Champs was situated about
eighteen miles from Paris. It had been founded early in the
thirteenth century, and would have faded away unremembered but for
the grandeur of its closing years. The rule of the community had been
greatly relaxed, but it was reformed with extreme rigour by Jaqueline
Arnauld, its young abbess, known in religion as La Mere Angelique.
The priest chosen as Director of the community was Jean du Vergier
de Hauranne, Abbe de St. Cyran, a close friend of Cornelius Jansen,
Bishop of Ypres. They had together devoted themselves to the study of
Saint Augustine; and the "Augustinus," the work to which Jansen gave
his whole life, was planned with the assistance of St. Cyran. Certain
propositions drawn from this work were afterwards condemned, and the
controversy which raged between the two schools of the Jesuits and
the Jansenists divided itself into two parts, first, whether the
propositions were heretical, and secondly, whether as a fact they
were contained in, or could fairly be deduced from, Jansen's book.
The strife, which raged with varying fortunes for many years, need
not here detain us.

After the reform of Port Royal, and when the Society, however
assailed and in danger, was at the height of its renown, the whole
establishment consisted of two convents, the mother house of Port
Royal des Champs, and one in Paris to which was attached a school for
girls. To Port Royal des Champs, as to a spiritual centre, and to be
under the guidance of the three great directors, who in succession
ruled the abbey, M. de St. Cyran, M. Singlin, and M. de Saci, there
came men and women, not under monastic vows, but living for a time
the monastic or even the eremitical life. The women, for the most
part, had rooms in the convent, the men built rooms for themselves
hard by, or shared between them La Grange, a farm belonging to the
abbey. It need scarcely be said that in so strict a community the
sexes were wholly separate; a common worship, and the confidence of
the same confessor, together with similarity of views in religion,
were the ties which bound together the whole society.

When Pascal formally joined Port Royal, the Abbey and all that
was attached to it greatly needed aid from without. A Bull in
condemnation of Jansen had been gained from the Pope, and a
Formulary, minimising its effect as far as possible, was drawn up
by the General Assembly in France, which was ultimately accepted by
Port Royal itself. But if the Port Royalists minimized the defeat,
and, with great intellectual dexterity, showed that the condemned
propositions were not in precise terms what they had held, and were
not in Jansen's book, their adversaries exaggerated the victory. A
confessor in Paris refused absolution to a parishioner because he
had a Jansenist living in his house, and had sent his grand-daughter
to school at Port Royal. Antoine Arnauld, known as Le Grand Arnauld,
brother of La Mere Angelique, himself in danger of condemnation by
the Sorbonne, drew up a statement of the case intended to instruct
the public on the points in dispute. On reading this to the Port
Royal solitaries before printing it, he saw that it would not do,
and turning to Pascal, who had then been a year under M. Singlin's
direction, he suggested to him as a younger man with a lighter pen
to see what he could do. The next day Pascal produced the first of
the "Provincial Letters," or to give it the correct title, "A Letter
written to a Provincial by one of his friends." In these Letters
Pascal formed his true style, and took rank at once among the great
French writers. They contributed largely to turn the scale of feeling
against his adversaries; they, and an occurrence in which he saw the
visible finger of God, saved Port Royal for a time. But the history
of the "Provincial Letters" must be read elsewhere, as must also in
its fulness the miracle of the Holy Thorn, on which a few words are
needed.

The "Provincial Letters" were in course of publication, but M.
Arnauld had been condemned by the Sorbonne just as the first was
issued, and his enemies said he was excommunicated, which was not
technically true; he was in danger of arrest, and was in hiding; the
solitaries of Port Royal were almost all dispersed; the schools were
thinned of their pupils and on the point of closing, the confessors
were about to be withdrawn and the nuns sent to various other
convents, when the miracle took place. Marguerite Perier, a child
of ten years old, daughter of Pascal's elder sister, was one of the
pupils at Port Royal in Paris, not as yet dismissed to her home. She
was tenderly nursed by the nuns for an ulcer in the lachrymal gland,
which had destroyed the bones of the nose, and produced other horrors
of which there is no need to speak. A relic of the Saviour, one of
the thorns of his crown of mockery, which had been intrusted to the
nuns, was specially venerated during a service in its honour, and as
it would seem was passed from hand to hand in its reliquary. When the
turn of the scholars came, Sister Flavia, their mistress, moved by a
sudden impulse said, "My child, pray for your eye," and touched the
ulcer with the reliquary. The child was cured, and the effect on the
community was immediate. The remaining solitaries were not dispersed,
some of those who had gone returned, the confessors were not removed,
the school was not closed, and Port Royal was respited.

The miracle was to Pascal at once a solemn matter of religion and
a family occurrence; he took henceforward as his cognizance an eye
encircled with a crown of thorns and the motto _Scio cui credidi_, he
jotted down various thoughts on the miracle, and the manner in which
as it seemed to him God had by it given as by "a voice of thunder"
his judgment in favour of Port Royal, and he sketched a plan of a
work against atheists and unbelievers. In the year between the spring
of 1657, and that of 1658, the last year of his good health, if that
can be called good which was at best but feeble, he indicated the
plan, and wrote the most finished paragraphs of his intended work.
The detached thoughts which make up the bulk of it were scribbled,
as they occurred to him during the last four years of his life, on
scraps of paper, or on the margin of what he had already written,
often when he was quite incapable of sustained employment. Many were
dictated, some to friends, and some to a servant who constantly
attended him in his illness.

Towards the end of his life he was obliged to move into Paris again,
where he was carefully nursed by his sister Madame Perrier, to whose
house he was moved at the last, where he died on August 9th, 1662, at
the age of thirty-nine, having spent his last years in an ecstasy of
self-denial, of charity, and of aspiration after God.


Not for six years after his death were his family and friends able
to consider in what form his unfinished work should be given to the
world. Then Port Royal had a breathing space, what was known as
the Peace of the Church was established by Clement IX., and it was
considered that the time had come to set in order these precious
fragments. The duty of giving an author's works to the world as he
left them was little understood in those days, and the Duc de Roannez
even suggested that Pascal's whole work should be re-written on the
lines he had laid down. Some editing was, on all hands, allowed to
be needful; thus the arrangement of chapters, and the fragments to
be included in chapters, were matter for fair discussion. But the
committee of editors went further, and even when the text had been
settled by them, it had to undergo a further censorship by various
theologians. Finally, in January, 1670, the "Pensees" appeared as a
small duodecimo, with a preface by the Perrier family, and no mention
of Port Royal in the volume.

For a full account of this and other editions, the reader must be
referred to the preface to M. Molinier's edition, Paris, 1877-1879,
and to that of M. Faugere, Paris, 1844.

M. Victor Cousin was the first to draw attention to the need of a
new edition of Pascal in 1842. He showed that great liberties had
been taken with and suppressions made in the text, and the labour
to which he invited was first undertaken by M. Prosper Faugere. M.
Havet adopting his text departed from his arrangement, reverted in
great measure to that of the old editors, and accompanied the whole
by an excellent commentary and notes, 2nd edition, Paris, 1866. M.
Molinier has again consulted the MSS. word for word, and while in a
degree following M. Faugere's arrangement has yet been guided by his
own skill and judgment. It must always be remembered that each editor
must necessarily follow his own judgment in regard to the position
he should give to fragments not placed by the writer. But provided
that an editor makes no changes merely for the sake of change and
that he loyally enters into the spirit of his predecessors, each new
comer, till the arrangement is finally fixed, has a great advantage.
Such an editor is M. Molinier, and in his arrangement the text of
Pascal would seem to be mainly if not wholly fixed; so that for the
first time we have not only Pascal's "Thoughts," but we have them
approximately arranged as he designed to present them to his readers.

The course of an English translator is clear; his responsibility is
confined to deciding which text to follow, he has no right to make
one for himself. In the present edition, therefore, M. Molinier's
text and arrangement are scrupulously followed except in two places.
In regard to one, M. Molinier has himself adopted a different
reading in his notes made after the text was printed, the second is
an obvious misprint. Pascal's "Profession of Faith," or "Amulet,"
is transferred from the place it occupies in M. Molinier's edition
to serve as an introduction to the work, striking as it does the
key-note to the "Thoughts."

Pascal's quotations from the Bible were made of course from the
Vulgate, but very often indeed from memory, and incorrectly, while he
often gave the substance alone of the passage he used. No one version
of the Bible therefore has been used exclusively, but the Authorised
Version and the Douai or Rheims versions have been used as each in
turn most nearly afforded the equivalent of the quotations made by
Pascal.

The notes are mainly based on those of MM. Faugere, Havet, and
Molinier.




_GENERAL INTRODUCTION._




PASCAL'S PROFESSION OF FAITH.

[Illustration:(Small crucifix.)]

                      This year of Grace 1654,
          Monday, November 23rd, day of Saint Clement, pope
              and martyr, and others in the martyrology,
            Eve of Saint Chrysogonus, martyr, and others;
                From about half past ten at night, to
                      about half after midnight,
                                Fire.
              God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
                 Not of the philosophers and the wise.
                Security, security. Feeling, joy, peace.
                         God of Jesus Christ
                     _Deum meum et Deum vestrum._
                       Thy God shall be my God.
             Forgetfulness of the world and of all save God.
                 He can be found only in the ways taught
                            in the Gospel.
                      Greatness of the human soul.
             O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee,
                         but I have known thee.
                      Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
                    I have separated myself from him.
                   _Dereliquerunt me fontem aqua vivae._
                  My God, why hast thou forsaken me?...
               That I be not separated from thee eternally.
              This is life eternal: That they might know thee
      the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ,
                              Jesus Christ,
                              Jesus Christ.
  I have separated myself from him; I have fled, renounced, crucified him.
                    May I never be separated from him.
            He maintains himself in me only in the ways taught
                              in the Gospel.
                       Renunciation total and sweet.
                                   etc.




_GENERAL INTRODUCTION._


Let them at least learn what is the Religion they assail, before they
assail it. If this religion claimed to have a clear view of God, and
to possess it openly and unveiled, then to say that we see nothing in
the world which manifests him with this clearness would be to assail
it. But since on the contrary it affirms that men are in darkness and
estranged from God, that he has hidden himself from their knowledge,
that the very name he has given himself in the Scriptures is _Deus
absconditus_; and if indeed it aims equally at establishing these
two points, that God has set in the Church evident notes to enable
those who seek him in sincerity to recognise him, and that he has
nevertheless so concealed them that he can only be perceived by those
who seek him with their whole hearts; what advantages it them, when,
in their professed neglect of the search after truth, they declare
that nothing reveals it to them? For the very obscurity in which they
are, and for which they blame the Church, does but establish one of
the points which she maintains, without affecting the other, and far
from destroying, establishes her doctrine.

In order to assail it they ought to urge that they have sought
everywhere with all their strength, and even in that which the Church
proposes for their instruction, but without avail. Did they thus
speak, they would indeed assail one of her claims. But I hope here to
show that no rational person can thus speak, and I am even bold to
say that no one has ever done so. We know well enough how men of this
temper behave. They believe they have made great efforts for their
instruction, when they have spent a few hours in reading some book
of Scripture, and have talked with some Ecclesiastic on the truths
of the faith. Whereupon they boast that they have in vain consulted
books and men. But indeed I will tell them what I have often said,
that such carelessness is intolerable. We are not here dealing with
the light interest of a stranger, that we should thus treat it; but
with that which concerns ourselves and our all.

The immortality of the soul is a matter of so great moment to us,
it touches us so deeply, that we must have lost all feeling if we
are careless of the truth about it. Our every action and our every
thought must take such different courses, according as there are or
are not eternal blessings for which to hope, that it is impossible to
take a single step with sense or judgment, save in view of that point
which ought to be our end and aim.

Thus our first interest and our first duty is to gain light on
this subject, whereon our whole conduct depends. Therefore among
unbelievers, I make a vast difference between those who labour with
all their power to gain instruction, and those who live without
taking trouble or thought for it.

I can have nothing but compassion for all who sincerely lament their
doubt, who look upon it as the worst of evils, and who, sparing no
pains to escape it, find in that endeavour their principal and most
serious occupation.

But as for those who pass their life without thought of the ultimate
goal of life, who, solely because they do not find within themselves
the light of conviction, neglect to seek it elsewhere and to examine
thoroughly whether the opinion in question be among those which are
popularly received with credulous simplicity, or among those which,
although in themselves obscure, have yet a solid and indestructible
basis,--of those, I say, my thoughts are very different.

This neglect of a matter in which themselves are concerned, their
eternity, and their all, makes me angry rather than compassionate; it
astonishes and terrifies me, it is to me something monstrous. I do
not say this out of the pious zeal of a spiritual devotion. I mean
on the contrary that such a feeling should spring from principles of
human interest and self-love; and for this we need see no more than
what is seen by the least enlightened persons.

We need no great elevation of soul to understand that here is no
true and solid satisfaction, that all our pleasures are but vanity,
our evils infinite, and lastly that death, which threatens us every
moment, must infallibly and within a few years place us in the dread
alternative of being for ever either annihilated or wretched.

Nothing is more real than this, nothing more terrible. Brave it out
as we may, that is yet the end which awaits the fairest life in the
world. Let us reflect on this, and then say if it be not certain that
there is no good in this life save in the hope of another, that we
are happy only in proportion as we approach it, and that as there is
no more sorrow for those who have an entire assurance of eternity, so
there is no happiness for those who have not a ray of its light.

Assuredly then it is a great evil thus to be in doubt, but it is
at least an indispensable duty to seek when we are in such doubt;
he therefore who doubts and yet seeks not is at once thoroughly
unhappy and thoroughly unfair. And if at the same time he be easy and
content, profess to be so, and in fact pride himself thereon; if even
it be this very condition of doubt which forms the subject of his
joy and boasting, I have no terms in which to describe a creature so
extravagant.

Whence come such feelings? What delight can we find in the
expectation of nothing but unavailing misery? What cause of boasting
that we are in impenetrable darkness? How can such an argument as the
following occur to a reasoning man?

"I know not who has sent me into the world, nor what the world is,
nor what I myself am; I am terribly ignorant of every thing; I know
not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, nor even that part
of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself,
yet is as ignorant of itself as of all beside. I see those dreadful
spaces of the universe which close me in, and I find myself fixed
in one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am set in
this place rather than elsewhere, nor why this moment of time given
me for life is assigned to this point rather than another of the
whole Eternity which was before me or which shall be after me. I see
nothing but infinities on every side, which close me round as an
atom, and as a shadow which endures but for an instant and returns
no more. I know only that I must shortly die, but what I know the
least is this very death which I cannot avoid.

"As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go; only this I
know, that on departing this world, I shall either fall for ever into
nothingness, or into the hands of an offended God, without knowing
which of these two conditions shall eternally be my lot. Such is my
state, full of weakness and uncertainty; from all which I conclude
that I ought to pass all the days of my life without thought of
searching for what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find some ray
of light in my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor stir a
foot to seek it; and after treating with scorn those who are troubled
with this care, I will go without foresight and without fear to make
trial of the grand event, and allow myself to be led softly on to
death, uncertain of the eternity of my future condition."

Who would wish to have for his friend a man who should thus speak;
who would choose him rather than another for advice in business; who
would turn to him in sorrow? And indeed to what use in life could we
put him?

In truth, it is the glory of Religion to have for enemies men so
unreasoning, whose opposition is so little dangerous to her, that it
the rather serves to establish her truths. For the Christian faith
goes mainly to the establishment of these two points, the corruption
of nature, and the Redemption by Jesus Christ. Now I maintain that
if these men serve not to demonstrate the truth of Redemption by the
holiness of their morals, they at least serve admirably to show the
corruption of nature by sentiments so unnatural.

Nothing is so important to man as his condition, nothing so
formidable to him as eternity; and thus it is not natural there
should be men indifferent to the loss of their being, and to the
peril of an endless woe. They are quite other men in regard to all
else; they fear the veriest trifles, they foresee them, they feel
them; and the very man who spends so many days and nights in rage
and despair for the loss of office or for some imaginary insult to
his honour, is the same who, without disquiet and without emotion,
knows that he must lose all by death. It is a monstrous thing to see
in one and the same heart and at the same time this sensibility to
the meanest, and this strange insensibility to the greatest matters.
It is an incomprehensible spell, a supernatural drowsiness, which
denotes as its cause an all powerful force.

There must be a strange revolution in the nature of man, before he
can glory at being in a state to which it seems incredible that any
should attain. Experience however has shown me a large number of
such men, a surprising fact did we not know that the greater part of
those who meddle with the matter are not as a fact what they declare
themselves. They are people who have been told that the manners of
good society consist in such daring. This they call shaking off
the yoke, this they try to imitate. Yet it would not be difficult
to convince them how much they deceive themselves in thus seeking
esteem. Not so is it acquired, even among those men of the world
who judge wisely, and who know that the only way of worldly success
is to show ourselves honourable, faithful, of sound judgment, and
capable of useful service to a friend; because by nature men love
only what may prove useful to them. Now in what way does it advantage
us to hear a man say he has at last shaken off the yoke, that he
does not believe there is a God who watches his actions, that he
considers himself the sole master of his conduct and accountable for
it only to himself. Does he think that thus he has brought us to
have henceforward confidence in him, and to look to him for comfort,
counsel and succour in every need of life? Do they think to delight
us when they declare that they hold our soul to be but a little wind
or smoke, nay, when they tell us so in a tone of proud content? Is
this a thing to assert gaily, and not rather to say sadly as the
saddest thing in all the world?

Did they think on it seriously, they would see that this is so great
a mistake, so contrary to good sense, so opposed to honourable
conduct, so remote in every respect from that good breeding at which
they aim, that they would choose rather to restore than to corrupt
those who might have any inclination to follow them. And indeed if
they are obliged to give an account of their opinions, and of the
reasons they have for doubts about Religion, they will say things
so weak and base, as rather to persuade the contrary. It was once
happily said to such an one, "If you continue to talk thus you will
really make me a Christian." And the speaker was right, for who would
not be horrified at entertaining opinions in which he would have such
despicable persons as his associates!

Thus those who only feign these opinions would be very unhappy were
they to put force on their natural disposition in order to make
themselves the most inconsequent of men. If, in their inmost hearts,
they are troubled at their lack of light, let them not dissemble:
the avowal will bring no shame; the only shame is to be shameless.
Nothing betrays so much weakness of mind as not to apprehend the
misfortune of a man without God, nothing is so sure a token of an
evil disposition of heart as not to desire the truth of eternal
promises, nothing is more cowardly than to fight against God. Let
them therefore leave these impieties to persons who are so ill-bred
as to be really capable of them, let them at least be men of honour
if they cannot be Christians, and lastly, let them recognise that
there are but two classes of men who can be called reasonable; those
who serve God with their whole heart because they know him, or those
who seek him with their whole heart because they know him not.

But as for those who live without knowing him and without seeking
him, they judge themselves to deserve their own care so little, that
they are not worthy the care of others, and it needs all the charity
of the Religion they despise, not to despise them so utterly as to
abandon them to their madness. But since this Religion obliges us
to look on them, while they are in this life, as always capable of
illuminating grace, and to believe that in a short while they may
be more full of faith than ourselves, while we on the other hand
may fall into the blindness which now is theirs, we ought to do for
them what we would they should do for us were we in their place, and
to entreat them to take pity on themselves and advance at least a
few steps, if perchance they may find the light. Let them give to
reading these words a few of the hours which otherwise they spend
so unprofitably: with whatever aversion they set about it they may
perhaps gain something; at least they cannot be great losers. But if
any bring to the task perfect sincerity and a true desire to meet
with truth, I despair not of their satisfaction, nor of their being
convinced of so divine a Religion by the proofs which I have here
gathered up, and have set forth in somewhat the following order....

Before entering upon the proofs of the Christian Religion, I find it
necessary to set forth the unfairness of men who live indifferent to
the search for truth in a matter which is so important to them, and
which touches them so nearly.

Among all their errors this doubtless is the one which most proves
them to be fools and blind, and in which it is most easy to confound
them by the first gleam of common sense, and by our natural feelings.

For it is not to be doubted that this life endures but for an
instant, that the state of death is eternal, whatever may be its
nature, and that thus all our actions and all our thoughts must take
such different courses according to the state of that eternity, as to
render it impossible to take a single step with sense and judgment,
save in view of that point which ought to be our end and aim.

Nothing is more clear than this, and therefore by all principles of
reason the conduct of men is most unreasonable if they do not alter
their course. Hence we may judge concerning those who live without
thinking of the ultimate goal of life, who allow themselves to be
guided by their inclinations and their pleasures without thought or
disquiet, and, as if they could annihilate eternity by turning their
minds from it, consider only how they may make themselves happy for
the moment.

Yet this eternity exists; and death the gate of eternity, which
threatens them every hour, must in a short while infallibly reduce
them to the dread necessity of being through eternity either nothing
or miserable, without knowing which of these eternities is for ever
prepared for them.

This is a doubt which has terrible consequences. They are in danger
of an eternity of misery, and thereupon, as if the matter were not
worth the trouble, they care not to examine whether this is one of
those opinions which men in general receive with a too credulous
facility, or among those which, themselves obscure, have yet a solid
though concealed foundation. Thus they know not whether the matter be
true or false, nor if the proofs be strong or weak. They have them
before their eyes, they refuse to look at them, and in that ignorance
they choose to do all that will bring them into this misfortune if
it exist, to wait for death to verify it, and to be in the meantime
thoroughly satisfied with their state, openly avowing and even making
boast of it. Can we think seriously on the importance of this matter
without being revolted at conduct so extravagant?

Such rest in ignorance is a monstrous thing, and they who live in it
ought to be made aware of its extravagance and stupidity, by having
it revealed to them, that they may be confounded by the sight of
their own folly. For this is how men reason when they choose to live
ignorant of what they are and do not seek to be enlightened. "I know
not," say they....




_NOTES_

_FOR THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION._


To doubt is then a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is
an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at
once unfortunate and unfair. If at the same time he is gay and
presumptuous, I have no terms in which to describe a creature so
extravagant.


A fine subject of rejoicing and boasting, with the head uplifted
in such a fashion.... Therefore let us rejoice; I see not the
conclusion, since it is uncertain, and we shall then see what will
become of us.


Is it courage in a dying man that he dare, in his weakness and agony,
face an almighty and eternal God?


Were I in that state I should be glad if any one would pity my folly,
and would have the goodness to deliver me in despite of myself!


Yet it is certain that man has so fallen from nature that there is in
his heart a seed of joy in that very fact.


A man in a dungeon, who knows not whether his doom is fixed, who has
but one hour to learn it, and this hour enough, should he know that
it is fixed, to obtain its repeal, would act against nature did he
employ that hour, not in learning his sentence, but in playing piquet.

So it is against nature that man, etc. It is to weight the hand of
God.


Thus not the zeal alone of those who seek him proves God, but the
blindness of those who seek him not.


We run carelessly to the precipice after having veiled our eyes to
hinder us from seeing it.


Between us and hell or heaven, there is nought but life, the frailest
thing in all the world.


If it be a supernatural blindness to live without seeking to know
what we are, it is a terrible blindness to live ill while believing
in God.


The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great
things, is the mark of a strange inversion.


This shows that there is nothing to say to them, not that we despise
them, but because they have no common sense: God must touch them.


We must pity both parties, but for the one we must feel the pity born
of tenderness, and for the other the pity born of contempt.


We must indeed be of that religion which man despises that we may not
despise men.


People of that kind are academicians and scholars, and that is the
worst kind of men that I know.


I do not gather that by system, but by the way in which the heart of
man is made.


To reproach Miton, that he is not troubled when God will reproach him.


Is this a thing to say with joy? It is a thing we ought then to say
with sadness.


Nothing is so important as this, yet we neglect this only.


This is all that a man could do were he assured of the falsehood of
that news, and even then he ought not to be joyful, but downcast.


... Suppose an heir finds the title-deeds of his house. Will he say,
"Perhaps they are forgeries?" and neglect to examine them?


We must not say that this is a mark of reason.


To be so insensible as to despise interesting things, and to become
insensible to the point which most interests us.


What then shall we conclude of all these obscurities, if not our own
unworthiness?




_THE MISERY OF MAN WITHOUT GOD_;

_OR_

_THAT NATURE IS NATURALLY CORRUPT_.




_PREFACE TO THE FIRST PART._


To speak of those who have treated of the knowledge of self, of the
divisions of Charron which sadden and weary us, of the confusion of
Montaigne; that he was aware he had no definite system, and tried
to evade the difficulty by leaping from subject to subject; that he
sought to be fashionable.

His foolish project of self-description, and this not casually and
against his maxims, since everybody may make mistakes, but by his
maxims themselves, and by his main and principal design. For to say
foolish things by chance and weakness is an ordinary evil, but to say
them designedly is unbearable, and to say of such that....


_Montaigne._--Montaigne's defects are great. Lewd expressions. This
is bad, whatever Mademoiselle de Gournay may say. He is credulous,
_people without eyes_; ignorant, _squaring the circle, a greater
world_. His opinions on suicide and on death. He suggests a
carelessness about salvation, _without fear and without repentance_.
Since his book was not written with a religious intent, it was not
his duty to speak of religion; but it is always a duty not to turn
men from it. We may excuse his somewhat lax and licentious opinions
on some relations of life, but not his thoroughly pagan opinions on
death, for a man must give over piety altogether, if he does not at
least wish to die like a Christian. Now through the whole of his book
he looks forward to nothing but a soft and indolent death.


What good there is in Montaigne can only have been acquired with
difficulty. What is evil in him, I mean apart from his morality,
could have been corrected in a moment, if any one had told him he was
too prolix and too egoistical.


Not in Montaigne, but in myself, I find all that I see in him.


Let no one say I have said nothing new, the disposition of my matter
is new. In playing tennis, two men play with the same ball, but one
places it better.

It might as truly be said that my words have been used before. And if
the same thoughts in a different arrangement do not form a different
discourse, so neither do the same words in a different arrangement
form different thoughts.




_MAN'S DISPROPORTION._


This is where our intuitive knowledge leads us. If it be not true,
there is no truth in man; and if it be, he finds therein a great
reason for humiliation, because he must abase himself in one way
or another. And since he cannot exist without such knowledge, I
wish that before entering on deeper researches into nature he
would consider her seriously and at leisure, that he would examine
himself also, and knowing what proportion there is.... Let man
then contemplate the whole realm of nature in its full and exalted
majesty, and turn his eyes from the low objects which hem him
round; let him observe that brilliant light set like an eternal
lamp to illumine the universe, let the earth appear to him a point
in comparison with the vast circle described by that sun, and let
him see with amazement that even this vast circle is itself but a
fine point in regard to that described by the stars revolving in
the firmament. If our view be arrested there, let imagination pass
beyond, and it will sooner exhaust the power of thinking than nature
that of giving scope for thought. The whole visible world is but an
imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches
it. We may swell our conceptions beyond all imaginable space, yet
bring forth only atoms in comparison with the reality of things.
It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is every where, the
circumference no where. It is, in short, the greatest sensible mark
of the almighty power of God, in that thought let imagination lose
itself.

Then, returning to himself, let man consider his own being compared
with all that is; let him regard himself as wandering in this remote
province of nature; and from the little dungeon in which he finds
himself lodged, I mean the universe, let him learn to set a true
value on the earth, on its kingdoms, its cities, and on himself.

What is a man in the infinite? But to show him another prodigy no
less astonishing, let him examine the most delicate things he knows.
Let him take a mite which in its minute body presents him with
parts incomparably more minute; limbs with their joints, veins in
the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the
humours, vapours in the drops; let him, again dividing these last,
exhaust his power of thought; let the last point at which he arrives
be that of which we speak, and he will perhaps think that here is the
extremest diminutive in nature. Then I will open before him therein
a new abyss. I will paint for him not only the visible universe, but
all that he can conceive of nature's immensity in the enclosure of
this diminished atom. Let him therein see an infinity of universes
of which each has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the
same proportion as in the visible world; in each earth animals, and
at the last the mites, in which he will come upon all that was in
the first, and still find in these others the same without end and
without cessation; let him lose himself in wonders as astonishing in
their minuteness as the others in their immensity; for who will not
be amazed at seeing that our body, which before was imperceptible in
the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now
a colossus, a world, a whole, in regard to the nothingness to which
we cannot attain.

Whoso takes this survey of himself will be terrified at the thought
that he is upheld in the material being, given him by nature, between
these two abysses of the infinite and nothing, he will tremble at the
sight of these marvels; and I think that as his curiosity changes
into wonder, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence
than to search into them with presumption.

For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in regard to the
infinite, a whole in regard to nothing, a mean between nothing and
the whole; infinitely removed from understanding either extreme. The
end of things and their beginnings are invincibly hidden from him in
impenetrable secrecy, he is equally incapable of seeing the nothing
whence he was taken, and the infinite in which he is engulfed.

What shall he do then, but discern somewhat of the middle of things
in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning or their end?
All things arise from nothing, and tend towards the infinite. Who
can follow their marvellous course? The author of these wonders can
understand them, and none but he.

Of these two infinites in nature, the infinitely great and the
infinitely little, man can more easily conceive the great.

Because they have not considered these infinities, men have rashly
plunged into the research of nature, as though they bore some
proportion to her.

It is strange that they have wished to understand the origin of all
that is, and thence to attain to the knowledge of the whole, with
a presumption as infinite as their object. For there is no doubt
that such a design cannot be formed without presumption or without a
capacity as infinite as nature.

If we are well informed, we understand that nature having graven her
own image and that of her author on all things, they are almost all
partakers of her double infinity. Thus we see that all the sciences
are infinite in the extent of their researches, for none can doubt
that geometry, for instance, has an infinite infinity of problems
to propose. They are also infinite in the number and in the nicety
of their premisses, for it is evident that those which are finally
proposed are not self-supporting, but are based on others, which
again having others as their support have no finality.

But we make some apparently final to the reason, just as in regard to
material things we call that an indivisible point beyond which our
senses can no longer perceive any thing, though by its nature this
also is infinitely divisible.

Of these two scientific infinities, that of greatness is the
most obvious to the senses, and therefore few persons have made
pretensions to universal knowledge. "I will discourse of the all,"
said Democritus.

But beyond the fact that it is a small thing to speak of it simply,
without proving and knowing, it is nevertheless impossible to do so,
the infinite multitude of things being so hidden, that all we can
express by word or thought is but an invisible trace of them. Hence
it is plain how foolish, vain, and ignorant is that title of some
books: _De omni scibili_.

But the infinitely little is far less evident. Philosophers have much
more frequently asserted they have attained it, yet in that very
point they have all stumbled. This has given occasion to such common
titles as _The Origin of Creation_, _The Principles of Philosophy_,
and the like, as presumptuous in fact though not in appearance as
that dazzling one, _De omni scibili_.

We naturally think that we can more easily reach the centre of
things than embrace their circumference. The visible bulk of the
world visibly exceeds us, but as we exceed little things, we think
ourselves more capable of possessing them. Yet we need no less
capacity to attain the nothing than the whole. Infinite capacity
is needed for both, and it seems to me that whoever shall have
understood the ultimate principles of existence might also attain
to the knowledge of the infinite. The one depends on the other, and
one leads to the other. Extremes meet and reunite by virtue of their
distance, to find each other in God, and in God alone.

Let us then know our limits; we are something, but we are not all.
What existence we have conceals from us the knowledge of first
principles which spring from the nothing, while the pettiness of that
existence hides from us the sight of the infinite.

In the order of intelligible things our intelligence holds the same
position as our body holds in the vast extent of nature.

Restricted in every way, this middle state between two extremes is
common to all our weaknesses.

Our senses can perceive no extreme. Too much noise deafens us, excess
of light blinds us, too great distance or nearness equally interfere
with our vision, prolixity or brevity equally obscure a discourse,
too much truth overwhelms us. I know even those who cannot understand
that if four be taken from nothing nothing remains. First principles
are too plain for us, superfluous pleasure troubles us. Too many
concords are unpleasing in music, and too many benefits annoy, we
wish to have wherewithal to overpay our debt. _Beneficia eo usque
laeta sunt dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro
gratia odium redditur._

We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold. Qualities in excess
are inimical to us and not apparent to the senses, we do not feel but
are passive under them. The weakness of youth and age equally hinder
the mind, as also too much and too little teaching....

In a word, all extremes are for us as though they were not; and we
are not, in regard to them: they escape us, or we them.

This is our true state; this is what renders us incapable both of
certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail on a vast
expanse, ever uncertain, ever drifting, hurried from one to the other
goal. If we think to attach ourselves firmly to any point, it totters
and fails us; if we follow, it eludes our grasp, and flies from
us, vanishing for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural
condition, yet always the most contrary to our inclination; we burn
with desire to find a steadfast place and an ultimate fixed basis
whereon we may build a tower to reach the infinite. But our whole
foundation breaks up, and earth opens to the abysses.

We may not then look for certainty or stability. Our reason is always
deceived by changing shows, nothing can fix the finite between the
two infinites, which at once enclose and fly from it.

If this be once well understood I think that we shall rest, each in
the state wherein nature has placed him. This element which falls to
us as our lot being always distant from either extreme, it matters
not that a man should have a trifle more knowledge of the universe.
If he has it, he but begins a little higher. He is always infinitely
distant from the end, and the duration of our life is infinitely
removed from eternity, even if it last ten years longer.

In regard to these infinites all finites are equal, and I see not why
we should fix our imagination on one more than on another. The only
comparison which we can make of ourselves to the finite troubles us.

Were man to begin with the study of himself, he would see how
incapable he is of proceeding further. How can a part know the
whole? But he may perhaps aspire to know at least the parts with
which he has proportionate relation. But the parts of the world are
so linked and related, that I think it impossible to know one without
another, or without the whole.

Man, for instance, is related to all that he knows. He needs place
wherein to abide, time through which to exist, motion in order to
live; he needs constituent elements, warmth and food to nourish him,
air to breathe. He sees light, he feels bodies, he contracts an
alliance with all that is.

To know man then it is necessary to understand how it comes that he
needs air to breathe, and to know the air we must understand how it
has relation to the life of man, etc.

Flame cannot exist without air, therefore to know one, we must know
the other.

All that exists then is both cause and effect, dependent and
supporting, mediate and immediate, and all is held together by a
natural though imperceptible bond, which unites things most distant
and most different. I hold it impossible to know the parts without
knowing the whole, or to know the whole without knowing the parts in
detail.

I hold it impossible to know one alone without all the others, that
is to say impossible purely and absolutely.

The eternity of things in themselves or in God must also confound
our brief duration. The fixed and constant immobility of Nature in
comparison with the continual changes which take place in us must
have the same effect.

And what completes our inability to know things is that they are in
their essence simple, whereas we are composed of two opposite natures
differing in kind, soul and body. For it is impossible that our
reasoning part should be other than spiritual; and should any allege
that we are simply material, this would far more exclude us from the
knowledge of things, since it is an inconceivable paradox to affirm
that matter can know itself, and it is not possible for us to know
how it should know itself.

So, were we simply material, we could know nothing whatever, and if
we are composed of spirit and matter we cannot perfectly know what is
simple, whether it be spiritual or material. For how should we know
matter distinctly, since our being, which acts on this knowledge, is
partly spiritual, and how should we know spiritual substances clearly
since we have a body which weights us, and drags us down to earth.

Moreover what completes our inability is the simplicity of things
compared with our double and complex nature. To dispute this point
were an invincible absurdity, for it is as absurd as impious to
deny that man is composed of two parts, differing in their nature,
soul and body. This renders us unable to know all things; for if
this complexity be denied, and it be asserted that we are entirely
material, it is plain that matter is incapable of knowing matter.
Nothing is more impossible than this.

Let us conceive then that this mixture of spirit and clay throws us
out of proportion....

Hence it comes that almost all philosophers have confounded different
ideas, and speak of material things in spiritual phrase, and of
spiritual things in material phrase. For they say boldly that bodies
have a tendency to fall, that they seek after their centre, that
they fly from destruction, that they fear a void, that they have
inclinations, sympathies, antipathies; and all of these are spiritual
qualities. Again, in speaking of spirits, they conceive of them as
in a given spot, or as moving from place to place; qualities which
belong to matter alone.

Instead of receiving the ideas of these things simply, we colour them
with our own qualities, and stamp with our complex being all the
simple things which we contemplate.

Who would not think, when we declare that all that is consists of
mind and matter, that we really understood this combination? Yet it
is the one thing we least understand. Man is to himself the most
marvellous object in Nature, for he cannot conceive what matter is,
still less what is mind, and less than all how a material body should
be united to a mind. This is the crown of all his difficulties,
yet it is his very being: _Modus quo corporibus adhaeret spiritus
comprehendi ab homine non potest et hoc tamen homo est_.

These are some of the causes which render man so totally unable
to know nature. For nature has a twofold infinity, he is finite
and limited. Nature is permanent, and continues in one stay; he is
fleeting and mortal. All things fail and change each instant, he
sees them only as they pass, they have their beginning and end, he
conceives neither the one nor the other. They are simple, he is
composed of two different natures. And to complete the proof of our
weakness, I will finish by this reflection on our natural condition.
In a word, to complete the proof of our weakness, I will end with
these two considerations....


The nature of man may be considered in two ways, one according to
its end, and then it is great and incomparable; the other according
to popular opinion, as we judge of the nature of a horse or a dog,
by popular opinion which discerns in it the power of speed, _et
animum arcendi_; and then man is abject and vile. These are the two
ways which make us judge of it so differently and which cause such
disputes among philosophers.

For one denies the supposition of the other; one says, _He was not
born for such an end, for all his actions are repugnant to it_; the
other says, _He cannot gain his end when he commits base deeds_.

Two things instruct man about his whole nature, instinct and
experience.


_Inconstancy._--We think we are playing on ordinary organs when we
play upon man. Men are organs indeed, but fantastic, changeable,
and various, with pipes not arranged in due succession. Those who
understand only how to play upon ordinary organs make no harmonies on
these. We should know where are the....


_Nature._--Nature has placed us so truly in the centre, that if we
alter one side of the balance we alter also the other. This makes me
believe that there is a mechanism in our brain, so adjusted, that who
touches one touches also the contrary spring.


_Lustravit lampade terras._--The weather and my moods have little
in common. I have my foggy and my fine days within me, whether my
affairs go well or ill has little to do with the matter. I sometimes
strive against my luck, the glory of subduing it makes me subdue it
gaily, whereas I am sometimes wearied in the midst of my good luck.


It is difficult to submit anything to the judgment of a second
person without prejudicing him by the way in which we submit it. If
we say, "I think it beautiful, I think it obscure," or the like, we
either draw the imagination to that opinion, or irritate it to form
the contrary. It is better to say nothing, so that the other may
judge according to what really is, that is to say, as it then is,
and according as the other circumstances which are not of our making
have placed it. We at least shall have added nothing of our own,
except that silence produces an effect, according to the turn and
the interpretation which the other is inclined to give it, or as he
may conjecture it, from gestures or countenance, or from the tone of
voice, if he be a physiognomist; so difficult is it not to oust the
judgment from its natural seat, or rather so rarely is it firm and
stable!


The spirit of this sovereign judge of the world is not so independent
but that it is liable to be troubled by the first disturbance about
him. The noise of a cannon is not needed to break his train of
thought, it need only be the creaking of a weathercock or a pulley.
Do not be astonished if at this moment he argues incoherently, a fly
is buzzing about his ears, and that is enough to render him incapable
of sound judgment. Would you have him arrive at truth, drive away
that creature which holds his reason in check, and troubles that
powerful intellect which gives laws to towns and kingdoms. Here is a
droll kind of god! _O ridicolosissimo eroe!_


The power of flies, which win battles, hinder our soul from action,
devour our body.


When we are too young our judgment is at fault, so also when we are
too old.

If we take not thought enough, or too much, on any matter, we are
obstinate and infatuated.

He that considers his work so soon as it leaves his hands, is
prejudiced in its favour, he that delays his survey too long, cannot
regain the spirit of it.

So with pictures seen from too near or too far; there is but one
precise point from which to look at them, all others are too near or
too far, too high or too low. Perspective determines that precise
point in the art of painting. But who shall determine it in truth or
morals?


When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the
eternity before and after, the small space which I fill, or even can
see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know
nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified, and wonder
that I am here rather than there, for there is no reason why here
rather than there, or now rather than then. Who has set me here? By
whose order and design have this place and time been destined for
me?--_Memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis_.


It is not well to be too much at liberty. It is not well to have all
we want.


How many kingdoms know nothing of us!

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.


Nothing more astonishes me than to see that men are not astonished
at their own weakness. They act seriously, and every one follows his
own mode of life, not because it is, as a fact, good to follow, being
the custom, but as if each man knew certainly where are reason and
justice. They find themselves constantly deceived, and by an amusing
humility always imagine that the fault is in themselves, and not in
the art which all profess to understand. But it is well there are so
many of this kind of people in the world, who are not sceptics for
the glory of scepticism, to show that man is thoroughly capable of
the most extravagant opinions, because he is capable of believing
that his weakness is not natural and inevitable, but that, on the
contrary, his wisdom comes by nature.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than that there are some who are
not sceptics. If all were so, they would be wrong.


Two infinites, a mean. If we read too quickly or too slowly, we
understand nothing.


Too much and too little wine. Give a man none, he cannot find truth,
give him too much, the same.


Chance gives thoughts, and chance takes them away; there is no art
for keeping or gaining them.

A thought has escaped me. I would write it down. I write instead,
that it has escaped me.


In writing down my thought it now and then escapes me, but this
reminds me of my weakness, which I constantly forget. This teaches
me as much as my forgotten thought, for my whole study is to know my
nothingness.


Are men so strong, as to be insensible to all which affects them? Let
us try them in the loss of goods or honour. Ah! the charm is worked.


To fear death out of danger, and not in danger, for we must be men.

Sudden death is the only thing to fear, therefore confessors live in
the houses of the great.


We know ourselves so little, that many think themselves near death
when they are perfectly well, and many think themselves well when
they are near death, since they do not feel the fever at hand, or the
abscess about to form.


Why is my knowledge so restricted, or my height, or my life to a
hundred years rather than to a thousand? What was nature's reason for
giving me such length of days, and for choosing this number rather
than another, in that infinity where there is no reason to choose one
more than another, since none is preferable to another?


The nature of man is not always to go forward, it has its advances
and retreats.

Fever has its hot and cold fits, and the cold proves as well as the
hot how great is the force of the fever.


The inventions of men from age to age follow the same plan. It is the
same with the goodness and the wickedness of the world in general.

_Plerumque gratae principibus vices._


The strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his occasional
efforts, but by his ordinary life.


Those great spiritual efforts to which the soul sometimes attains are
things on which it takes no permanent hold. It leaps to them, not as
to a throne, for ever, but only for an instant.


I do not admire the excess of a virtue as of valour, unless I see at
the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as in Epaminondas,
who had exceeding valour and exceeding humanity, for otherwise we do
not rise, but fall. Grandeur is not shown by being at one extremity,
but in touching both at once, and filling the whole space between.
But perhaps this is only a sudden motion of the soul from one to the
other extreme, and in fact it is always at one point only, as when a
firebrand is whirled. Be it so, but at least this marks the agility
if not the magnitude of the soul.


We do not remain virtuous by our own power, but by the counterpoise
of two opposite vices, we remain standing as between two contrary
winds; take away one of these vices, we fall into the other.


When we would pursue the virtues to their extremes on either side,
vices present themselves, which insinuate themselves insensibly
there, in their insensible course towards the infinitely great, so
that we lose ourselves in vices, and no longer see virtues.


It is not shameful to man to yield to pain, and it is shameful to
yield to pleasure. This is not because pain comes from without
us, while we seek pleasure, for we may seek pain, and yield to it
willingly without this kind of baseness. How comes it then that
reason finds it glorious in us to yield under the assaults of
pain, and shameful to yield under the assaults of pleasure? It is
because pain does not tempt and attract us. We ourselves choose it
voluntarily, and will that it have dominion over us. We are thus
masters of the situation, and so far man yields to himself, but in
pleasure man yields to pleasure. Now only mastery and empire bring
glory, and only slavery causes shame.


All things may prove fatal to us, even those made to serve us, as
in nature walls may kill us and stairs may kill us, if we walk not
aright.

The slightest movement affects all nature, the whole sea changes
because of a rock. Thus in grace, the most trifling action has effect
on everything by its consequences; therefore everything is important.


Provided we know each man's ruling passion we are sure of pleasing
him; yet each man has his fancies, contrary to his real good, even in
the very idea he forms of good; a strange fact which puts all out of
tune.


When our passions lead us to any act we forget our duty. If we
like a book we read it, when we should be doing something else.
But as a reminder we ought to propose to ourselves to do something
distasteful; we then excuse ourselves that we have something else to
do, and thus remember our duty.


Sneezing absorbs all the faculties of the soul, as do certain bodily
functions, but we do not draw therefrom the same conclusions against
the greatness of man, because it is against his will. And if we make
ourselves sneeze we do so against our will. It is not in view of
the act itself, but for another end, and so it is not a mark of the
weakness of man, and of his slavery to that act.


Scaramouch, who thinks of one thing only.

The doctor, who speaks for a quarter of an hour after he has said all
he has to say, so full is he of the desire of talking.

The parrot's beak, which he dries though it is clean already.


The sense of falseness in present pleasures, and our ignorance of the
vanity of absent pleasures, are the causes of inconstancy.


He no longer loves the person he loved ten years ago. I can well
believe it. She is no longer the same, nor is he. He was young, and
so was she; she is quite different. He would perhaps love her still
were she what she then was.


Reasons, seen from afar, appear to restrict our view, but not when we
reach them; we begin to see beyond.


... We look at things not only from other sides, but with other eyes,
and care not to find them alike.


Diversity is so ample, that all tones of voice, all modes of walking,
coughing, blowing the nose, sneering. We distinguish different kinds
of vine by their fruit, and name them the Condrieu, the Desargues,
and this stock. But is this all? Has a vine ever produced two bunches
exactly alike, and has a bunch ever two grapes alike? etc.

I never can judge of the same thing exactly in the same way. I cannot
judge of my work while engaged on it. I must do as the painters,
stand at a distance, but not too far. How far, then? Guess.


_Diversity._--Theology is a science; but at the same time how many
sciences! Man is a whole, but if we dissect him, will man be the
head, the heart, the stomach, the veins, each vein, each portion of a
vein, the blood, each humour of the blood?

A town, a champaign, is from afar a town and a champaign; but as we
approach there are houses, trees, tiles, leaves, grass, emmets, limbs
of emmets, in infinite series. All this is comprised under the word
champaign.


We like to see the error, the passion of Cleobuline, because she is
not aware of it. She would be displeasing if she were not deceived.


What a confusion of judgment is that, by which every one puts himself
above all the rest of the world, and loves his own advantage and the
duration of his happiness or his life above those of all others.




_DIVERSION._


Diversion.--When I have set myself now and then to consider the
various distractions of men, the toils and dangers to which they
expose themselves in the court or the camp, whence arise so many
quarrels and passions, such daring and often such evil exploits,
etc., I have discovered that all the misfortunes of men arise from
one thing only, that they are unable to stay quietly in their own
chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to dwell
with pleasure in his own home, would not leave it for sea-faring
or to besiege a city. An office in the army would not be bought so
dearly but that it seems insupportable not to stir from the town, and
people only seek conversation and amusing games because they cannot
remain with pleasure in their own homes.

But upon stricter examination, when, having found the cause of all
our ills, I have sought to discover the reason of it, I have found
one which is paramount, the natural evil of our weak and mortal
condition, so miserable that nothing can console us when we think of
it attentively.

Whatever condition we represent to ourselves, if we bring to our
minds all the advantages it is possible to possess, Royalty is the
finest position in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king surrounded
with all the conditions which he can desire, if he be without
diversion, and be allowed to consider and examine what he is, this
feeble happiness will never sustain him; he will necessarily fall
into a foreboding of maladies which threaten him, of revolutions
which may arise, and lastly, of death and inevitable diseases; so
that if he be without what is called diversion he is unhappy, and
more unhappy than the humblest of his subjects who plays and diverts
himself.

Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war, and offices
of state, are so sought after. Not that there is in these any real
happiness, or that any imagine true bliss to consist in the money won
at play, or in the hare which is hunted; we would not have these as
gifts. We do not seek an easy and peaceful lot which leaves us free
to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the
troubles of statecraft, but seek rather the distraction which amuses
us, and diverts our mind from these thoughts.

Hence it comes that men so love noise and movement, hence it comes
that a prison is so horrible a punishment, hence it comes that the
pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And it is the great
subject of happiness in the condition of kings, that all about them
try incessantly to divert them, and to procure for them all manner of
pleasures.

The king is surrounded by persons who think only how to divert the
king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king
though he be, if he think of self.

That is all that human ingenuity can do for human happiness. And
those who philosophise on the matter, and think men unreasonable
that they pass a whole day in hunting a hare which they would not
have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare itself would not free
us from the view of death and our miseries, but the chase of the
hare does free us. Thus, when we make it a reproach that what they
seek with such eagerness cannot satisfy them, if they answered as on
mature judgment they should do, that they sought in it only violent
and impetuous occupation to turn their thoughts from self, and that
therefore they made choice of an attractive object which charms and
ardently attracts them, they would leave their adversaries without a
reply. But they do not so answer because they do not know themselves;
they do not know they seek the chase and not the quarry.

They fancy that were they to gain such and such an office they would
then rest with pleasure, and are unaware of the insatiable nature of
their desire. They believe they are honestly seeking repose, but they
are only seeking agitation.

They have a secret instinct prompting them to look for diversion
and occupation from without, which arises from the sense of their
continual pain. They have another secret instinct, a relic of the
greatness of our primitive nature, teaching them that happiness
indeed consists in rest, and not in turmoil. And of these two
contrary instincts a confused project is formed within them,
concealing itself from their sight in the depths of their soul,
leading them to aim at rest through agitation, and always to imagine
that they will gain the satisfaction which as yet they have not, if
by surmounting certain difficulties which now confront them, they may
thereby open the door to rest.

Thus rolls all our life away. We seek repose by resistance to
obstacles, and so soon as these are surmounted, repose becomes
intolerable. For we think either on the miseries we feel or on those
we fear. And even when we seem sheltered on all sides, weariness, of
its own accord, will spring from the depths of the heart wherein are
its natural roots, and fill the soul with its poison.


The counsel given to Pyrrhus to take the rest of which he was going
in search through so many labours, was full of difficulties.


A gentleman sincerely believes that the chase is a great, and even a
royal sport, but his whipper-in does not share his opinion.

_Dancing._--We must think where to place our feet.


But can you say what object he has in all this? The pleasure of
boasting to-morrow among his friends that he has played better
than another. Thus others sweat in their closets to prove to the
learned world that they have solved an algebraical problem hitherto
insoluble, while many more expose themselves to the greatest perils,
in my judgment as foolishly, for the glory of taking a town. Again,
others kill themselves, by their very application to all these
studies, not indeed that they may grow wiser, but simply to prove
that they know them; these are the most foolish of the band, because
they are so wittingly, whereas it is reasonable to suppose of the
others, that were they but aware of it, they would give over their
folly.

A man passes his life without weariness in playing every day for a
small stake. Give him each morning, on condition he does not play,
the money he might possibly win, and you make him miserable. It will
be said, perhaps, that he seeks the amusement of play, and not the
winnings. Make him then play for nothing, he will not be excited over
it, and will soon be wearied. Mere diversion then is not his pursuit,
a languid and passionless amusement will weary him. He must grow
warm in it, and cheat himself by thinking that he is made happy by
gaining what he would despise if it were given him not to play; and
must frame for himself a subject of passion and excitement to employ
his desire, his wrath, his fear, as children are frightened at a face
they themselves have daubed.

Whence comes it that a man who within a few months has lost his
only son, or who this morning was overwhelmed with law suits and
wrangling, now thinks of them no more? Be not surprised; he is
altogether taken up with looking out for the boar which his hounds
have been hunting so hotly for the last six hours. He needs no more.
However full of sadness a man may be, he is happy for the time, if
you can only get him to enter into some diversion. And however happy
a man may be, he will soon become dispirited and miserable if he be
not diverted and occupied by some passion or pursuit which hinders
his being overcome by weariness. Without diversion no joy, with
diversion no sadness. And this forms the happiness of persons in high
position, that they have a number of people to divert them, and that
they have the power to keep themselves in this state.

Take heed to this. What is it to be superintendent, chancellor, first
president, but to be in a condition wherein from early morning a vast
number of persons flock in from every side, so as not to leave them
an hour in the day in which they can think of themselves? And if they
are in disgrace and dismissed to their country houses, though they
want neither wealth nor retinue at need, they yet are miserable and
desolate because no one hinders them from thinking of themselves.

Thus man is so unhappy that he wearies himself without cause of
weariness by the peculiar state of his temperament, and he is so
frivolous that, being full of a thousand essential causes of
weariness, the least thing, such as a cue and a ball to strike with
it, is enough to divert him.


_Diversions._--Men are charged from infancy with the care of their
honour, their fortunes, and their friends, and more, with the care
of the fortunes and honour of their friends. They are overwhelmed
with business, with the study of languages and bodily exercises;
they are given to understand that they cannot be happy unless their
health, their honour, their fortune and that of their friends be in
good condition, and that a single point wanting will render them
unhappy. Thus we give them business and occupations which harass them
incessantly from the very dawn of day. A strange mode, you will say,
of making them happy. What more could be done to make them miserable?
What could be done? We need only release them from all these cares,
for then they would see themselves; they would think on what they
are, whence they come, and whither they go, and therefore it is
impossible to occupy and distract them too much. This is why, after
having provided them with constant business, if there be any time to
spare we urge them to employ it in diversion and in play, so as to be
always fully occupied.


How comes it that this man, distressed at the death of his wife and
his only son, or who has some great and embarrassing law suit, is not
at this moment sad, and that he appears so free from all painful and
distressing thoughts? We need not be astonished, for a ball has just
been served to him, and he must return it to his opponent. His whole
thoughts are fixed on taking it as it falls from the pent-house, to
win a chase; and you cannot ask that he should think on his business,
having this other affair in hand. Here is a care worthy of occupying
this great soul, and taking away from him every other thought of the
mind. This man, born to know the Universe, to judge of all things, to
rule a State, is altogether occupied and filled with the business of
catching a hare. And if he will not abase himself to this, and wishes
always to be highly strung, he will only be more foolish still,
because he wishes to raise himself above humanity; yet when all is
said and done he is only a man, that is to say capable of little and
of much, of all and of nothing. He is neither angel nor brute, but
man.

One thought alone occupies us, we cannot think of two things at once;
a good thing for us from a worldly point of view, but not as regards
God.


_Diversion._--Death is easier to bear without the thought of it, than
is the thought of death without danger.


_Diversion._--Men, unable to remedy death, sorrow, and ignorance,
determine, in order to make themselves happy, not to think on these
things.

Notwithstanding these miseries, man wishes to be happy, and wishes
for happiness only; unable to wish otherwise, he knows not how to
gain happiness. For this he must needs make himself immortal; but
unable to effect this, he sets himself to avoid the thought of death.


The miseries of human life are the cause of all this; having a
perception of them men take to diversion.


_Diversion._--If man were happy he would be the more so the less he
was diverted, like the Saints and God.

Yes: but is not the power of being pleased with diversion in itself
a happiness? No; for that comes from elsewhere and from without, so
it is dependent, and therefore liable to be troubled by a thousand
accidents, which make afflictions inevitable.


_Misery._--The one thing which consoles us for our miseries is
diversion, yet this itself is the greatest of our miseries. For
this it is which mainly hinders us from thinking of ourselves, and
which insensibly destroys us. Without this we should be weary, and
weariness would drive us to seek a more abiding way out of it. But
diversion beguiles us and leads us insensibly onward to death.


This is all they have been able to discover to console them in so
many evils. But it is a miserable consolation, since it does not
serve for the cure of the evil, but simply for the concealment of
it for a short time, and its very concealment prevents the thought
of any true cure. Thus by a strange inversion of man's nature he
finds that the weariness which is his most sensible evil, is in
some measure his greatest good, because more than any thing else it
contributes to make him seek his true healing, and that the diversion
which he regards as his greatest good is in fact his greatest evil,
because more than any thing else it prevents his seeking the remedy
for his evils. Both of these are admirable proofs of man's misery and
corruption, and at the same time of his greatness, since man is only
weary of all things, and only seeks this multitude of occupations
because he has the idea of a lost happiness. And not finding this in
himself, he seeks it vainly in external things, without being able to
content himself, because it is neither in us, nor in the creature,
but in God alone.


_Thoughts._--_In omnibus requiem quaesivi._

Were our condition truly happy we need not turn our minds from it in
order to become happy.

A little matter consoles us, because a little matter afflicts us.


Strife alone pleases us and not the victory. We like to see beasts
fighting, not the victor furious over the vanquished. We wish only to
see the victorious end, and as soon as it comes, we are surfeited. It
is the same in play, and in the search for truth. In all disputes we
like to see the clash of opinions, but care not at all to contemplate
truth when found. If we are to see truth with pleasure, we must see
it arise out of conflict.

So in the passions, there is pleasure in seeing the shock of two
contraries, but as soon as one gains the mastery it becomes mere
brutality. We never seek things in themselves, but only the search
for things. So on the stage, quiet scenes which raise no emotion are
worthless, so is extreme and hopeless misery, so are brutal lust and
excessive cruelty.


Continuous eloquence wearies.

Princes and kings sometimes unbend. They are not for ever on
their thrones, where they grow weary. Grandeur to be felt must be
abandoned, continuity in any thing is displeasing. Cold is pleasant,
that we may seek warmth.


_Weariness._--Nothing is so insupportable to man as to be completely
at rest, without passion, without business, without diversion,
without study. He then feels his nothingness, his loneliness, his
insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness.

At once, from the depth of his soul, will arise weariness, gloom,
sadness, vexation, disappointment, despair.


_Agitation._--When a soldier complains of his work, or a ploughman,
etc., force them to be idle.


_Diversion._--Is not the royal dignity itself so truly great as to
make its possessor happy by the mere contemplation of what he is?
Must he be diverted from this thought like ordinary people? I see
well enough that a man may be made happy by diverting him from the
thought of his domestic sorrows so that he apply all his care to
excel in dancing. But will it be the same with a king, and will he be
happier if he devote himself to these idle amusements rather than to
the contemplation of his greatness? And what more satisfactory object
can he offer to his mind? Might it not be to lessen his content that
he occupy his soul in thinking how to suit his steps to the cadence
of an air, or how to throw a bar skilfully, rather than allow it to
enjoy peacefully the contemplation of the majesty which wraps him
round? Let us make the experiment, let us leave a king all alone,
without any gratifications of sense, or any occupation for the mind,
without companions, reflecting on himself at leisure, and it will be
seen that a king without diversion is a man full of miseries. This is
therefore carefully avoided, and there are always about the persons
of kings a great number of people who watch to see that diversion
succeeds to business, and look after their every hour of leisure to
furnish them with pleasures and games, so that no vacancy may be
left in life; that is, they are surrounded with persons who take
wonderful pains that the king is never alone and able to think of
self, knowing well that he will be miserable, king though he is, if
he think of self.

In all this I am not speaking of Christian kings as Christians, but
simply as kings.


Men busy themselves in pursuing a ball or a hare, and this is the
pleasure even of kings.


Caesar, as it seems to me, was too old to set about amusing himself
with the conquest of the world. Such a pastime was good for Augustus
or Alexander, who were still young men, and these are difficult to
restrain, but Caesar should have been more mature.


The weariness we experience in leaving occupations to which we are
attached. A man lives with pleasure in his home, but if he see a
woman who charms him, or if he take pleasure in play for five or
six days, he is miserable if he return to his former mode of life.
Nothing is more common than that.


_Frivolity._--It is plain that the frivolity of the world is so
little known, that it is a strange and surprising thing to say it is
foolish to seek for greatness, and this is great cause for wonder.


Whoso does not see the frivolity of the world is himself most
frivolous. And indeed all see it save young people, who are engaged
in turmoil, diversion, and the thought of the future. But take away
their diversion and you will see them consumed with weariness; then
they feel their nothingness without knowing it. For it is indeed to
be unhappy to be intolerably sad as soon as we are reduced to the
thought of self, without any diversion.




_THE GREATNESS AND LITTLENESS OF MAN._


Greatness, _Littleness_.--The more light we have, the more greatness
and the more baseness we discover in man.

Ordinary men....

The more cultivated....

Philosophers.

They astonish ordinary men.

Christians. They astonish Philosophers.

Who then will be surprised to see that Religion only makes us know
deeply what we already know in proportion to our light.


_For Port Royal. Greatness and Littleness._

Littleness being correlative to greatness, and greatness to
littleness, some have inferred man's littleness all the more because
they have taken his greatness as a proof of it, and others have
inferred his greatness with all the more force, because they have
inferred it from his littleness; all that the one party was able
to say for his greatness having served only as an argument of his
littleness to others, because we are low in proportion to the height
from which we have fallen, and the contrary is equally true. So that
the one party returns on the other in an endless circle, for it is
certain that in measure as men possess light the more they discern
both the greatness and the littleness of man. In a word, man knows he
is little. He is then little because he is so; but he is truly great
because he knows it.


Man knows not in what rank to place himself. He has evidently gone
astray and fallen from his true place, unable to find it again.
Disquieted and unsuccessful he seeks it everywhere in impenetrable
darkness.


Though we see all the miseries which close upon us and take us by the
throat, we have an irrepressible instinct which raises us.


_The greatness of Man._--We have so great an idea of the human soul
that we cannot bear to be despised, or to lie under the disesteem of
any soul, and all the happiness of men consists in that esteem.


The search after glory is the greatest vileness of man. Yet it is
also the greatest mark of his excellence, for whatever riches he may
have on earth, whatever health and advantage, he is not satisfied if
he have not the esteem of men. He rates human reason so highly that
whatever privileges he may have on earth, he is not content unless
he stand well in the judgment of men. This is the finest position in
the world, nothing can turn him from this desire, which is the most
indelible quality of the human heart.

And those who most despise men, and place them on the level of the
brutes, still wish to be admired and believed by men, and are in
contradiction with themselves through their own feelings; their
nature, which is stronger than all else, convincing them of the
greatness of man more powerfully than reason convinces them of their
vileness.


The vileness of man in that he submits himself to the brutes, and
even worships them.


Instinct and reason, marks of two natures.


Description of man. Dependence, desire of independence, bodily needs.


Contradiction. To despise existence, to die for nothing, to hate our
existence.


Man is neither angel nor brute, and the misfortune is that whoever
would play the angel plays the brute.


If man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?

If man is made for God, why is he so contrary to God?


Contraries. Man is naturally credulous and incredulous, timid and
rash.


_A corrupt nature._--Man does not act by reason, which constitutes
his essence.


The nature of man is his whole nature, _omne animal_.

There is nothing we cannot make natural, nothing natural we cannot
lose.


The true nature being lost, all becomes natural. As the true good
being lost, all becomes truly good.


_Misery._--Solomon and Job best knew, and have best spoken of
human misery; the former the most fortunate, the latter the most
unfortunate of men; the one knowing by experience the vanity of
pleasure, the other the reality of evil.


It is dangerous to prove to man too plainly how nearly he is on
a level with the brutes without showing him his greatness; it is
also dangerous to show him his greatness too clearly apart from his
vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of
both. But it is of great advantage to show him both.


How comes it that we have so much patience with those who are maimed
in body, and so little with those who are defective in mind? Because
a cripple recognises that we have the true use of our legs, but the
fool maintains that we are they whose understanding halts; were it
not so we should feel pity and not anger.

Epictetus puts it yet more strongly: "How comes it that we are not
angry if a man says we have an headache, but are angry if told we use
a weak argument or make a wrong choice?" The reason of this is that
we are quite certain we have no headache, or are not lame, but we are
not equally sure that our judgment is correct. So having no assurance
but that we see with our whole powers of sight, we are startled and
confounded when another with equal powers sees the exact opposite,
especially when a thousand others laugh at our decision; for then
we must prefer our light to that of so many others, a daring and
difficult matter. There is never this contradiction in feeling as to
a cripple.

Man is so framed that by dint of telling him he is a fool he believes
it, and by dint of telling it to himself he makes himself believe it.
For man holds a secret communing with himself, which it behoves him
well to regulate: _Corrumpunt mores bonos colloquia prava_. We must
keep silent as much as possible, and converse with ourselves only of
God, whom we know to be true, and thus we persuade ourselves of truth.


I will not suffer him to rest on himself, nor on another, so that
being without a resting place or repose....


If he exalt himself I humble him, if he humble himself I exalt
him, and ever contradict him, till he comprehend that he is an
incomprehensible monster.


The greatness of man consists in thought.


_A thinking reed._--Not from space must I seek my dignity, but from
the ruling of my thought. I should have no more if I possessed whole
worlds. By space the Universe encompasses and swallows me as an atom,
by thought I encompass it.


Man is but a reed, weakest in nature, but a reed which thinks. It
needs not that the whole Universe should arm to crush him. A vapour,
a drop of water is enough to kill him. But were the Universe to crush
him, man would still be more noble than that which has slain him,
because he knows that he dies, and that the Universe has the better
of him. The Universe knows nothing of this.


All our dignity therefore consists in thought. By this must we raise
ourselves, not by space or duration which we cannot fill. Then let us
make it our study to think well, for this is the starting-point of
morals.


The greatness of man is great in that he knows he is miserable. A
tree does not know that it is miserable.

It is therefore little to know ourselves little, and it is great to
know ourselves little.

Thus his very infirmities proves man's greatness. They are the
infirmities of a great lord, of a discrowned king.


The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his
littleness. For what in animals is nature we call in man littleness,
whereby we recognise that his nature being now like that of animals
he is fallen from a better nature which once was his.

For what man ever was unhappy at not being a king, save a discrowned
king? Was Paulus Emilius unhappy at being no longer consul? On the
contrary, all men thought him happy in having filled that office,
because it was involved in it that it should be but temporary. But
Perseus was thought so unhappy in being no longer king, because the
condition of royalty involved his being always king, that it was
thought strange he could bear to live. No man thinks himself unhappy
in having but one mouth, but any man is unhappy if he have but one
eye. No man was ever grieved at not having three eyes, but any man is
inconsolable if he have none.


_Perseus, King of Macedon._--Paulus Emilius reproached Perseus for
not killing himself.


There is no misery apart from sensation. A ruined house is not
miserable. Man only is miserable. _Ego vir videns._


It is then thought which makes man's being, and without this we
cannot conceive him. What is it in us which feels pleasure? The hand?
The arm? The flesh? The blood? We see that it roust be something
immaterial.


I can easily conceive a man without hands, feet, head, for it is only
experience which teaches us that the head is more necessary than the
feet. But I cannot conceive a man without thought; he would be a
stone or a brute.


Man is evidently made for thought, this is his whole dignity and his
whole merit; his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of
thought is to begin with self, and with its author and its end.

Now of what thinks the world? Never of these things, but of dancing,
playing the lute, singing, making verses, tilting at the ring, etc.,
of fighting, making ourselves kings, without thinking what it is to
be a king, or what to be a man.


_Thought._--The whole dignity of man lies in thought But what is this
thought? how foolish it is!


Thought is then in its nature admirable and incomparable. It must
have strange defects to be despicable, but it has these, and so
nothing is more ridiculous.

How great it is in essence, how vile in defects!


_Contraries._ _After having shown the vileness and the greatness of
man._--Let man now estimate his value. Let him love himself, because
he has a nature capable of good, but let him not therefore love
the vileness which exists in that nature. Let him despise himself,
because this capacity is void, but let him not therefore despise his
natural capacity. Let him hate himself, let him love himself: he has
in himself the power of knowing the truth and being happy, and yet
has found no truth either permanent or satisfactory.

I would then lead man to the desire of finding it; to be free from
passions and ready to follow it where he may find it, knowing how his
knowledge is obscured by the passions. I would that he should hate
in himself the desires which bias his judgment, that they may neither
blind him in making his choice, nor obstruct him when he has chosen.


I blame equally those who take on themselves to praise man, those
who take on themselves to blame him, and those who merely amuse
themselves; I can approve those only who seek with tears.


The stoics say, "Retire within yourselves, there will you find your
rest;" which is not true. Others say, "Go out of yourselves, seek
your happiness in diversion;" nor is that true, for sickness may come.

Happiness is neither without us nor within us; it is in God, both
without us and within us.




_OF THE DECEPTIVE POWERS OF THE IMAGINATION_.


_Of the deceptive powers_.--Man is only a subject full of natural
error, which is indelible without grace. Nothing shows him the truth,
everything deceives him. These two principles of truth, reason and
the senses, in addition to the fact that they are both wanting in
sincerity, reciprocally deceive each other. The senses trick the
reason by false appearances, and gain from reason in their turn the
same deception with which they deceive; reason avenges herself. The
passions of the soul trouble the senses, and make on them false
impressions. They lie and deceive, outvying one another.

But beyond those errors which come by accident, and by a lack of
intelligence, with these heterogeneous faculties.... _To begin thus
the chapter on the deceptive powers_.


_Imagination._--This is that deceitful part of man, the mistress of
error and falsity, the more knavish that she is not always so, for
she would be an infallible rule of truth, if she were an infallible
rule of lying. But being for the most part false, she gives no mark
of her character, stamping the true and the false with the same die.

I speak not of fools, but of the wisest men, and it is among them
that imagination has the great gift of persuasion. Reason protests in
vain, for she can make no true estimate.

This proud potentate, who loves to rule and domineer over her enemy,
reason, has established in man a second nature in order to show her
wide-spread influence. She makes men happy and miserable, sound and
sick, rich and poor; she obliges reason to believe, doubt and deny;
she dulls the senses, or sharpens them; she has her fools and wise;
and nothing vexes us more than to see that she fills her votaries
with a satisfaction far more full and entire than does reason. Those
whose imagination is active feel greater complacency than the truly
wise can reasonably allow themselves to feel. They look down on
other men as from the height of empire, they argue with assurance
and confidence, others with diffidence and fear, and this gaiety
of countenance often gives the former an advantage in the minds of
their hearers; such favour do the imaginary wise find from judges
like-minded. Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them
content, and so triumphs over reason, which can only make its friends
miserable; the one covers them with glory, the other with shame.

What but this faculty of imagination dispenses reputation, assigns
respect and veneration to persons, works, laws, and the great? How
valueless are all the treasures of earth without her consent!

You would say that this magistrate whose reverend age commands the
respect of a whole people is swayed by pure and lofty reason, that he
judges all causes according to their true nature, unmoved by those
mere accidents which only affect the imagination of the weak. See him
go to sermon with devout zeal, strengthening his firm and impartial
reason by the ardour of his divine love. He is ready to listen with
exemplary respect. The preacher appears; but if nature have given him
a hoarse voice or a comic face, if his barber have shaven him ill, or
if his clothes be splashed more than is wont, then however great the
truths he announces, I wager that our statesman lose his gravity.

Set the greatest philosopher in the world on a plank really wider
than he needs, but hanging over a precipice, and though reason
convince him of his security, imagination will prevail. Many will
scarce bear the thought without a cold sweat.

I will not name all its effects. Every one knows that the sight of
cats, and rats, or the crushing of a coal, etc., may quite unhinge
the reason. The tone of voice will affect the wisest and change the
whole force of a speech or a poem.

Love or hate will change the aspect of justice, and an advocate
retained with a large fee has an increased confidence in the right
of the cause he pleads, while the assurance of his demeanour commends
it to the judges, duped in their turn by appearances. How ridiculous
is reason, swayed by a breath in every direction!

I should have to enumerate almost every action of men who seldom
stagger but under her shocks. For reason has been forced to yield,
and the wisest reason accepts as her own those principles which the
imagination of men has everywhere casually introduced.

Our magistrates are well aware of this mystery. Their scarlet robes,
the ermine in which they wrap themselves like furred cats, the halls
in which they administer justice, the _fleurs-de-lis_, and all their
august apparatus are most necessary; if the doctors had not their
cassocks and their mules, if the lawyers had not their square caps,
and their robes four times too wide, they would never have duped the
world, which cannot resist so authoritative an appearance. Soldiers
alone are not disguised after this fashion, because indeed their part
is the more essential, they establish themselves by force, the others
by fraud.

So our kings seek out no disguises. They do not mask themselves in
strange garments to appear such, but they are accompanied by guards
and halberdiers. Those armed puppets who have hands and power for
them alone, those trumpets and drums which go before them, and those
legions round about them, make the firmest tremble. They have not
dress only, but power; we need an highly refined reason to regard as
an ordinary man the Grand Turk, in his superb seraglio, surrounded
with forty thousand janissaries.

We cannot even see an advocate in his long robe and with his cap on
his head, without an enhanced opinion of his ability.

If magistrates had true justice, and if doctors had the true art of
healing, they would have no need of square caps, the majesty of these
sciences were of itself venerable enough. But having only imaginary
knowledge, they must take these instruments, idle, but striking to
the imagination with which they have to deal, and by that in fact
they gain respect.

Imagination is the disposer of all things, it creates beauty, justice
and happiness, and these are the world's all. I should much like to
see an Italian work, of which I know the title only, but such a title
is worth many books: _Della opinione Regina del mondo_. I accept the
book without knowing it, save the evil in it, if there be any.

These are for the most part the effects of that deceptive faculty,
which seems to have been given us expressly to lead us into necessary
error. Of error however we have many other sources.

Not only are old impressions capable of deceiving us, the charms of
novelty have the same power. Hence arise all the disputes of men,
who charge each other either with following the false impressions
of childhood or of running rashly after new. Who rightly keeps a
middle way? Let him appear and make good his pretensions. There is
no principle, however natural to us even from childhood, which may
not be made to pass for a false impression either of education or of
sense.

"Because," say some, "you have believed from childhood that a box
was empty when you saw nothing in it, you have therefore believed
the possibility of a vacuum. This is an illusion of your senses,
strengthened by custom, which science must correct." "Because," say
others, "you were taught at school that there is no such thing as
a vacuum, your common sense, which clearly comprehended the matter
before, is corrupted, and you must correct this false impression by
returning to your primitive nature." Which has deceived you, your
senses or your education?

Diseases are another source of error. They impair our judgment and
our senses, and if the more violent produce a sensible change, I
do not doubt that slighter ailments produce each its proportionate
impression.

Our own interest is again a wonderful instrument for putting out our
eyes in a pleasant way. The man of greatest probity can not be judge
in his own cause; I know some who that they may not fall into this
self love are, out of opposition, thoroughly unjust. The certain way
of ruining a just cause has been to get it recommended to these men
by their near relatives.

Justice and truth are two such subtle points, that our instruments
are too blunt to touch them accurately. If they attain the point
they cover it so completely that they rest more often on the wrong
than the right.


There is internecine war in man between the reason and the passions.

If he had only reason without passions....

If he had only passions without reason....

But having both he must have continual strife, since he cannot be at
peace with one unless he be at war with the other. Hence he is always
divided against and contrary to himself.


The habit of seeing kings accompanied by guards, drums, officers
and all those things which mechanically incline man to respect and
terror, causes their countenance, when now and then seen alone, and
without these accompaniments, to impress respect and terror on their
subjects, because our thought cannot separate their personality from
those surroundings with which it is ordinarily joined. And the world
which does not know that the effect arises from habit, believes that
it arises from natural force, and hence come such expressions as:
"The character of Divinity is imprinted on his countenance," etc.


The power of kings is based both on the reason and the folly of the
people, and mainly on their folly. The greatest and most important
matter in the world has weakness for its foundation, and this
foundation is admirably sure, for there is nothing more sure than
this, that the people will be weak. What is founded on sound reason
is very ill founded, as the value of wisdom.


The chancellor is grave, and clothed with ornaments, for his position
is unreal. Not so the king, he has power and nothing to do with
imagination. Judges, doctors, etc., depend solely on imagination.


Empire founded on opinion and imagination lasts some time, the rule
is gentle and willingly accepted; that founded on power lasts for
ever. Thus opinion is, as it were, queen of the world, but power is
its tyrant.

Power is the queen of the world, not opinion, but opinion makes use
of power.

Power creates opinion. Gentleness is beautiful, as we think. Why?
Because he who goes to extremes will be alone, and I will make a
stronger cabal of people who will say it is inexpedient.


The cords attached by the respect of man for man, are, for the most
part, cords of necessity, for there must be different degrees, all
men wishing to rule, but not all being able to do so, though some are
able.

Let us suppose then we see men beginning to form a society. They will
no doubt fight till the stronger party gets the better of the weaker,
and a dominant party is constituted. But so soon as this is once
settled, the masters not wishing that the strife should continue,
declare that the power in their hands shall be transmitted as they
please, some placing it in the choice of the people, others in the
succession of birth, etc.

And here imagination begins to play her part. Till now power has
constrained facts, now power is upheld by imagination in a certain
party, in France that of the nobles, in Switzerland that of the
burgesses, etc.

The cords therefore which bind the respect of men to any given man
are the cords of imagination.


Our imagination so enlarges the present by dint of continually
reflecting on it, and so contracts eternity, by never reflecting on
it, that we make a nothing of eternity and an eternity of nothing;
and all this has such living roots in us, that all our reason cannot
suppress them, and that....


The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our soul with
its fantastic estimate, and by a rash insolence belittles the great
to its own measure, as when it speaks of God.


Things which have the greatest hold on us, as the concealing
our small possessions, are often a mere nothing. It is a nothing
which our imagination magnifies into a mountain, another turn of
imagination would make us discover its nothingness without difficulty.


Two faces which resemble each other, neither of which alone causes
our laughter, make us laugh, when together, by their resemblance.


Children who are frightened at the face they have daubed are mere
children, but how shall one who is so weak when a child grow truly
strong as he grows old? We only change our fancies.


All that is brought to perfection by progress perishes also by
progress. All that has been weak can never be absolutely strong. It
is in vain to say, "He has grown, he has changed." He is also the
same.


My fancy makes me hate a man who breathes hard when he is eating.
Fancy has great weight. Will you profit by yielding to this weight
because it is natural? No; but by resisting it.


_Prejudice leading into error._--It is a deplorable thing to see all
men deliberating on means alone, and not on the end. Every man thinks
how he may acquit himself in his condition, but as for the choice of
condition or of country, chance gives them to us.

It is a pitiable thing, to see so many Turks, heretics and infidels,
follow the way of their fathers for the simple reason that each has
been told it is the best. And that fixes for each man his condition,
locksmith, soldier, etc.

Therefore savages would care nothing for Provence.


_Ferox gens, nullam esse vitam sine armis rati._ They love death
rather than peace, other men love death rather than war.

Every opinion may be held in preference to life, of which the love
seems so strong and so natural.


_Thoughts._--All is one, all is diverse. How many natures in that of
man, how many vocations! And by what a chance does each man take
ordinarily what he has heard praised. A well turned heel.


_The heel of a slipper._--How well this is turned, here is a clever
workman, how brave is this soldier! Such is the source of our
inclinations and of the choice of conditions. How much this man
drinks, how little that man! That is what makes men sober or drunken,
soldiers, cowards, etc.


_Glory._--Admiration spoils everything from infancy. How well said,
how well done, how clever he is! etc.

The children of Port Royal, who are not urged with this spur of envy
and glory, become careless.


_Glory._--The brutes have no admiration for each other. A horse does
not admire his companion. Not but that they have their rivalries in
a race, but that entails no consequences, for once in the stable the
heaviest and most ill-formed does not yield his oats to another,
as men would expect from others in their own case. Their virtue is
satisfied with itself.


First degree: to be blamed for doing evil, and praised for doing
good. Second degree: to be neither praised nor blamed.


Brave deeds are most estimable when hidden. When I see some of these
in history they please me much. But after all they have not been
wholly hidden, since they have become known. And though all has been
done to hide them that could be done, the little whereby they have
appeared has spoiled all, for what was finest in them was the desire
to hide them.


We are not content with the life we have in ourselves and in our
own being, we wish to live an imaginary life in the idea of others,
and to this end we strive to make a show. We labour incessantly to
embellish and preserve this imaginary being, and we neglect the true.
And if we have either calmness, generosity, or fidelity, we hasten to
let it be known, that we may attach these virtues to that imaginary
being; we would even part with them for this end, and gladly become
cowards for the reputation of valour. It is a great mark of the
nothingness of our own being that we are not satisfied with the one
without the other, and that we often renounce one for the other. For
he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.


_Vocations._--The sweetness of glory is so great that join it to what
we will, even to death, we love it.


Evil is easy, and its forms are infinite; good is almost unique. But
a certain kind of evil is as difficult to find as what is called
good; and often on this account this particular kind of evil gets
passed off as good. There is even needed an extraordinary greatness
of soul to attain to it as well as to good.


We are so presumptuous that we would fain be known by the whole
world, even by those who shall come after, when we are no more. And
we are such triflers that the esteem of five or six persons about us
diverts and contents us.


Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, a
camp-follower, a cook, a porter makes his boasts, and is for having
his admirers; even philosophers wish for them. Those who write
against it, yet desire the glory of having written well, those who
read, desire the glory of having read; I who write this have, may be,
this desire, and perhaps those who will read it....


In towns through which we pass we care not whether men esteem us, but
we do care if we have to live there any time. How long is needed? A
time in proportion to our vain and fleeting life.


The condition of man; inconstancy, weariness, unrest.


Whoever will know fully the vanity of man has but to consider the
causes and the effects of love. The cause is an unknown quantity, and
the effects are terrible. This unknown quantity, so small a matter
that we cannot recognise it, moves a whole country, princes, armies,
and all the world.

Cleopatra's nose: had it been shorter, the face of the world had been
changed.


Nothing better shows the frivolity of men than to consider what are
the causes and what the effects of love, for all the universe is
changed by them. Cleopatra's nose.


_Frivolity._--The cause and the effects of love. Cleopatra.


Pride is a counterpoise, and turns the scale against all woes. Here
is a strange monster, a very visible aberration. Behold him fallen
from his place, and anxiously seeking it. That is what all men do.
Let us see who has found it.


_Contradiction._--Pride is a counterpoise to all miseries. Man either
conceals them, or if he display them, glories in the knowledge of
them.


_Of the desire of being esteemed by those with whom we are._--Pride
has a natural possession of us in the midst of our miseries, errors,
etc. We can even lose our life with joy, if men will but talk of it.

Vanity, play, hunting, visiting, false pretences, a lasting name.


_Pride._--Curiosity is mere frivolity. For the most part we want to
know only for the sake of talking. People would not make voyages if
they were never to speak of them, for the sole pleasure of seeing,
without hope of ever communicating their impressions.




_OF JUSTICE, CUSTOMS, AND PREJUDICES._


On what shall man found the economy of the world which he would
fain govern? If on the caprice of each man, all is confusion. If on
justice, man is ignorant of it.

Certainly had he known it, he would not have established the maxim,
most general of all current among men, that every one must conform to
the manners of his own country; the splendour of true equity would
have brought all nations into subjection, and legislators would not
have taken as their model the fancies and caprice of Persians and
Germans instead of stable justice. We should have seen it established
in all the States of the world, in all times, whereas now we see
neither justice nor injustice which does not change its quality
upon changing its climate. Three degrees of latitude reverse all
jurisprudence, a meridian decides what is truth, fundamental laws
change after a few years of possession, right has its epochs, the
entrance of Saturn into the Lion marks for us the origin of such and
such a crime. That is droll justice which is bounded by a stream!
Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on that.

It is admitted that justice is not in these customs, but that it
resides in natural laws common to every country. This would no
doubt be maintained with obstinacy if the rash chance which has
disseminated human laws had lighted upon even one that is universal,
but the singularity of the matter is that owing to the vagaries of
human caprice there is not one.

Theft, incest, infanticide, parricide, all have found a place among
virtuous actions. Can there be any thing more absurd than that a
man should have the right to kill me because he lives across the
water, and because his prince has a quarrel with mine, although I
have none with him? There are no doubt natural laws, but fair reason
once corrupted has corrupted all. _Nihil amplius nostrum est; quod
nostrum dicimus, artis est. Ex senatus consultis, et plebiscitis
crimina exercentur. Ut olim vitiis, sic nunc legibus laboramus_.

From this confusion it results that one declares the essence
of justice to be the authority of the legislator, another, the
convenience of the sovereign, another, existing custom, and this is
the most sure; nothing which follows reason alone is just in itself,
all shifts and changes with time; custom creates equity, by the
simple reason that this is received. It is the mystical foundation
of its authority, whoever carries it back to first principles
annihilates it. Nothing is so faulty as those laws which correct
faults. Whoever obeys them because they are just, obeys an imaginary
justice, not law in its essence; it is altogether self-contained, it
is law and nothing more. Whoever will examine its motive will find
it so feeble and so slight that if he be not used to contemplate the
marvels of human imagination, he will wonder that a single century
has gained for it so much pomp and reverence. It is the art of
disturbance and of revolution to shake established customs, sounding
them to their source, to mark their want of authority and justice. We
must, it is said, return to the primitive and fundamental laws of the
State, abolished by unjust custom. It is a game wherein we are sure
to lose all; in this balance nothing would be true, yet the people
easily lends an ear to such talk as this. They shake off the yoke as
soon as they recognise it, and the great profit by its ruin, and by
the ruin of those who have too curiously examined recognised customs.
This is why the wisest of law givers said that it was often necessary
to cheat men for their good, and another, a good politician, _Quum
veritatem qua liberetur ignoret, expedit quod fallatur_. We ought not
to feel the truth that law is but usurpation; it was once introduced
without reason, and has become reasonable; it is necessary to cause
it to be regarded as eternal and authoritative, and to conceal the
beginning if we do not wish it should soon come to an end.


I have passed much of my life believing that justice existed, and in
this I did not deceive myself, for there is justice according as God
has willed to reveal it to us. But I did not take it so, and in that
I deceived myself, for I believed that our justice was essentially
just, and that I had that whereby I was able to know and judge of
it. But I so often find that my right judgment was at fault, that at
last I have begun to distrust myself, and then others. I saw in all
countries that men change, and thus after many changes of judgment
concerning true justice, I recognised that our nature was a continual
change, and I have not changed since; were I to change I should but
strengthen my opinion. The sceptic Archesilas became a dogmatist.


The most unreasonable things in the world become most reasonable,
because of the unruly lives of men. What is less reasonable than to
choose the eldest son of a queen to guide a state? for we do not
choose as steersman of a ship that one of the passengers who is of
the best family. Such a law would be ridiculous and unjust; but since
they are so themselves, and ever will be, it becomes reasonable and
just. For would they choose the most virtuous and able, we at once
fall to blows, since each asserts that he is the most virtuous and
able. Let us then affix this quality to something which cannot be
disputed. This man is the king's eldest son. That is clear, and there
is no dispute. Reason can do no better, for civil war is the worst of
evils.


Men of unruly lives assert that they alone follow nature, while those
who are orderly stray from her paths; as passengers in a ship think
that those move who stand upon the shore. Both sides say the same
thing. There must be a fixed point to enable us to judge. The harbour
decides the question for those who are in the vessel, but where can
we find the harbour in morals?


When all moves equally, nothing seems to move, as in a ship. When all
tend to vice, none appears to do so. Whoever stops draws attention to
the onward movement of others, as does a fixed point.

Justice is what is established, and thus all our established laws are
necessarily held to be just without being examined, because they are
established.


_Justice._--As fashion makes what is agreeable, so it makes what is
just.


Our natural principles are but principles of custom. In children
natural principles are those which they have received from the habits
of their fathers, as hunting in animals.

A different custom will produce different natural principles. This
experience testifies, and if there are some natural principles
ineradicable by custom, so are there some customs opposed to nature
ineradicable by nature, or by a second custom. This depends on
constitution.


Fathers fear that the natural love of their children may be effaced.
Now what sort of thing is that nature which is liable to be effaced.
Custom is a second nature which destroys the former. But what is
nature, for is not custom natural? I am greatly afraid that nature
itself may be only our first custom, as custom is second nature.


Montaigne was wrong: custom should only be followed because it is
custom, and not because it is reasonable or just; but most men follow
it for the simple reason that they think it just. Otherwise they
would not follow it though it were the custom, for our only desire is
to be subjected to reason or to justice. Without this, custom would
pass for tyranny, but the empire of reason and justice is no more
tyrannical than that of choice. These are principles natural to man.

It is then good to obey laws and customs because they are laws, but
we ought to know that there is neither truth nor justice to introduce
into them, that we know nothing about these, and can therefore only
follow what is recognised, and thus we should never transgress them.
But most men cannot receive this doctrine, and since they believe
that truth can be found, and that it resides in law and custom, they
believe these laws, and take their antiquity as a proof of their
truth, and not merely of their authority apart from truth. Thus they
obey the laws, but are liable to revolt when these are shown to be
of no value; and this may be proved of all of them, looked at from a
certain point of view.


_Injustice._--The authority of the judge is not given him for his
sake, but for that of the judged. It is dangerous to say this to the
people, but the people have too much faith in you; that will not harm
them, and may serve you. You must then say it openly. _Pasce oves
meas_, not _tuas_. You owe me pasturage.


_Injustice._--It is dangerous to say to the people that the laws
are not just, for men obey them only because they think them just.
Therefore it is necessary to say at the same time that they must
be obeyed because they are laws, as superiors must be obeyed, not
because they are just, but because they are superiors. All sedition
is averted, if this principle be established and it be understood
what is rightly the definition of justice.


If God gave us masters direct from himself, how heartily ought we to
obey them! Circumstances and necessity are infallible masters.


Custom is our nature. Whoever is accustomed to the faith believes
in it, can no longer even fear hell, and believes in nothing else.
Whoever accustoms himself to believe that the king is terrible ...
etc. Who doubts then that our soul, being accustomed to see number,
space, and motion, believes that and nothing else?


_Veri juris_; we have it no longer; had we it, we should not take the
manners of our country as our rule of justice.

Here, not finding justice, we fall back on force, etc.


It is a ridiculous thing to consider that there are people in the
world who, having renounced all the laws of God and nature, have
yet made laws for themselves which they exactly obey, as, for
instance, the soldiers of Mahomet, thieves, heretics, etc., and thus
logicians....

It seems as though their licence must be without limit or barrier,
since they have broken down so many that are just and holy.


_Weakness._--The whole employment of men is to gain wealth; yet
they have no title to show that they justly possess it but human
caprice, nor have they power to hold it securely. It is the same with
knowledge, of which disease deprives us. We are incapable both of
truth and of goodness.


The Swiss are offended if they are called noble, and bring proof of
their plebeian race that they may be judged worthy of office.


When the question is of judging whether we ought to make war and kill
so many men, condemning so many Spaniards to death, there is only one
man who is the judge, and he an interested party; there ought to be a
third, and he disinterested.


"Why do you kill me?--What! Do not you live on the other side of the
stream, my friend? If you lived on this side I should be an assassin,
and it were unjust to kill you in this fashion, but since you live on
the other side, I am a brave soldier, and it is just."


_Justice, Power._--It is just that what is just should be obeyed, it
is of necessity that what is strongest should be obeyed.

Justice without power is unavailing, power without justice is
tyrannical. Justice without power is gainsaid, because the wicked
always exist, power without justice is condemned. We must therefore
combine justice and power, making what is just strong, and what is
strong just.

Justice is subject to dispute, power is easily recognised and cannot
be disputed. Thus we cannot give power to justice, because power has
arraigned justice, saying that justice is unjust, and she herself
truly just; so since we are unable to bring about that what is just
should be strong, we have made the strong just.


The sole universal rules are the laws of the country in ordinary
affairs, and the law of the majority in others. And this comes from
the power which is in them.

Thus it comes that kings, whose power is of another kind, do not
follow the majority of their ministers.

No doubt equality of goods is just, but since they are unable to
bring about that power should obey justice, people have judged it
right to obey power; not being able to add power to justice they
have justified power, so that justice and power should coalesce, and
peace, the sovereign good, result.


Do we follow the majority because they have more reason? No; but
because they have more power.

Do we follow ancient laws and opinions because they are more sound?
No; but because they stand alone and take from us the root of
diversity.


_Summum jus, summa injuria._

The way of the majority is the best way, because it is plain, and has
power to make itself obeyed; yet it is the opinion of the least able.

If men could have done so, they would have placed power in the hands
of justice, since we cannot deal with power as we please, because it
is a tangible quality, while justice is a spiritual quality of which
we dispose as we please, they have placed justice in the hands of
power, and thus that is called just which we are forced to obey.

Thence arises the right of the sword, for the sword gives a true
right.

Otherwise we should see violence on one side and justice on the
other. The end of the twelfth _Provincial_.

Thence the injustice of the Fronde, which raises its so-called
justice against power.

It is not the same in the Church, for there is true justice and no
violence.


_Injustice._--That presumption should be joined to insignificance is
extreme injustice.


Tyranny consists in the desire of universal rule outside its sphere.

There are different societies, in which are the strong, the fair,
the judicious, the devout, in which each man rules at home, not
elsewhere. Sometimes they meet, and the strong and the fair contend
for the mastery, foolishly, for their mastery is each in a different
kind. They do not agree, and their fault is that each aims at
universal dominion. None can obtain this, not even power, which is
of no avail in the realm of the wise; she is only mistress of our
external actions.

_Tyranny._--Thus the following expressions are false and tyrannical:
"I am beautiful, therefore I should be feared; I am strong, therefore
I should be loved. I am...."

Tyranny is the wishing to have in one way what can only be had in
another. Divers duties are owing to divers merits, the duty of love
to the pleasant, of fear to the strong, of belief to the wise.

These duties should be paid, it is unjust to refuse them, unjust also
to require others. In the same way it is false and tyrannous to say,
"He is not strong, therefore I will not esteem him; he is not clever,
therefore I will not fear him."


It is necessary that men should be unequal. True; but that being
granted, the door is open, not only to the greatest domination, but
to the greatest tyranny.

It is necessary to relax the mind a little, but that opens the door
to extreme dissipation.

We must mark the limits.--There are no fixed boundaries in these
matters, law wishes to impose them, but the mind will not bear them.


_Mine, Thine._--"This is my dog," say poor children, "that is my
place in the sunshine." Here is the beginning and the image of the
usurpation of the whole earth.


Good birth is a great advantage, for it gives a man a chance at the
age of eighteen, making him known and respected as an ordinary man is
on his merits at fifty. Here are thirty years gained at a stroke.

It is the result of power and not of custom. For those who are able
to originate are few, the greater number will only follow, and refuse
glory to those inventors who seek it by their inventions. And if they
persist in wishing to gain glory, and in despising those who do not
originate, the others will give them ridicule and would fain give
them blows. Let no one then pride himself on this subtle capacity, or
else let him keep his content to himself.


_The reason of effects._--It is strange that men would not have me
honour a man clothed in brocade, and followed by seven or eight
footmen! Yet he will have them give me the strap if I do not salute
him. This custom is a power. It is the same with a horse in fine
trappings compared with another. It is odd that Montaigne does not
see what difference there is, wonders that we find any, and asks the
reason. "Indeed," he says, "how comes it," etc....


When power attacks craft, when a mere soldier takes the square cap of
a first president, and flings it out of the window.


_Injustice_.--Men have found no means to gratify their sensuality
without wrong to others.


The greatness of man even in his sensuality, to have known how to
extract from it an admirable code, and to have drawn from it a
picture of love to others.


_Greatness._--The reasons of effects mark the greatness of man, in
having formed so fair an order out of sensuality.


_The reason of effects._--Sensuality and power are the source of all
our actions; sensuality causes those which are voluntary, power the
involuntary.


From sensuality men have found and drawn excellent rules of policy,
of morals, and of justice.

But after all, this evil root of man, this _figmentum malum_, is only
hidden, it is not removed.

All men by nature hate each other. They have used sensuality as best
they could to make it serve the public weal, but this is only a
feint, and a false image of charity, for at bottom it is but hate.


To pity the unfortunate is not contrary to sensuality, rather is
it easy to render this evidence of friendship, and to gain the
reputation of a tender heart, without giving.

The people have very sound opinions, for instance:

1. In having preferred diversion and hunting to poetry. The half
educated deride this, and are triumphant over the folly of the
world, but the people are right by a reason which the others do not
understand.

2. In distinguishing men by outward marks, as birth or wealth. The
world is again triumphant in showing how unreasonable this is, yet it
is thoroughly reasonable. Savages laugh at an infant king.

3. In taking offence at a blow, or in desiring glory so strongly.

But it is very desirable, on account of the other essential goods
which are joined to it, and a man who has received a blow without
resenting it is overwhelmed with abuse and indignity.

4. In working for an uncertainty, in going on a sea voyage, in
walking over a plank.


_Sound opinions of the people._--Civil wars are the greatest of all
evils. They are certain, if we try to reward desert, for all will say
they deserve. The evil to fear from a fool who succeeds by right of
birth, is neither so great nor so certain.


_Sound opinions of the people._--To be well dressed is not altogether
foolish, for it proves that a great number of people work for us. It
shows by our hair, that we have a valet, a perfumer, etc.; by our
band, our thread, our trimming, etc. Now it is not merely superficial
nor simply outward show to have many arms at our disposal.

The more arms we have the stronger we are. To be well dressed is to
show our power.


_The reason of effects._--Continual alternation of _pro_ and _con._

We have then shown that man is frivolous, by the estimation he has of
non-essentials. And all these opinions are destroyed. We have next
shown that all these opinions were perfectly sound, and that thus all
these frivolities being well founded, the people are not so frivolous
as is said. And thus we have destroyed the opinion which destroyed
that of the people.

But we must now destroy this last proposition, and show that it
remains always true that the people are frivolous, though its opinions
are sound, because it does not feel the truth where it is, and
placing it where it is not, its opinions are always very false and
very unsound.


_The reason of effects._--It is, then, true to say that all men are
under an illusion, for even though the opinions of the people be
sound, they are not so as they hold them, for they think that truth
is where it is not. Truth is indeed in their opinions, but not at the
point where they imagine it.

Thus, it is true that we should honour men of birth, but not because
good birth is in itself an advantage, etc.


_The reason of effects._--Gradation. The people honours persons of
high birth. The half-educated despise them, saying that birth is
not a personal, but a chance advantage. The educated honour them,
not from the motives of the people, but from another motive. Devout
persons of more zeal than knowledge despise them, in spite of that
consideration which makes them honoured by the educated, because they
judge by a new light arising from their piety. But true Christians
honour them by a still higher light. So there is a succession of
opinions for and against, according to the measure of our light.


How rightly do men distinguish by exterior rather than by interior
qualities! Which of us twain shall take the lead? Who will give place
to the other? The least able? But I am as able as he is. We should
have to fight about that. He has four footmen, and I have but one;
that is something which can be seen; there is nothing to do but to
count; it is my place to yield, and I am a fool if I contest it. So
by this means we remain at peace, the greatest of all blessings.


Deference is shown by submitting to personal inconvenience. This
is apparently foolish but really just, for it is to say, "I would
certainly put myself to inconvenience did you need it, since I do so
when it can be of no service to you." Respect, moreover, is for the
purpose of marking distinctions of rank. Now if it showed respect to
be seated in an arm-chair, we should pay respect to every body, and
thus no distinction would be made, but being put to inconvenience we
distinguish very well.


_The reason of effects._--We should keep our own secret thoughts, and
judge of all by those, while speaking like every one else.


_King and tyrant._--I too will have my secret thoughts. I will take
care on every journey.


_The reason of effects._--Epictetus. Those who say "You have a
headache," this is not the same thing. We are assured of health, and
not of justice, and indeed his own was folly.

Yet he believed it demonstrable when he said, "it is either in our
power or it is not."

But he did not see that it is not in our power to regulate the heart,
and he was wrong to draw this conclusion from the fact that some were
Christians.


_The reason of effects._--It is owing to the weakness of man that so
many things are esteemed beautiful, as to be well skilled in playing
the lute.

It is only an evil because of our weakness.




_THE WEAKNESS, UNREST, AND DEFECTS OF MAN._


_The Misery of Man._--We care nothing for the present. We anticipate
the future as too slow in coming, as if we could make it move faster;
or we call back the past, to stop its rapid flight. So imprudent
are we that we wander through the times in which we have no part,
unthinking of that which alone is ours; so frivolous are we that
we dream of the days which are not, and pass by without reflection
those which alone exist. For the present generally gives us pain;
we conceal it from our sight because it afflicts us, and if it be
pleasant we regret to see it vanish away. We endeavour to sustain
the present by the future, and think of arranging things not in our
power, for a time at which we have no certainty of arriving.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with
the past or the future. We scarcely think of the present, and if we
do so, it is only that we may borrow light from it to direct the
future. The present is never our end; the past and the present are
our means, the future alone is our end. Thus we never live, but hope
to live, and while we always lay ourselves out to be happy, it is
inevitable that we can never be so.


We are so unhappy that we cannot take pleasure in a thing, save on
condition of being troubled if it turn out ill, as a thousand things
may do, and do every hour. He who should find the secret of rejoicing
in good without being troubled at its contrary evil, would have hit
the mark. It is perpetual motion.


Our nature exists by motion; perfect rest is death.


When we are well we wonder how we should get on if we were sick,
but when sickness comes we take our medicine cheerfully, into that
the evil resolves itself. We have no longer those passions and that
desire for amusement and gadding abroad, which were ours in health,
but are now incompatible with the necessities of our disease. So then
nature gives us passions and desires in accordance with the immediate
situation. Nothing troubles us but fears, which we, and not nature,
make for ourselves, because fear adds to the condition in which we
are the passions of the condition in which we are not.

Since nature makes us always unhappy in every condition, our desires
paint for us a happy condition, joining to that in which we are, the
pleasures of the condition in which we are not, and were we to gain
these pleasures we should not therefore be happy, because we should
have other desires conformable to this new estate.

We must particularize this general proposition....


What difference in point of obedience is there between a soldier
and a Carthusian? For both are alike under rule and dependent, both
engaged in equally irksome labours. But the soldier always hopes to
bear rule, and though he never does so, for even captains and princes
are always slaves and dependents, he ever hopes and ever works to
attain mastery, whereas the Carthusian makes a vow never to be aught
else than dependent. Thus they do not differ in their perpetual
servitude, which is the same always for both, but in the hope which
one always has, the other never.


The example of Alexander's chastity has not made so many continent
as that of his drunkenness has made intemperate. It is not shameful
to be less virtuous than he, and it seems excusable to be no more
vicious. We do not think ourselves wholly partakers in the vices
of ordinary men, when we see that we share those of the great, not
considering that in such matters the great are but ordinary men. We
hold on to them by the same end by which they hold on to the people,
for at whatsoever height they be, they are yet united at some
point to the lowest of mankind. They are not suspended in the air,
abstracted from our society. No, doubly no; if they are greater than
we, it is because their heads are higher; but their feet are as low
as ours. There all are on the same level, resting on the same earth,
and by the lower extremity are as low as we are, as the meanest men,
as children, and the brutes.


Great men and little have the same accidents, the same tempers, the
same passions, but one is on the felloe of the wheel, the other near
the axle, and so less agitated by the same revolutions.


Would he who had enjoyed the friendship of the King of England, the
King of Poland, and the Queen of Sweden have thought he should come
to want, and need a retreat or shelter in the world?


Man is full of wants, and cares only for those who can satisfy them
all. "Such an one is a good mathematician," it is said. But I have
nothing to do with mathematics, he would take me for a proposition.
"This other is a good soldier." He would treat me as a besieged city.
I need then an honourable man who can lend himself generally to all
my wants.


Men say that eclipses presage misfortune, because misfortunes are
common, so that as evil often happens they often divine it; whereas
to say that they presage happiness would often prove false. They
attribute happiness only to rare planetary conjunctions, and thus
they seldom fail in their divination.


We are fools if we rest content with the society of those like
ourselves; miserable as we are, powerless as we are, they will not
aid us, we shall die alone. We ought therefore to act as though we
were alone, and should we in that case build superb mansions, etc.?
We should search for truth unhesitatingly, and if we refuse it, we
show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.


The last act is tragic, how pleasantly soever the play may have run
through the others. At the end a little earth is flung on our head,
and all is over for ever.


I feel that I might not have been, for the 'I' consists in my
thought; therefore I, who think, had not been had my mother been
killed before I had life. So I am not a necessary being. Neither
am I eternal nor infinite, but I see plainly there is in nature a
necessary being, eternal and infinite.


As duchies, kingships, and magistracies are real and necessary,
because power rules all, these exist every where and always. But
since it is only caprice which makes one or another duke or king, the
rule is not constant, and may vary, etc.


Cromwell was about to ravage the whole of Christendom, the royal
family had been brought to nought, and his own dynasty for ever
established, but for a little grain of sand in his bladder. Rome
herself began to tremble under him, but this scrap of gravel
having got there, he dies, his family falls from power, peace is
established, and the king restored.


_Scepticism._--Excessive or deficient mental powers are alike accused
of madness. Nothing is good but mediocrity. The majority has settled
that, and assails whoever escapes it, no matter by which extreme. I
make no objection, would willingly consent to be in the mean, and
I refuse to be placed at the lower end, not because it is low, but
because it is an extreme, for I would equally refuse to be placed at
the top. To leave the mean is to leave humanity. The greatness of the
human soul consists in knowing how to keep the mean. So little is it
the case that greatness consists in leaving it, that it lies in not
leaving it.


Discourses on humility give occasion for pride to the boastful, and
for humility to the humble. Those on scepticism give occasion for
believers to affirm. Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely
of chastity, few of scepticism doubtingly. We are but falsehood,
duplicity and contradiction, using even to ourselves concealment and
guile.


There are vices which only take hold of us by means of others, and
these, like branches, fall with the removal of the trunk.


For we must not mistake ourselves, we have as much that is automatic
in us as intellectual, and hence it comes that the instrument by
which persuasion is brought about is not demonstration alone. How few
things are demonstrated! Proofs can only convince the mind; custom
makes our strongest proofs and those which we hold most firmly, it
sways the automaton, which draws the unconscious intellect after it.
Who has demonstrated that there will be a to-morrow, or that we shall
die; yet what is more universally believed? It is then custom that
convinces us of it, custom that makes so many men Christians, custom
that makes them Turks, heathen, artisans, soldiers, etc. Lastly, we
must resort to custom when once the mind has seen where truth is,
in order to slake our thirst, and steep ourselves in that belief,
which escapes us at every hour, for to have proofs always at hand
were too onerous. We must acquire a more easy belief, that of custom,
which without violence, without art, without argument, causes our
assent and inclines all our powers to this belief, so that our soul
naturally falls into it. It is not enough to believe only by force
of conviction if the automaton is inclined to believe the contrary.
Both parts of us then must be obliged to believe, the intellect by
arguments which it is enough to have admitted once in our lives,
the automaton by custom, and by not allowing it to incline in the
contrary direction. _Inclina cor meum, Deus._


The intellect believes naturally, and the will loves naturally, so
that for lack of true objects, they must needs attach themselves to
the false.


_Eritis sicut dii, scientes bonum et malum._--Every one plays the god
in judging whether anything be good or bad, and in being too much
afflicted or rejoiced at circumstances.


Even if people have no interest in what they say, it must not
therefore be certainly concluded they are not lying, for there are
those who lie simply for lying's sake.


Men are of necessity so mad, that not to be mad were madness in
another form.


We cannot think of Plato and Aristotle, save in professorial robes.
They were honest men like others, laughing with their friends,
and when they amused themselves with writing the _Laws_ or the
_Politics_, they did it as a pastime. That part of their life was
the least philosophic and the least serious; the most philosophic
was to live simply and quietly. If they wrote on politics it was as
though they were laying down rules for a madhouse, and if they made
as though they were speaking of a great matter, it was because they
knew that the madmen to whom they spoke fancied themselves kings and
emperors. They entered into their views in order to make their folly
as little harmful as possible.


The most important affair in life is the choice of a trade, yet
chance decides it. Custom makes men masons, soldiers, tilers. "He is
a good tiler," says one, "and soldiers are fools." But others: "There
is nothing great but war, all but soldiers are rogues." We choose our
professions according as we hear this or that praised or despised
in our childhood, for we naturally love truth and hate folly. These
words move us, the only fault is in their application. So great is
the force of custom that out of those who by nature are only men,
are made all conditions of men. For some countries are full of
masons, others of soldiers, etc. Nature is certainly not so uniform.
Custom then produces this effect and gains ascendency over nature,
yet sometimes nature gets the upper hand, and obliges man to act by
instinct in spite of all custom, whether good or bad.


Men by nature are tilers and of all callings, except in their own
closets.


We never teach men to be gentlemen, but we teach them everything
else, and they never pique themselves so much on all the rest as on
knowing how to be gentlemen. They pique themselves only on knowing
the one thing they have not learnt.


People should not be able to say of a man, he is a mathematician,
or a preacher, or eloquent, but he is a gentleman; that universal
quality alone pleases me.--When you think of a man's book as soon as
you see himself, it is a bad sign. I would rather that none of his
qualities should be recognised till you meet them, or have occasion
to avail yourself of them. _Ne quid nimis_, for fear some one quality
gain the mastery and stamp the man. Let not people think of him as an
orator, unless oratory be in question, then let them think of it.


No man passes in the world as an expert in verse unless he hang
out the sign of a poet, a mathematician, etc. But people who are
generally accomplished need no sign and scarce recognise any
difference between the trade of a poet and that of an embroiderer.

People of general accomplishment are not called poets or
geometricians, etc., though they are so, and judges of all these. You
do not guess what they are. When they enter a society they join in
the general conversation. They do not exhibit one quality rather than
another, except when they have to make use of it. Then we remember
it, for it is natural to such characters that we do not say of them
that they are fine speakers when it is not a question of oratory, and
that we give them the praise of eloquence if occasion call for it.

It is false praise then to say of a man as soon as he enters a
society that he is a clever poet, and it is a bad sign when a man is
never called on to give his opinion on such a subject as verse.


_Inconstancy._--Things have different qualities, and the soul
different inclinations; for nothing is simple which presents itself
to the soul, and the soul never presents itself simply to any
subject. Hence it comes that men laugh and weep at the same thing.


Greatness of establishment, respect for establishment.

The pleasure of the great is to be able to make people happy.

The property of riches is to be given liberally.

The property of each thing should be sought out. The property of
power is to protect.


Saint Augustine saw that we labour for an uncertainty, at sea,
in a battle, etc.; he did not see the doctrine of chances, which
demonstrates that we must do so. Montaigne saw that we are disgusted
at a distorted mind, and that custom can do all things, but he did
not see the reason of that effect.

All these men saw the effects, but did not see the causes; in
relation to those who have discovered the causes they are as those
who have only eyes are in regard to those who have intellect. For the
effects are as it were sensible, and the causes are visible only to
the intellect. And though these effects too are apprehended through
reason, yet is it in relation to the reason which apprehends causes,
as the bodily senses are to the intellect.


Suppose a man puts himself at a window to see the passers by. If I
pass I cannot say that he stood there to see me, for he does not
think of me in particular. Nor does any one who loves another on
account of beauty really love that person, for the small-pox, which
kills beauty without killing the person, will cause the loss of
love. Nor does one who loves me for my judgment, my memory, love me,
myself, for I may lose those qualities without losing my identity.
Where then is this 'I' if it reside not in the body nor in the soul,
and how love the body or the soul, except for the qualities which do
not make '_me_,' since they are perishable? For it is not possible
and it would be unjust to love the soul of a person in the abstract,
and whatever qualities might be therein. So then we do not love a
person, but only qualities. We should not then sneer at those who are
honoured on account of rank and office, for we love no one save for
borrowed qualities.


Time heals all pain and misunderstanding, because we change and are
no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are
any more themselves. It is like a nation which we have angered and
meet again after two generations. They are Frenchmen still, but not
the same.


_Inconstancy and singularity._--To live only by labour, and to reign
over the most powerful state in the world, are very opposite things.
They are united in the person of the grand Sultan of the Turks.

It pleases us to say 'Prince' to a king, because it lessens his
quality.


_Epigrams of Martial._--Men like malice, but not against one-eyed
men, nor against the unfortunate, but against the fortunate and
proud. Those who think otherwise make a mistake.

For concupiscence is the source of all our movements, and humanity,
etc.

We must please those whose feelings are humane and tender.

That epigram about the two one-eyed people is valueless, for it
brings them no consolation, and only gives a point to the author's
glory. All that is merely for the sake of the author is valueless.
_Ambitiosa recidet ornamenta._


I put it down as a fact that if all men knew what each said of the
other, there would not be four friends in the world. This is evident
from the quarrels which arise from indiscreet reports made from time
to time.


Those who are always hopeful in adversity, and rejoice in good
luck, are suspected of being glad of failure should they not be
correspondingly depressed under bad luck; they are delighted to find
pretexts for hoping, in order to show that they are interested, and
to hide by the joy they pretend to feel that which they really feel
at the ill success of the affair.


Malignity when it has reason on its side becomes proud, and displays
reason in all its splendour.

If austerity or a rigid choice have not found the true good, and we
must needs return to follow nature, it becomes proud by reason of
this return.


A maker of epigrams,--a bad man.


Do you wish men to believe good of you? Then say none.


We ought to be much obliged to those who tell us of our faults, for
they mortify us, they teach us we have been despised, they do not
prevent our being so in the future, for we have many other faults
which are despicable. They prepare for us the exercise of correction,
and freedom from a fault.


If we would reprove with success, and show another his mistake, we
must see from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is
generally true, and admitting that truth, show him the side on which
it is false. He will be satisfied, for he will see that he was not
mistaken, only that he did not see all sides. Now, no one is vexed
at not seeing every thing. But we do not like to be mistaken, and
that perhaps arises from the fact that man by nature cannot see
everything, and that by nature he cannot be mistaken in the side he
looks at, since what we apprehend by our senses is always true.


I passed a long time in the study of the abstract sciences, and was
much discouraged at finding how few were my fellow-students. When I
began the study of man I saw that these abstract sciences were not
fit for him, and that I was wandering more from my true state in
investigating them, than others in ignoring them. I forgave their
scanty knowledge. But I thought at least to find many fellow-students
in the study of man, and that this was the real study which befits
us. I was deceived, for there are still fewer than those who study
mathematics. It is only for want of knowing how to pursue this
study that we seek others. But is it not that even here is not the
knowledge that man should have, and that it is better for him to be
ignorant of himself in order to be happy?


_The Vanity of Knowledge._--The knowledge of external things will not
console me for my ignorance of ethics in time of affliction, but the
science of morals will always console me for my ignorance of external
knowledge.


There are plants on the earth, we see them, but they could not be
seen from the moon. On these plants are hairs, and in these hairs
tiny animals, but beyond that, nothing more. O, presumption! Compound
bodies are made up of elements, but not the elementary bodies
themselves. O presumption! Here is a fine distinction. We must not
assert the existence of what we cannot see, we must then say what
others say, but not think with them.


The world's judgment is right, for it is in that condition of natural
ignorance which is man's best wisdom. The sciences have two extremes
which meet. The first is that pure natural ignorance in which every
man is born. The other extreme is that reached by great minds,
who having run through all that men can know, find that they know
nothing, and again come round to the same ignorance from which they
started; but this is a learned ignorance, conscious of itself. Those
between the two, who have left their natural ignorance and not been
able to reach the other, have some tincture of this vain knowledge,
and assume to be wise. These trouble the world, and judge all things
falsely. The people and the wise make up the world; these despise it,
and are despised; they judge ill of all things, and the world rightly
judges of them.


Nature has made all her truths self-contained. Our art encloses them
one within another, but that is not according to nature. Each holds
its own place.


_Spongia solis._--When we see the same effect invariably recur we
conclude there is in it a natural necessity, as that there will be
a to-morrow, etc. But nature often gives us the lie, and will not
subject herself to her own rules.


Nature always begins the same things again, years, days, and hours,
and in like manner spaces and numbers follow each other, end without
end. So is made a sort of infinity and eternity, not that any thing
of these is infinite and eternal, but these finite entities are
infinitely multiplied.

Thus as it seems to me the number which multiplies them alone is
infinite.


Nature imitates herself. A seed sown in good ground brings forth
fruit. A principle cast into a good mind brings forth fruit.

Numbers imitate space, which is of an wholly different nature.

All is made and guided by one and the same master, root, branch and
fruits; principles and consequences.


Nature works by progress, _itus et reditus_. It goes and returns,
then it goes further, then twice as much backwards, then more forward
than ever, etc.

So is it with the tide of the sea, and so apparently with the course
of the sun.


Every one is all in all to himself, for he being dead, all is dead to
him. Hence it comes that each man believes that he is all to all. We
ought not to judge of nature by ourselves, but by it.


Self is hateful. You Miton, conceal self, but do not thereby destroy
it, therefore you are still hateful.

--Not so, for in acting as we do, to oblige every body, we give no
reason for hating us.--True, if we only hated in self the vexation
which it causes us.

But if I hate it because it is unjust, and because it makes itself
the centre of all, I shall always hate it.

In one word Self has two qualities, it is unjust in its essence
because it makes itself the centre of all, it is inconvenient to
others, in that it would bring them into subjection, for each 'I' is
the enemy, and would fain be the tyrant of all others. You take away
the inconvenience, but not the injustice, and thus you do not render
it loveable to those who hate injustice; you render it loveable only
to the unjust, who find in it an enemy no longer. Thus you remain
unjust and can please none but the unjust.

_Of Self-love._--The nature of self-love and of this human 'I' is to
love self only, and consider self only. But what can it do? It cannot
prevent the object it loves from being full of faults and miseries;
man would fain be great and sees that he is little, would fain be
happy, and sees that he is miserable, would fain be perfect, and sees
that he is full of imperfections, would fain be the object of the
love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their
aversion and contempt. The embarrassment wherein he finds himself
produces in him the most unjust and criminal passion imaginable, for
he conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and
convinces him of his faults. Desiring to annihilate it, yet unable to
destroy it in its essence, he destroys it as much as he can in his
own knowledge, and in that of others; that is to say, he devotes all
his care to the concealment of his faults, both from others and from
himself, and he can neither bear that others should show them to him,
nor that they should see them.

It is no doubt an evil to be full of faults, but it is a greater evil
to be full of them, yet unwilling to recognise them, because that
is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion. We do not like
others to deceive us, we do not think it just in them to require more
esteem from us than they deserve; it is therefore unjust that we
should deceive them, desiring more esteem from them than we deserve.

Thus if they discover no more imperfections and vices in us than
we really have, it is plain they do us no wrong, since it is not
they who cause them; but rather they do us a service, since they
help us to deliver ourselves from an evil, the ignorance of these
imperfections. We ought not to be troubled that they know our faults
and despise us, since it is but just they should know us as we are,
and despise us if we are despicable.

Such are the sentiments which would arise in a heart full of equity
and justice. What should we say then of our own heart, finding in
it an wholly contrary disposition? For is it not true that we hate
truth, and those who tell it us, and that we would wish them to have
an erroneously favourable opinion of us, and to esteem us other than
indeed we are?

One proof of this fills me with dismay. The Catholic religion does
not oblige us to tell out our sins indiscriminately to all, it allows
us to remain hidden from men in general, but she excepts one alone,
to whom she commands us to open the very depths of our heart, and to
show ourselves to him as we are. There is but this one man in the
world whom she orders us to undeceive; she binds him to an inviolable
secrecy, so that this knowledge is to him as though it were not. We
can imagine nothing more charitable and more tender. Yet such is the
corruption of man, that he finds even this law harsh, and it is one
of the main reasons which has set a large portion of Europe in revolt
against the Church.

How unjust and unreasonable is the human heart which finds it hard
to be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some degree it were
just to do to all men. For is it just that we should deceive them?

There are different degrees in this dislike to the truth, but it may
be said that all have it in some degree, for it is inseparable from
self-love. This false delicacy causes those who must needs reprove
others to choose so many windings and modifications in order to avoid
shocking them. They must needs lessen our faults, seem to excuse
them, mix praises with their blame, give evidences of affection and
esteem. Yet this medicine is always bitter to self-love, which takes
as little as it can, always with disgust, often with a secret anger
against those who administer it.

Hence it happens, that if any desire our love, they avoid doing us a
service which they know to be disagreeable; they treat us as we would
wish to be treated: we hate the truth, and they hide it from us; we
wish to be flattered, they flatter us; we love to be deceived, they
deceive us.

Thus each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes
us further from truth, because we fear most to wound those whose
affection is most useful, and whose dislike is most dangerous. A
prince may be the by-word of all Europe, yet he alone know nothing
of it. I am not surprised; to speak the truth is useful to whom it
is spoken, but disadvantageous to those who speak it, since it makes
them hated. Now those who live with princes love their own interests
more than that of the prince they serve, and thus they take care not
to benefit him so as to do themselves a disservice.

This misfortune is, no doubt, greater and more common in the higher
classes, but lesser men are not exempt from it, since there is always
an interest in making men love us. Thus human life is but a perpetual
illusion, an interchange of deceit and flattery. No one speaks of us
in our presence as in our absence. The society of men is founded on
this universal deceit: few friendships would last if every man knew
what his friend said of him behind his back, though he then spoke in
sincerity and without passion.

Man is then only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself
and with regard to others. He will not be told the truth, he avoids
telling it to others, and all these tendencies, so far removed from
justice and reason, have their natural roots in his heart.




_THE HAPPINESS OF MAN WITH GOD_;

_OR_,

_THAT THE SCRIPTURE SHOWS A
REDEEMER._




_PREFACE TO THE SECOND PART._


To speak of those who have treated of this subject.

I wonder at the boldness with which these persons undertake to speak
of God, in addressing their words to the irreligious. Their first
chapter is to prove Divinity by the works of nature. I should not be
astonished at their undertaking if they addressed their argument to
the faithful, for it is certain that those who have a lively faith
in their heart see at once that all that exists is none other than
the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light
is extinguished, and in whom we desire to revive it, men destitute
of faith and grace who, seeking with all their light whatever they
see in nature to lead them to this knowledge, find only clouds and
darkness,--to tell them they need only look at the smallest things
which surround them in order to see God unveiled, to give them as
the sole proof of this great and important subject, the course of
the moon and planets, and to say that with such an argument we have
accomplished the proof; is to give them ground for belief that the
proofs of our Religion are very feeble. Indeed I see by reason and
experience that nothing is more fitted to excite contempt.

Not after this fashion speaks the Scripture, which knows better than
we the things of God. It says, on the contrary, that God is a God who
hides himself, and that since nature became corrupt, he has left men
in a blindness from which they can only escape by Jesus Christ, and
except through him we are cut off from all communication with God.
_Nemo novit Patrem, nisi Filius, et cui voluerit Filius revelare._

This is what Scripture indicates when it says in so many places that
those who seek God find him. It is not of a light like the sun at
noonday that they thus speak. No one says that those who seek the
sun at noonday, or water in the sea shall find them, and thus it
follows that the evidence for God is not of that kind. Therefore it
says to us elsewhere: _Vere tu es Deus absconditus_.


The metaphysical proofs of God are so apart from man's reason, and so
complicated that they are but little striking, and if they are of use
to any, it is only during the moment that the demonstration is before
them, but an hour afterwards they fear they have been mistaken.

_Quod curiositate cognoverint, superbia amiserunt._

Such is the outcome of the knowledge of God gained without Jesus
Christ, for this is to communicate without a mediator with the God
whom they have known without a mediator.

Instead of which those who have known God by a mediator know their
own wretchedness.


Jesus Christ is the goal of all, and the centre to which all tends.
Who knows him knows the reason of all things.

Those who go astray only do so from failing to see one of these
two things. It is then possible to know God without knowing our
wretchedness, and to know our wretchedness without knowing God; but
we cannot know Jesus Christ without knowing at the same time God and
our wretchedness.

Therefore I do not here undertake to prove by natural reasons either
the existence of God or the Trinity, or the immortality of the soul,
nor anything of that sort, not only because I do not feel myself
strong enough to find in nature proofs to convince hardened atheists,
but also, because this knowledge without Jesus Christ is useless
and barren. Though a man should be persuaded that the proportions
of numbers are immaterial truths, eternal, and dependent on a first
truth in whom they subsist, and who is called God, I should not
consider him far advanced towards his salvation.

The God of Christians is not a God who is simply the author of
mathematical truths, or of the order of the elements, as is the
god of the heathen and of Epicureans. Nor is he merely a God who
providentially disposes the life and fortunes of men, to crown his
worshippers with length of happy years. Such was the portion of the
Jews. But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,
the God of Christians, is a God of love and consolation, a God who
fills the souls and hearts of his own, a God who makes them feel
their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy, who unites himself
to their inmost spirit, filling it with humility and joy, with
confidence and love, rendering them incapable of any end other than
himself.


All who seek God apart from Jesus Christ, and who rest in nature,
find no light to satisfy them, but form for themselves a means of
knowing God and serving him without a mediator. Thus they fall either
into atheism, or into deism, two things which the Christian religion
almost equally abhors.


The God of Christians is a God who makes the soul perceive that
he is her only good, that her only rest is in him, her only joy
in loving him; who makes her at the same time abhor the obstacles
which withhold her from loving him with all her strength. Her two
hindrances, self-love and lust, are insupportable to her. This God
makes her perceive that the root of self-love destroys her, and that
he alone can heal.


The knowledge of God without that of our wretchedness creates pride.
The knowledge of our wretchedness without that of God creates
despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ is the middle way, because in
him we find both God and our wretchedness.




_OF THE NEED OF SEEKING TRUTH._


_Second Part. That man without faith cannot know the true good, nor
justice._

All men seek happiness. To this there is no exception, what different
means soever they employ, all tend to this goal. The reason that
some men go to the wars and others avoid them is but the same desire
attended in each with different views. Our will makes no step but
towards this object. This is the motive of every action of every man,
even of him who hangs himself.

And yet after so many years, no one without faith has arrived at
the point to which all eyes are turned. All complain, princes and
subjects, nobles and commons, old and young, strong and weak, learned
and ignorant, sound and sick, of all countries, all times, all ages,
and all conditions.

A trial so long, so constant and so uniform, should surely convince
us of our inability to arrive at good by our own strength, but
example teaches us but little. No resemblance is so exact but
that there is some slight difference, and hence we expect that
our endeavour will not be foiled on this occasion as before. Thus
while the present never satisfies, experience deceives us, and from
misfortune to misfortune leads us on to death, eternal crown of
sorrows.

This desire, and this weakness cry aloud to us that there was once
in man a true happiness, of which there now remains to him but the
mark and the empty trace, which he vainly tries to fill from all that
surrounds him, seeking from things absent the succour he finds not in
things present; and these are all inadequate, because this infinite
void can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is
to say, only by God himself.

He only is our true good, and since we have left him, it is strange
that there is nothing in nature which has not served to take his
place; neither the stars, nor heaven, earth, the elements, plants,
cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever,
pestilence, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since he has
lost the true good, all things can equally appear good to him, even
his own destruction, though so contrary to God, to reason, and to the
whole course of nature.

Some seek good in authority, others in research and knowledge, others
in pleasure. Others, who indeed are nearer the truth, have considered
it necessary that the universal good which all men desire should
not consist in any of those particular matters which can only be
possessed by one, and which if once shared, afflict their possessor
more by the want of what he has not, than they gladden him by the
joy of what he has. They have apprehended that the true good should
be such as all may possess at once, without diminution, and without
envy, and that which none can lose against his will. And their reason
is that this desire being natural to man, since it exists necessarily
in all, and that all must have it, they conclude from it....


_Infinite, nothing._--The soul of man is cast into the body, in which
it finds number, time, dimension; it reasons thereon, and calls this
nature or necessity, and cannot believe aught else.

Unity joined to infinity increases it not, any more than a foot
measure added to infinite space. The finite is annihilated in
presence of the infinite and becomes simply nought. Thus our
intellect before God, thus our justice before the divine justice.
There is not so great a disproportion between our justice and that of
God, as between unity and infinity.

The justice of God must be as vast as his mercy, but justice towards
the reprobate is less vast, and should be less amazing than mercy
towards the elect.

We know that there is an infinite, but are ignorant of its nature.
As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it must therefore
be true that there is an infinity in number, but what this is we know
not. It can neither be odd nor even, for the addition of an unit can
make no change in the nature of number; yet it is a number, and every
number is either odd or even, at least this is understood of every
finite number.

Thus we may well know that there is a God, without knowing what he is.

We know then the existence and the nature of the finite, because we
also are finite and have dimension.

We know the existence of the infinite, and are ignorant of its
nature, because it has dimension like us, but not limits like us. But
we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has
neither dimension nor limits.

But by faith we know his existence, by glory we shall know his
nature. Now I have already shown that we can know well the existence
of a thing without knowing its nature.

Let us now speak according to the light of nature.

If there be a God, he is infinitely incomprehensible, since having
neither parts nor limits he has no relation to us. We are then
incapable of knowing either what he is or if he is. This being so,
who will dare to undertake the solution of the question? Not we, who
have no relation to him.

Who then will blame Christians for not being able to give a reason
for their faith; those who profess a religion for which they cannot
give a reason? They declare in putting it forth to the world that it
is a foolishness, _stultitiam_, and then you complain that they do
not prove it. Were they to prove it they would not keep their word,
it is in lacking proof that they are not lacking in sense.--Yes, but
although this excuses those who offer it as such, and takes away from
them the blame of putting it forth without reason, it does not excuse
those who receive it.--Let us then examine this point, and say "God
is, or he is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can
determine nothing about it. There is an infinite gulf fixed between
us. A game is playing at the extremity of this infinite distance in
which heads or tails may turn up. What will you wager? There is no
reason for backing either one or the other, you cannot reasonably
argue in favour of either.

Do not then accuse of error those who have already chosen, for you
know nothing about it.--No, but I blame them for having made, not
this choice, but a choice, for again both the man who calls 'heads'
and his adversary are equally to blame, they are both in the wrong;
the true course is not to wager at all.--

Yes, but you must wager; this depends not on your will, you are
embarked in the affair. Which will you choose? Let us see. Since
you must choose, let us see which least interests you. You have two
things to lose, truth and good, and two things to stake, your reason
and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has
two things to avoid, error and misery. Since you must needs choose,
your reason is no more wounded in choosing one than the other. Here
is one point cleared up, but what of your happiness? Let us weigh the
gain and the loss in choosing heads that God is. Let us weigh the
two cases: if you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
Wager then unhesitatingly that he is.--You are right. Yes, I must
wager, but I may stake too much.--Let us see. Since there is an equal
chance of gain and loss, if you had only to gain two lives for one,
you might still wager. But were there three of them to gain, you
would have to play, since needs must that you play, and you would be
imprudent, since you must play, not to chance your life to gain three
at a game where the chances of loss or gain are even. But there is
an eternity of life and happiness. And that being so, were there an
infinity of chances of which one only would be for you, you would
still be right to stake one to win two, and you would act foolishly,
being obliged to play, did you refuse to stake one life against three
at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there be one for
you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to win.
But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to win, a
chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what
you stake is finite; that is decided. Wherever the infinite exists
and there is not an infinity of chances of loss against that of gain,
there is no room for hesitation, you must risk the whole. Thus when a
man is forced to play he must renounce reason to keep life, rather
than hazard it for infinite gain, which is as likely to happen as the
loss of nothingness.

For it is of no avail to say it is uncertain that we gain, and
certain that we risk, and that the infinite distance between the
certainty of that which is staked and the uncertainty of what
we shall gain, equals the finite good which is certainly staked
against an uncertain infinite. This is not so. Every gambler stakes
a certainty to gain an uncertainty, and yet he stakes a finite
certainty against a finite uncertainty without acting unreasonably.
It is false to say there is infinite distance between the certain
stake and the uncertain gain. There is in truth an infinity between
the certainty of gain and the certainty of loss. But the uncertainty
of gain is proportioned to the certainty of the stake, according to
the proportion of chances of gain and loss, and if therefore there
are as many chances on one side as on the other, the game is even.
And thus the certainty of the venture is equal to the uncertainty
of the winnings, so far is it from the truth that there is infinite
distance between them. So that our argument is of infinite force, if
we stake the finite in a game where there are equal chances of gain
and loss, and the infinite is the winnings. This is demonstrable, and
if men are capable of any truths, this is one.

I confess and admit it. Yet is there no means of seeing the hands at
the game?--Yes, the Scripture and the rest, etc.

--Well, but my hands are tied and my mouth is gagged: I am forced to
wager and am not free, none can release me, but I am so made that I
cannot believe. What then would you have me do?

True. But understand at least your incapacity to believe, since your
reason leads you to belief and yet you cannot believe. Labour then
to convince yourself, not by increase of the proofs of God, but by
the diminution of your passions. You would fain arrive at faith, but
know not the way; you would heal yourself of unbelief, and you ask
remedies for it. Learn of those who have been bound as you are, but
who now stake all that they possess; these are they who know the way
you would follow, who are cured of a disease of which you would be
cured. Follow the way by which they began, by making believe that
they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc.
Thus you will naturally be brought to believe, and will lose your
acuteness.--But that is just what I fear.--Why? what have you to lose?

But to show you that this is the right way, this it is that will
lessen the passions, which are your great obstacles, etc.--

What you say comforts and delights me, etc.--If my words please you,
and seem to you cogent, know that they are those of one who has
thrown himself on his knees before and after to pray that Being,
infinite, and without parts, to whom he submits all his own being,
that you also would submit to him all yours, for your own good and
for his glory, and that this strength may be in accord with this
weakness.

_The end of this argument._--Now what evil will happen to you in
taking this side? You will be trustworthy, honourable, humble,
grateful, generous, friendly, sincere, and true. In truth you will no
longer have those poisoned pleasures, glory and luxury, but you will
have other pleasures. I tell you that you will gain in this life, at
each step you make in this path you will see so much certainty of
gain, so much nothingness in what you stake, that you will know at
last that you have wagered on a certainty, an infinity, for which you
have risked nothing.


_Objection._--Those who hope for salvation are so far happy, but they
have as a counterpoise the fear of hell.

_Answer._--Who has most reason to fear hell, the man who is in
ignorance if there be a hell, and who is certain of damnation if
there be; or he who is certainly convinced that there is a hell, and
has a hope of being saved if there be?


"I would soon have given up pleasure," say they, "had I but faith."
But I say to you, "you would soon have faith did you leave off your
pleasures. Now it is for you to begin. If I could, I would give you
faith. I cannot do this, nor discover therefore if what you say is
true. But you can easily give up pleasure, and discover if what I say
is true."


_Probabilities._--We must live differently in the world, according to
these different suppositions:

1. That we could always remain in it. 2. That it is certain we cannot
remain here long, and uncertain if we shall remain here an hour. This
last supposition is the case with us.


_Instability._--It is horrible to feel all that we possess slipping
away from us.


By the law of probabilities you are bound to take pains to seek the
truth; for if you die without adoring the true source of all things
you are lost. "But," say you, "had he willed that I should adore him,
he would have left me tokens of his will." He has done so, but you
neglect them. Seek them then, it is well worth your while.


_Dungeon._--I admit that it is not necessary to fathom the opinion of
Copernicus, but this:

It is all our life is worth to know if the soul be mortal or immortal.


_Fascinatio nugacitatis._--In order that passion may do no hurt, we
should act as though we had but a week to live.

If we ought to give a week we ought to give our whole life.


In short, what is it you promise me if not ten years of self-love
spent in trying hard to please without success, besides the troubles
which are certain? For ten years is the probability.


Let us imagine a number of men in chains, all condemned to death, of
whom some are strangled every day in the sight of the others, while
those who remain see their own condition in that of their fellows,
and wait their turn looking at each other sorrowfully and without
hope. This is an image of the lot of man.


We must know ourselves, and if that does not serve to discover truth,
it at least serves to regulate our lives, and there is nothing more
just.


There are but three classes of persons: those who having found God,
serve him; those who not having found him, diligently seek him; those
who not having found him, live without seeking him. The first are
happy and wise, the last are unhappy and fools, those between are
unhappy, but they are wise.


It is certain that there is no good without the knowledge of God,
that only as we approach him are we happy, and that the ultimate good
is to know him certainly; that we are unhappy in proportion as we are
removed from him, and that the greatest evil would be certainty of
the opposite.


The ordinary world has the power of not thinking about what it does
not choose to think about. "Do not reflect on those passages about
the Messiah," said the Jew to his son. So our people often act. Thus
false religions are preserved, and the true also, as regards many
people.

But there are those who have not thus the power of preventing
thought, and who think the more the more we forbid them. These get
rid of false religions, and of the true also, if they do not find
solid reasons.


If we ought to do nothing save on a certainty, we ought to do nothing
for Religion, for this is not certain. But how much we do on an
uncertainty, as sea voyages, battles! I say then if this be the case
we ought to do nothing at all, for nothing is certain, and that
there is more certainty in Religion than that we shall see another
day, for it is not certain that we shall see to-morrow, but it is
certainly possible that we shall not see it. We cannot say so much
about Religion. It is not certain that it is, but who will dare to
say that it is certainly possible that it is not? But when we work
for to-morrow, therefore for the uncertain, we act reasonably.

For we should work for the uncertain by the doctrine of chances
already laid down.


We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and
it is from this last that we know first principles; and reason,
which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to combat them. The
sceptics who desire truth alone labour in vain. We know that we do
not dream, although it is impossible to prove it by reason, and this
inability shows only the weakness of our reason, and not, as they
declare, the general uncertainty of our knowledge. For our knowledge
of first principles, as _space_, _time_, _motion_, _number_, is as
distinct as any principle derived from reason. And reason must lean
necessarily on this instinctive knowledge of the heart, and must
found on it every process. We know instinctively that there are three
dimensions in space, and that numbers are infinite, and reason then
shows that there are no two square numbers one of which is double
of the other. We feel principles, we infer propositions, both with
certainty, though by different ways. It is as useless and absurd for
reason to demand from the heart proofs of first principles before it
will admit them, as it would be for the heart to ask from reason a
feeling of all the propositions demonstrated before accepting them.

This inability should serve then only to humiliate reason, which
would fain judge of all things, but not to shake our certainty, as if
only reason were able to instruct us. Would to God, on the contrary,
that we never needed reason, and that we knew every thing by instinct
and feeling! But nature has denied us this advantage, and has on the
contrary given us but little knowledge of this kind, all the rest can
be acquired by reason only.

Therefore those to whom God has given Religion by an instinctive
feeling, are very blessed, and justly convinced. But to those who
have it not we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for the time
when God shall impress it on their hearts, without which faith is
human only, and useless for salvation.


Those to whom God has given Religion by an instinctive feeling are
very blessed, and quite convinced. But as for those who have it not,
we can give it them only by reasoning, waiting for the time when
God himself shall impress it on their heart, without which faith is
useless for salvation.


Is then the soul too noble a subject for the feeble light of man? Let
us then abase the soul to matter, and see if she knows whereof is
made the very body which she animates, and those others which she
contemplates and moves at her will. On this subject what have those
great dogmatists known who are ignorant of nothing?

_Harum sententiarum._

This would no doubt suffice if reason were reasonable. She is
reasonable enough to admit that she has never found anything stable,
but she does not yet despair of reaching it; on the contrary, she is
as ardent as ever in the search, and is sure that she has in herself
all the necessary powers for this conquest.

We must therefore make an end, and after having examined these powers
in their effects, recognise what they are in themselves, and see if
reason has power and grasp capable of seizing the truth.


The Preacher shows that man without God is wholly ignorant, and
subject to inevitable misery. For to will and to be powerless is to
be miserable. Now he wills to be happy, and to be assured of some
truth, yet he can neither know, nor not desire to know. He cannot
even doubt.


This is what I see and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and
see nothing but obscurity, nature offers me nothing but matter for
doubt and disquiet. Did I see nothing there which marked a Divinity I
should decide not to believe in him. Did I see every where the marks
of a Creator, I should rest peacefully in faith. But seeing too much
to deny, and too little to affirm, my state is pitiful, and I have
a hundred times wished that if God upheld nature, he would mark the
fact unequivocally, but that if the signs which she gives of a God
are fallacious, she would wholly suppress them, that she would either
say all or say nothing, that I might see what part I should take.
Instead of this, in my present state, ignorant of what I am, and of
what I ought to do, I know neither my condition nor my duty. My heart
is wholly bent to know where is the true good in order to follow it,
nothing would seem to me too costly for eternity.




_THE PHILOSOPHERS._


The principal arguments of the sceptics--to omit those of less
importance--are that we have no certainty of the truth of these
principles apart from faith and revelation, save so far as we
naturally perceive them in ourselves. Now this natural perception is
no convincing evidence of their truth, since, having no certainty
apart from faith, whether man was created by a good God, by an evil
demon, or by chance, it may be doubted whether these principles
within us are true or false or uncertain according to our origin.

And more than this: That no one has any certainty, apart from faith,
whether he wake or sleep, seeing that in sleep we firmly believe we
are awake, we believe that we see space, figure, and motion, we are
aware of the lapse and measure of time; in a word we act as though we
were awake. So that half of our life being passed in sleep, we have
by our own avowal, no idea of truth, whatever we may suppose. Since
then all our sentiments are illusions, who can tell but that the
other half of life wherein we fancy ourselves awake be not another
sleep somewhat different from the former, from which we wake when we
fancy ourselves asleep?

And who doubts that if we dreamt in company, and if by chance men's
dreams agreed, which is common enough, and if we were always alone
when awake, we should believe that the conditions were reversed?
In a word, as we often dream that we dream, and heap vision upon
vision, it may well be that this life itself is but a dream, on
which the others are grafted, from which we wake at death; having
in our lifetime as few principles of what is good and true, as
during natural sleep, the different thoughts which agitate us being
perhaps only illusions like those of the flight of time and the vain
fantasies of our dreams....

These are the principal arguments on one side and the other, setting
aside those of less importance, such as the talk of the sceptics
against the impressions of custom, education, manners, climate, and
the like; and these though they influence the majority of ordinary
men, who dogmatise only on vain foundations, are upset by the least
breath of the sceptics. We have only to see their books if we are
not convinced on this point, and we shall soon become assured of it,
perhaps only too much.

I pause at the only strong point of the dogmatists, namely, that
speaking sincerely and in good faith we cannot doubt of natural
principles.

Against this the sceptics set in one word the uncertainty of our
origin, which includes that of our nature. Which the dogmatists have
been trying to answer ever since the world began.

So then war is opened among men, in which each must take a side,
ranging himself either for dogmatism or for scepticism, since
neutrality, which is the part of the wise, is the oldest dogma of the
sceptical sect. Whoever thinks to remain neutral is before all things
a sceptic. This neutrality is the essence of the sect; who is not
against them is pre-eminently for them. They are not for themselves,
they are neutral, indifferent, in suspense as to all things,
themselves included.

What then shall man do in such a state? Shall he doubt of all, doubt
whether he wake, whether you pinch him, or burn him, doubt whether
he doubts, doubt whether he is? We cannot go so far as that, and
I therefore state as a fact that there never has been a perfect
finished sceptic; nature upholds the weakness of reason, and prevents
its wandering to such a point.

Shall he say on the contrary that he is in sure possession of truth,
when if we press him never so little, he can produce no title, and is
obliged to quit his hold?

What a chimaera then is man! how strange and monstrous! a chaos, a
contradiction, a prodigy. Judge of all things, yet a weak earth-worm;
depositary of truth, yet a cesspool of uncertainty and error; the
glory and offscouring of the Universe.

Who will unravel such a tangle? This is certainly beyond the power
of dogmatism and scepticism, and all human philosophy. Man is
incomprehensible by man. We grant to the sceptics what they have so
loudly asserted, that truth is not within our reach nor to our taste,
that her home is not on earth but in heaven, that she dwells within
the breast of God, and that we can only know her so far as it pleases
him to reveal her. Let us then learn our true nature from truth
uncreate and incarnate.

Nature confounds the sceptics, and reason the dogmatists. What then
will become of you, O men! who by your natural reason search out your
true condition? You can neither avoid both these sects nor live in
either.

Know then, proud man, how great a paradox thou art to thyself. Bow
down thyself, weak reason; be silent, thou foolish nature; learn that
man is altogether incomprehensible by man, and learn from your master
your true condition which you ignore. Hear God.

For in a word, had man never been corrupt he would innocently and
securely enjoy truth and happiness. And had man never been other than
corrupt he would have no idea of virtue or blessedness. But wretched
as we are, and even more than if there were no greatness in our
condition, we have an idea of happiness and cannot attain it, we feel
an image of truth and possess a lie only, alike incapable of absolute
ignorance and of certain knowledge, so manifest is it that we once
were in a degree of perfection from which we have unhappily fallen!

Yet it is an astonishing thing that the mystery most removed from
our knowledge, that of the transmission of sin, should be a thing
without which we can have no knowledge of ourselves. For it is
certain that nothing more shocks our reason than to say that the sin
of the first man rendered those culpable, who, being so distant from
the source, seem incapable of participation in it. This transfusion
does not only seem to us impossible, but even most unjust, for there
is nothing so repugnant to the rules of our miserable justice as to
damn eternally an infant incapable of will, for a sin in which he
seems to have so scanty a share, that it was committed six thousand
years before he was in being. Certainly nothing shocks us more
rudely than this doctrine, and yet without this mystery, the most
incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. The
tangle of our condition takes its plies and folds in this abyss, so
that man is more inconceivable without the mystery than the mystery
is inconceivable to man.

Whence it appears that God, willing to render the difficulty of our
being unintelligible to us, has concealed the knot so high, or rather
so low, that we cannot reach it; so that it is not by the arrogant
exertion of our reason, but by the simple submission of reason, that
we can truly know ourselves.

These foundations solidly established on the inviolable authority
of Religion make us understand that there are two truths of faith
equally constant--the one, that man in his state at creation or in
that of grace is elevated above the whole of nature, made like unto
God and sharer of his divinity--the other, that in the state of
corruption and sin he has fallen from his former state and is made
like unto the brutes. These two propositions are equally fixed and
certain. The Scripture declares this plainly to us when it says in
some places: _Deliciae meae esse cum filiis hominum. Effundam spiritum
meum super omnen carnem. Dii estis, etc.;_ and in other places,
_Omnis caro faenum. Homo assimilatus est jumentis insipientibus et
similis factus est illis. Dixi in corde meo de filiis hominum_....
Eccles. iii.

By which it clearly appears that man by grace is made like unto God,
and a sharer in his divinity, and that without grace he is like the
brute beasts, etc.


_Scepticism._--I shall here write my thoughts without order, yet
not perhaps in undesigned confusion, that is true order, which will
always denote my object by its very disorder.

I should do too much honour to my subject if I treated it with order,
because I wish to show that it is incapable of it.


_Scepticism._--All things here are true in part, and false in part.
Essential truth is not thus, it is altogether pure and true. This
mixture dishonours and annihilates it. Nothing is purely true, and
therefore nothing is true, understanding by that pure truth. You will
say it is true that homicide is an evil, yes, for we know well what
is evil and false. But what can be named as good? Chastity? I say no,
for then the world would come to an end. Marriage? No, a celibate
life is better. Not to kill? No, for lawlessness would be horrible,
and the wicked would kill all the good. To kill then? No, for that
destroys nature. Goodness and truth are therefore only partial, and
mixed with what is evil and false.


Were we to dream the same thing every night, this would affect us as
much as the objects we see every day, and were an artisan sure to
dream every night, for twelve hours at a stretch, that he was a king,
I think he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream every
night for twelve hours at a stretch that he was an artisan.

Should we dream every night that we were pursued by enemies, and
harassed by these painful phantoms, or that we were passing all our
days in various occupations, as in travelling, we should suffer
almost as much as if the dream were real, and should fear to sleep,
as now we fear to wake when we expect in truth to enter on such
misfortunes. And, in fact, it would bring about nearly the same
troubles as the reality.

But since dreams are all different, and each single dream is
diversified, what we see in them affects us much less than what we
see when awake, because that is continuous, not indeed so continuous
and level as never to change, but the change is less abrupt, except
occasionally, as when we travel, and then we say, "I think I am
dreaming," for life is but a little less inconstant dream.


_Instinct, reason._--We have an incapacity of proof which no
dogmatism can overcome. We have an idea of truth, which no scepticism
can overcome.


Nothing more strengthens scepticism than that some are not sceptics;
were all so, they would be in the wrong.


This sect draw their strength from their enemies more than from their
friends, for the weakness of man appears much more in those who are
not, than in those who are conscious of it.


_Against scepticism._--We suppose that we all conceive of things in
the same way, but it is a gratuitous supposition, of which we have
no proof. I see indeed that the same words are applied on the same
occasions, and that every time two men see a body change its place,
they both express their view of the same object by the same word,
both saying that it has moved, and from this sameness of application
we have a strong conviction of a sameness of idea; but this, though
it may be enough to justify us in wagering the affirmative, is not
finally or completely convincing, since we know that we often draw
the same conclusions from different premisses.

This is enough, at any rate, to confuse the matter, not that it
wholly extinguishes the natural light which assures us of these
things; the academicians would have won, but this obscures it, and
troubles the dogmatists to the glory of the sceptical cabal, which
consists in this ambiguous ambiguity, and in a certain doubtful haze,
from which our doubts cannot take away all the light, nor our natural
light banish all the darkness.


_Good sense._--They are obliged to say, "You do not act in good
faith; we are not asleep," etc. How I like to see this proud reason
humiliated and suppliant. For this is not the language of a man whose
right is disputed, and who defends it with the mailed power of his
hand. He does not trifle by saying that men are not acting in good
faith, but he punishes this bad faith with might.


It may be that there are true demonstrations, but it is not certain.
Thus this proves nothing but that it is not certain that all is
uncertain, to the glory of scepticism.


_Ex senatus consultis et plebiscitis scelera exercentur._

_Nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo
philosophorum. Quibusdam destinatis sententiis consecrati quae non
probant coguntur defendere._

_Ut omnium rerum sic litterarum quoque intemperantia laboramus._

_Id maxime quemque decet quod est cujusque suum maxime._

_Hos natura modos primum dedit._

_Paucis opus est litteris ad bonam mentem._

_Si quando turpe non sit, tamen non est non turpe quum id a
multitudine laudetur._

_Mihi sic usus est, tibi ut opus est facto, fac._


The falsity of those philosophers who do not discuss the immortality
of the soul. The falsity of their dilemma in Montaigne.


It is beyond doubt that the mortality or immortality of the soul must
make an entire difference in morals; yet philosophers have treated
morality independently of the question. They discuss to pass the time.

Plato, to dispose towards Christianity.


The soul is immaterial. Philosophers have subdued their passions.
What matter could do that?


Atheists should say things which are perfectly clear, but it is not
perfectly clear that the soul is material.


Atheism is a mark of strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.


_Against those philosophers who believe in God without Jesus
Christ._--They believe that God alone is worthy to be loved and
admired, and they have desired to be loved and admired of men, and
know not their own corruption. If they feel themselves full of
feelings of love and adoration, and if they find therein their chief
joy, let them think themselves good, and welcome! But if they find
themselves averse from him, if they have no inclination but the wish
to establish themselves in the esteem of men, and if their whole
perfection consists not in constraining, but yet in causing men to
find their happiness in loving them, I say that such a perfection is
horrible. What! they have known God, and have not desired solely that
men should love him, but that men should stop short at loving them.
They have wished to be the object of the voluntary joy of men.

All the principles of sceptics, stoics, atheists, etc. are true; but
their conclusions are false, because the opposite principles are also
true.


But perhaps the subject goes beyond the reach of reason. We will
therefore examine what she has to say on questions within her powers.
If there be anything to which her own interest must have made her
apply herself most seriously, it is the search after her sovereign
good. Let us see then in what these strong and clearsighted souls
have placed it, and whether they agree.

One says that the sovereign good consists in virtue, another in
pleasure, another in the knowledge of nature, another in truth:
_Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas_, another in total
ignorance, another in indolence, others in neglect of appearances,
another in the lack of wonder, _nihil mirari prope res una quae possit
facere et servare beatum_, the true sceptics in their indifference,
doubt and perpetual suspense, and others, more wise, think they can
find a better way. And this is all we get from them!

We must needs see if this fine philosophy has gained nothing certain
from a research so lengthy and so wide, at least perhaps the soul has
learned to know herself. We will hear the rulers of the world on this
matter. What have they thought of her substance?

Have they been more happy in fixing her seat?

What have they discovered about her origin, duration and departure?


_Search for the true good._--Ordinary men place their good in fortune
and external goods, or at least in amusement. Philosophers have shown
the vanity of all this, and have placed it where best they could.


Philosophers reckon two hundred and eighty-eight sovereign goods.


_The sovereign good. Dispute about the sovereign good._--_Ut
sis contentus temetipso et ex te nascentibus bonis._ There is a
contradiction, for finally they advise suicide. Ah! happy life
indeed, from which we are to free ourselves as from the plague.

It is well to be weary and harassed by the useless search after the
true good, that we may stretch our arms to the Redeemer.


_Conversation._--Great words: Religion. I deny it.

_Conversation._--Scepticism aids Religion.


_Philosophers._--We are full of matters which take us out of
ourselves.

Our instinct suggests that we must seek our happiness outside
ourselves; our passions hurry us abroad, even when there are no
objects to excite them. The objects outside us tempt and call us,
even when we do not think of them. And thus it is in vain for
philosophers to say, "Enter into yourselves, and you will find your
good there;" we believe them not, and those who believe them are the
most empty and the most foolish.


This civil war between reason and passion divides those who desire
peace into two sects, the one, of those who would renounce their
passions and become gods, the other, of those who would renounce
their reason and become brute beasts.--Des Barreaux.--But neither
has succeeded, and reason still exists, to condemn the baseness
and injustice of the passions, and to trouble the repose of those
who give themselves over to their sway, and the passions are still
vigorous in those who desire to renounce them.


_The Stoics._--They conclude that what has been done once may be done
always, and that because the desire of glory gives some degree of
power to those possessed by it, others can easily do the same.

These are the movements of fever, which health cannot imitate.

Epictetus concludes that since there are consistent Christians all
men can easily be so.


The three kinds of lust have made three sects, and philosophers have
done no other thing than follow one of the three lusts.


What the Stoics propose is so difficult and so idle.

The Stoics lay down that all who are not at the highest degree of
wisdom are equally frivolous and vicious, as those who are in two
inches under water....


_Philosophers._--A fine thing to cry to a man who does not know
himself, that of himself he should come to God. And a fine thing also
to say to a man who knows himself.




_THOUGHTS ON MAHOMET AND ON CHINA._


                     Jesus Christ.
          Heathens.       |        Mahomet.
                  \       |       /
                   \      |      /
                    \ Ignorance /
                       of God.

_The foundation of our faith._--The heathen religion has no
foundation at the present day. We are told that it once had such a
foundation by the voice of the oracles, but what are the books which
certify this? Are they worthy of credence on account of the virtue of
their writers, have they been kept with such care that we may feel
certain none have tampered with them?

The Mahomedan religion has for its foundation the Koran and Mahomet.
But was this prophet, who was to be the last hope of the world,
foretold? What mark has he that every other man has not who chooses
to call himself prophet? What miracles does he himself tell us that
he wrought? What mystery has he taught? Even according to his own
tradition, what was the morality, what the happiness he offered?

The Jewish religion must be differently regarded in the tradition of
the sacred books and in the tradition of the people. Its morality
and happiness are ridiculous in the tradition of the people, but
admirable in that of their saints. The foundation is admirable, it
is the most ancient book in the world, and the most authentic, and
whereas Mahomet, in order to ensure the lasting existence of his
book forbade men to read it, Moses with the same object commanded
everyone to read his. And it is the same with all religions, for the
Christianity of the sacred books is quite different to that of the
casuists.

Our religion is so divine that another divine religion is only the
foundation of it.


_The difference between Jesus Christ and Mahomet._--Mahomet was not
foretold; Jesus Christ was foretold.

Mahomet that he slew; Jesus Christ that he caused his own to be slain.

Mahomet forbade reading; the apostles ordered it.


In fact the two systems are so contrary that if Mahomet took the way,
humanly speaking, to succeed, Jesus Christ took, humanly speaking,
the way to perish. And instead of concluding from Mahomet's success
that Jesus Christ might well have succeeded, we should rather say
that since Mahomet succeeded, Jesus Christ ought to have perished.


The Psalms are chanted throughout all the world.

Who renders testimony to Mahomet? Himself. Jesus Christ wills that
his testimony to himself should be of no avail.

The quality of witnesses demands that they should exist always and
everywhere, and the wretch stands alone.


_The falsity of other religions._--Mahomet had no authority. His
reasons ought to be most cogent, having nothing but their own force.

What does he say then in order to make us believe him?


Any man can do what Mahomet did, for he wrought no miracles, he was
confirmed by no prophecies. No man can do what Jesus Christ did.

_Against Mahomet._--The Koran is not more of Mahomet than the Gospel
is of Saint Matthew, for it is cited by many authors from age to age.
Even its very enemies, Celsus and Porphyry, never disavowed it.

The Koran says that Saint Matthew was an honest man. Therefore
Mahomet was a false prophet for calling honest men wicked, or for
not admitting what they have said of Jesus Christ.


It is not by the obscurities in Mahomet which may be interpreted in
a mysterious sense, that I would have him judged, but in what he
speaks clearly, as of his paradise, and the rest, he is ridiculous.
And because what is clear is so absurd, it is not just to take his
obscurities for mysteries.

It is not the same with the Scripture. It may be admitted that in it
are obscurities as strange as those of Mahomet, but much is admirably
clear, and prophecies are manifestly fulfilled. The cases are not the
same. We must not confound and compare things which only resemble
each other in their obscurity, and not in that clearness, which
should induce us to reverence the obscurities.


Suppose two persons tell foolish stories, one whose words have a
two-fold sense, understood only by his own followers, the other which
has only the one sense, a stranger not being in the secret, who hears
them both speak in this manner, would pass on them a like judgment.
But if afterwards in the rest of their conversation one speak with
the tongue of angels, and the other mere wearisome common-places, he
will judge that the one spoke in mysteries and not the other; the
one having sufficiently shown that he was incapable of absurdity,
and capable of being mysterious, the other that he is incapable of
mystery, and capable of absurdity.

The Old Testament is a cipher.


_History of China._--I believe those histories only, whose witnesses
let themselves be slaughtered.

It is not a question of seeing this in bulk. I say there is in it a
something to blind and something to enlighten.

In this one word I destroy all your reasoning. "But China obscures,"
you say, and I answer, "China obscures, but there is light to be
found; seek it."

Thus all that you say makes for one of these designs, and not at all
against the other. So this serves, and does no harm.

We must then look at this in detail, the papers must be laid on the
table.


Against the history of China, the historians of Mexico. The five
suns, of which the last is but eight hundred years old.




_OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE._


I see the Christian Religion founded on an earlier Religion, and this
is what I find of positive fact.

I do not here speak of the miracles of Moses, of Jesus Christ, and
of the Apostles, because they do not at first seem convincing, and
because I only wish here to adduce in evidence all those foundations
of the Christian Religion which are beyond a doubt, and on which
doubt cannot be cast by any person soever. It is certain that we see
in many places in the world a peculiar people, separated from all
other peoples of the world, which is called the Jewish people.

I see then a mass of religions in many countries, and in all times,
but they neither please me by their morality, nor convince me by
their proofs. Thus I should equally have refused the religion of
Mahomet and of China, of the ancient Romans and of the Egyptians, for
the sole reason, that none having more marks of truth than another,
nor any thing which necessarily decides me, reason cannot incline to
one rather than the other.

But while I consider this vacillating and strange variety of morals
and beliefs at different times, I find in one corner of the world a
peculiar people, separated from all other nations upon earth, the
oldest of all, and whose histories are earlier by many ages than the
most ancient in our possession.

I find then this great and numerous people, sprung from a single
man, who adore one God, and guide themselves by a law, given them
as they say, by his own hand. They maintain that to them alone in
the world God has revealed his mysteries, that all men are corrupt
and under the wrath of God, are all abandoned to their senses and
imagination, whence arise the strange errors and continual changes
among them, both of religions and of manners, whereas this nation
remains unshaken in its conduct: but that God will not leave other
nations in darkness for ever, that there will come a Saviour for
all, that they are in the world to announce his coming, that they
were expressly formed to be the forerunners and heralds of this
great advent, and to call on all nations to join with them in the
expectation of this Redeemer.


_Advantages of the Jewish people._--In this search the Jewish people
at first attracts my attention by a number of wonderful and singular
things which appear among them.

I see first that they are a people wholly composed of brethren, and
whereas all others are formed by the assemblage of an infinity of
families, this, though so prodigiously fruitful, has sprung from one
man only, and being thus all one flesh, and members one of another,
they form a powerful state consisting of one family, a fact without
example.

This family or nation is the most ancient known to men, a fact which
seems to invest it with a peculiar veneration, especially in regard
to our present enquiry, because if God has during all time revealed
himself to men, these are they from whom we must learn the tradition.

This people is not peculiar only by their antiquity, but also
remarkable by their duration, which has been unbroken from their
origin till now. For while the nations of Greece and Italy, of
Lacedaemon, Athens and Rome, and others who came after, have long been
extinct, these still remain, and in spite of the endeavours of many
powerful princes who have a hundred times striven to destroy them,
as their historians testify, and as we can easily understand by the
natural order of things during so long a space of years, they have
nevertheless been preserved, and extending from the earliest times
to the latest, their history comprehends in its duration all our
histories.

The Law by which this people is governed is at once the most ancient
law in the world, the most perfect, and the only one which has
been kept without interruption in a state. This is what Josephus
excellently shows, against Apion, as does Philo the Jew in many
places, where they point out that it is so ancient that the very name
of _law_ was only known by the men of old more than a thousand years
afterwards, so that Homer, who has treated the history of so many
States, has not once used the word. And it is easy to judge of the
perfection of the Law by simply reading it, for it plainly provides
for all things with so great wisdom, equity and judgment, that the
most ancient legislators, Greek and Roman, having had some glimpse
of it, have borrowed from it their principal laws, as appears by
those called Of the Twelve Tables, and by the other proofs given by
Josephus.

Yet this law is at the same time severe and rigorous beyond all
others in respect to their religious worship, constraining the
people, in order to keep them in their duty, to a thousand peculiar
and painful observances, on pain of death. Whence it is a most
astonishing fact, that it has been constantly preserved during many
ages by a people so rebellious and impatient, while all other states
have changed their laws from time to time, although they are far more
lenient.

The book containing this law, the first of all laws, is itself the
most ancient book in the world, those of Homer, Hesiod and others
dating from six or seven hundred years later.


_Falsity of other religions._--They have no witnesses; this people
has them. God challenges other religions to produce such marks. Is.
xliii. 9,--xliv. 8.


This is fact. While all philosophers separate into different sects,
there is found in one corner of the world, a people, the most ancient
in the world, declaring that all the world is in error, that God has
revealed to them the truth, that they will abide always on the earth.
In fact, all other sects come to an end, this one still endures,
and has done so for four thousand years. They assert that they hold
from their ancestors that man has fallen from communion with God, is
entirely separated from God, but that he has promised to redeem them,
that their doctrine shall always exist on the earth;

That their law has a twofold sense, that during sixteen hundred years
they have had people whom they believed prophets foretelling both the
time and the manner;

That four hundred years after they were scattered everywhere in
order that Jesus Christ should be everywhere announced, Jesus Christ
came in the manner and time foretold;

That the Jews have since been scattered abroad under a curse, yet
nevertheless still exist.


The creation and the deluge being past, and God not intending any
more to destroy the world, nor to create it anew, nor to give any
such great proofs of himself, he began to establish a people on the
earth, formed of set purpose, which should last until the coming of
that people whom Messiah should mould by his spirit.


The Jews who were called to subdue the nations and their kings were
slaves of sin, and the Christians whose calling has been to be
servants and subjects, are free children.


The devil troubled the zeal of the Jews before Jesus Christ, because
he would have been their salvation, but not since.

The Jewish people mocked of the Gentiles, the Christian people
persecuted.


_Republic._--The Christian and even the Jewish Republic has only had
God for master, as Philo the Jew notices, _On Monarchy_.

When they fought, they did so for God alone, their chief hope was in
God alone, they considered their towns as belonging to God, and they
kept them for God. I Chron. xix. 13.


The sceptre was not interrupted by the carrying away into Babylon,
because the return was promised and foretold.


A single phrase of David or of Moses, as for instance that God will
circumcise the heart, enables us to judge of their spirit. If all
the rest of their language were ambiguous, and left it doubtful
whether they were philosophers or Christians, one single sentence of
this kind would determine all the rest, as one sentence of Epictetus
determines the character of the rest to be the contrary. So far we
may be in doubt, but not afterwards.


While the prophets were for maintaining the law, the people were
negligent, but since there have been no more prophets, zeal has taken
their place.

The zeal of the Jewish people for the law, especially since there
have been no more prophets.


Maccabees after they had no more prophets. The Masorah after Jesus
Christ.




_THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE SACRED BOOKS._


_The Premiss._--Moses was a man of genius. If then he ruled himself
by his reason, he should say nothing clearly which was directly
against reason.

So all the apparent weaknesses are strength. Example: the two
genealogies in Saint Matthew and Saint Luke. What can be more clear
than that this was not concerted?


_Proof of Moses._--Why should Moses make the lives of men so long,
and their generations so few?

Because it is not the length of years, but the number of generations
which renders matters obscure.

For truth is impaired only by the change of men. And yet Moses places
two things, the most memorable that can be imagined, that is to say
the creation and the deluge, so near that we can reach from one to
the other.


_Another proof._--The longevity of the patriarchs, instead of
causing the loss of past history, was the rather serviceable for its
preservation. For if we are not always well instructed in the history
of our ancestors, it is because we have never lived much with them,
and because they are often dead before we have ourselves attained the
age of reason. But when men lived so long, children lived long with
their parents, and long conversed with them. Now, their conversation
could only be of the history of their ancestors, since to that all
history was reduced, and men did not study science or art, which now
take up so much of our daily discourse. We see also that at that time
men took special care to preserve their genealogies.


Shem, who saw Lamech, who saw Adam, saw also Jacob, who saw those who
saw Moses; therefore the deluge and the creation are true. This is
conclusive among certain people who clearly understand it.


Josephus conceals the shame of his nation.

Moses does not conceal his own shame nor....

_Quis mihi det ut omnes prophetent?_

He was tired of the people.


When the creation of the people began to stand at a distance, God
provided a single contemporary historian, and appointed a whole
people as the guardians of this book, in order that the history might
be the most authentic in all the world, that all men might learn a
thing so necessary to know, yet so impossible to be known in any
other way.


If the story in Esdras is credible, then it must be believed that
Scripture is Holy Scripture. For this story is founded only on the
authority of those who allege that of the Seventy, which shows that
the Scripture is holy.

Therefore if the tale be true, we find our proof therein, if not
we have it elsewhere. Thus those who would ruin the truth of our
Religion, founded on Moses, establish it by the same authority by
which they attack it. Thus by this providence it still exists.


_On Esdras._--The story that the books were burnt with the temple
shown to be false by The Book of Maccabees. _Jeremiah gave them the
law._

The story that he recited the whole by heart. Josephus and Esdras
note _that he read the book_. Baronius, Ann. 180. _Nullus penitus
Hebraeorum antiquorum reperitur qui tradiderit libros periisse et per
Esdram esse restitutos, nisi in IV. Esdrae._

The story that he changed the letters.

Philo, _in Vita Moysis_: _Illa lingua ac charactere quo antiquitus
scripta est lex, sic permansit usque ad LXX_.

Josephus says the Law was in Hebrew when it was translated by the
Seventy.

Under Antiochus and Vespasian, when they wished to abolish the books,
and when there was no prophet, they could not do so. And under the
Babylonians when there had been no persecution, and when there were
so many prophets, would they have allowed them to be burnt?

Josephus derides the Greeks who would not allow....


Tertullian.--_Perinde potuit abolefactam eam violentia cataclysmi
in spiritu rursus reformare, quemadmodum et Hierosolymis Babylonia
expugnatione deletis, omne instrumentum Judaicae literaturae per Esdram
constat restauratum._ Lib. I. _De Cultu femin._ cap. iii.

He says that Noah might as easily have restored by the spirit the
book of Enoch, destroyed by the deluge, as Esdras have restored the
Scriptures lost during the Captivity.

[Greek: Theos en tei epi Nabouchodonosor aichmalosiai tou laou
diaphthareison ton graphon, enepneuse Esdrai toi hierei ek tes phyles
Leoi tous ton progegonoton propheton pantas anataxasthai logous,
kai apokatastesai toi laoi ten dia Moseos nomothesian.] He alleges
this to prove that it is not incredible that the Seventy should have
explained the holy Scriptures with that uniformity which we admire
in them. Euseb. lib. v. Hist. cap. 8. And he took that from Saint
Irenaeus.

Saint Hilary in his preface to the Psalms says that Esdras arranged
the Psalms in order.

The origin of this tradition comes from the Book of Esdras.

_Deus glorificatus est, et Scripturae verae divinae creditae sunt,
omnibus eandem et eisdem verbis et eisdem nominibus recitantibus
ab initio usque ad finem, uti et praesentes gentes cognoscerent
quoniam per inspirationem Dei interpretatae sunt Scripturae, et non
esset mirabile Deum hoc in eis operatum, quando in ea captivitate
populi quae facta est a Nabuchodonosor corruptis Scripturis et
post septuaginta annos Judaeis descendentibus in regionem suam, et
post deinde temporibus Artaxexis Persarum regis inspiravit Hesdrae
sacerdoti tribus Levi praeteritorum prophetarum omnes rememorare
sermones et restituere populo eam legem quae data est per Moysen._


_Against the Story in Esdras_, II. Maccab. 2. Josephus,
_Antiquities_, II. 1.--Cyrus took occasion from the prophecy of
Isaiah to release the people. The Jews held property in peace under
Cyrus in Babylon, therefore they might well have the Law.

Josephus, in the whole history of Esdras, says not a single word of
this restoration.--II. Kings, xvii. 37.


Scripture has provided passages of consolation and warning for every
condition of life.

Nature seems to have done the same thing by her two infinities,
natural and moral, for we shall always have those who are higher and
lower, who are more and less able, who are noble and in low estate,
in order to abate our pride, and raise our lowliness.


_Order, against the objection that the Scripture has no order._--The
heart has its own order; the mind too has its own, which is by
premisses and demonstrations, that of the heart is wholly different.
It were absurd to prove that we are worthy of love by putting forth
in order the causes of love.

Jesus Christ and Saint Paul use the order of charity, not of the
intellect, for they wish to warm, not to teach; the same with Saint
Augustine. This order consists mainly in digressions on each point
which may illustrate the main end, and keep it ever in view.


God and the Apostles foreseeing that the seed of pride would cause
heresies to spring up, and not wishing to give them occasion to arise
by defining them, have placed in the Scripture and the prayers of the
Church contrary words and sentences to produce their fruit in time.

So in morals he gives charity to produce fruits contrary to lust.

He who knows the will of his master will be beaten with more stripes,
because of the power he has by his knowledge. _Qui justus est
justificetur adhuc_, because of the power which he has by justice.
From him who has received most will the greatest account be demanded,
because the aid received has given him greater power.

There is an universal and essential difference between the actions of
the will and all other actions.

The will is one of the chief organs of belief, not that it forms
belief, but that things are true or false according to the side on
which we view them. The will which chooses one side rather than the
other turns away the mind from considering the qualities of all that
it does not like to see, thus the mind, moving in accord with the
will, stays to look at the side it chooses, and so judges by what it
sees.


All things work together for good to the elect, even the obscurities
of Scripture, which they honour because of what is divinely clear.
And all things work together for evil to the reprobate, even what is
clear, which they blaspheme because of the obscurities they do not
understand.


How many stars have telescopes discovered for us which did not exist
for the philosophers of old. Men have roundly taken holy Scripture to
task in regard to the great multitude of stars, saying: "We know that
there are only a thousand and twenty-two."


The meaning changes according to the words which express it. The
meaning receives its dignity from words instead of giving it. We must
seek examples of this.


Words differently arranged have different meanings, and meanings
differently arranged produce different effects.




_THE PROPHECIES._


The prophecies are the strongest proofs of Jesus Christ. For these
therefore God has made the most provision; since the event which has
fulfilled them is a miracle existing from the birth of the Church
to the end. Therefore God raised up prophets during sixteen hundred
years, and during four hundred years afterwards he dispersed all
these prophecies with all the Jews, who bore them into all regions of
the world. Such was the preparation for the birth of Jesus Christ,
whose Gospel exacting belief from every man made it necessary not
only that there should be prophecies to inspire this belief, but that
these prophecies should be spread throughout the whole world, so that
the whole world should embrace it.

_Prophecies._--If one man alone had made a book of predictions
concerning Jesus Christ, both as to the time and the manner of
his coming, and if Jesus Christ had come in agreement with these
prophecies, the fact would have had infinite force.

But in this case there is much more. Here is a succession of men
for the space of four thousand years, who without interruption or
variation, follow one another in foretelling the same event. Here is
a whole people announcing it, existing for four thousand years, to
testify in a body their certainty, from which they cannot be diverted
by all the threatenings and persecutions brought to bear against
them; this is in a far greater degree important.


But it was not enough that the prophecies existed, they needed also
distribution through all places, and preservation through all time.
And in order that this agreement might not be taken as an effect of
chance, it was necessary it should be foretold.

It is much more glorious for the Messiah that they should be
spectators and even instruments of his glory, beyond the fact that
God had preserved him.


_Proof._--Prophecy with accomplishment.

That which preceded, and that which followed Jesus Christ.


The prophecies concerning the Messiah are mingled with some
concerning other matters, so that neither the prophecies of the
Messiah should be without proof, nor the special prophecies without
fruit.


_Non habemus regem nisi Caesarem._ Therefore Jesus Christ was the
Messiah, because they had no longer any king but a stranger, and
because they would have no other.


The eternal kingdom of the race of David, II. Chron., by all the
prophecies, and with an oath. And it was not temporally accomplished.
Jer. xxxiii. 20.


Zeph. iii. 9.--"I will give my words to the Gentiles, that all may
serve me with one consent."

Ezekiel xxxvii 25.--"My servant David shall be their prince for ever."

Exodus iv. 22.--"Israel is my first born."


We might easily think that when the prophets foretold that the
sceptre would not depart from Judah until the advent of the eternal
king, they spoke to flatter the people, and that their prophecy was
proved false by Herod. But to show that this was not their meaning,
and that on the contrary they well knew that the temporal kingdom
should cease, they said they would be without a king, and without a
prince, and for a long time. Hosea iii. 4.


_Prophecies._--That Jesus Christ will sit on the right hand till God
has put his enemies under his feet.

Therefore he will not subject them himself.


The time of the first advent was foretold, the time of the second
is not so, because the first was to be secret, the second must be
glorious, and so manifest that even his enemies will recognise it.
But as his first coming was to be obscure, and to be known only of
those who searched the Scriptures....


The prophecies must be unintelligible to the wicked, Daniel xii. 10,
Hosea xiv. 9, but intelligible to those who are well instructed.

The prophecies which represent him poor, represent him master of the
nations.--Is. lii. 16, etc liii. Zech. ix. 9.

The prophecies which foretell the time foretell him only as master of
the Gentiles and suffering, and not as in the clouds nor as judge.
And those which represent him thus as judge and in glory do not
specify the time.


Do you think that the prophecies cited in the Gospel were reported to
make you believe? No, but to prevent your believing.


_Prophecies._--The time was foretold by the state of the Jewish
people, by the state of the heathen world, by the state of the
temple, by the number of years.

It is daring to predict the same affair in so many ways. It was
necessary that the four idolatrous or pagan monarchies, the end of
the kingdom of Judah, and the seventy weeks should coincide, and all
this before the second temple was destroyed.


_Prophecies._--The seventy weeks of Daniel are equivocal in the term
of commencement, because of the terms of the prophecy, and in the
term of conclusion because of the differences in the chronologists.
But all this difference extends only to two hundred years.


We understand the prophecies only when we see the events occur, thus
the proofs of retreat, discretion, silence, etc., are evidence only
to those who know and believe them.

Joseph so interior in a law so exterior.

Exterior penances dispose to interior, as humiliations to humility.
So the....


The more I examine them the more I find truths in them, both in those
which preceded and those which followed, both the synagogue which
was foretold, and the wretches who adhere to it, and who, being our
enemies, are admirable witnesses of the truth of these prophecies,
wherein their misery and even their blindness is foretold.

I find this sequence, our Religion wholly divine in its authority, in
its duration, in its perpetuity, in its morality, in its conduct, its
doctrine, and its effects.

The frightful darkness of the Jews foretold. _Eris palpans in
meridie. Dabitur liber scienti literas, et dicet: Non possum legere._


Hosea i. 9. "Ye shall not be my people and I will not be your God,"
when you are multiplied after the dispersion. "In the places where it
was said: Ye are not my people, I will call them my people."


_Predictions._--That under the fourth monarchy, before the
destruction of the second temple, before the dominion of the Jews was
taken away, and in the seventieth week of Daniel, while the second
temple was still standing, the Gentiles should be instructed, and
brought to the knowledge of the God worshipped by the Jews, that
those who loved him should be delivered from their enemies, and
filled with his fear and love.

And it came to pass that under the fourth monarchy, before the
destruction of the second temple, etc, the Gentiles in crowds
worshipped God and lived an angelic life. Maidens dedicated their
virginity and their life to God, men gave up their pleasures, what
Plato was only able to effect upon a few men, chosen and instructed
to that end, a secret force, by the power of a few words, now wrought
upon a hundred million ignorant men.

The rich left their wealth, children left the luxurious homes of
their parents to go into the austerity of the desert, etc., according
to Philo the Jew. All this was foretold long ages ago. For two
thousand years no Gentile had worshipped the God of the Jews, and at
the time foretold, the crowd of Gentiles worshipped this only God.
The temples were destroyed, the very kings bowed themselves under the
cross. All this was of the Spirit of God spread abroad upon the earth.


_Holiness._--_Effundam spiritum meum._--All nations had been in
unbelief and lust; the whole world was now ablaze with love. Princes
quitted their state, maidens suffered martyrdom. This power sprang
from the advent of Messiah, this was the effect and these the tokens
of his coming.


_Predictions._--It was foretold that in the time of Messiah he would
come and establish a new covenant, such as should make them forget
the coming out from Egypt, Jer. xxiii. 5, Is. xliii. 16, that he
would put his Law not in externals, but in the heart, that Jesus
Christ would put his fear, which had been only from without, in the
midst of the heart. Who does not see the Christian law in all this?


_Prophecies._--That the Jews would reject Jesus Christ, and would
themselves be rejected of God because the choice vine brought
forth only wild grapes; that the chosen people should be disloyal,
ungrateful, incredulous, _populum non credentem et contradicentem_;
that God would strike them with blindness, and that in full mid-day
they would grope like blind men; that his messenger should go before
him.


"... Then shall a man no more teach his neighbour, saying, There is
the Lord, _for God will make himself felt by all, your sons shall
prophesy_. _I will put my spirit and my fear in your heart._"

All that is the same thing. To prophesy is to speak of God, not by
outward proofs, but by a feeling interior and direct.


_Prophecies._--_Transfixerunt_, Zech. xii. 10.

That there should come a deliverer to crush the demon's head, and to
free his people from their sins, _ex omnibus iniquitatibus_. That
there should be a new and eternal covenant, and a new and eternal
priesthood after the order of Melchisedek, that the Christ should be
glorious, powerful, mighty, and yet so miserable that he would not
be recognised, nor taken for what he is, but be rejected and slain,
that his people which denied him should be no more his people, that
the idolaters would receive him and trust in him, that he would quit
Zion to reign in the centre of idolatry, that the Jews should exist
for ever, that he would spring from Judah, and at a time when there
should be no longer a king.


That Jesus Christ would be small in his beginnings, and afterwards
would increase. The little stone of Daniel.


That he would teach men the perfect way,

And never has there come before him nor after him any man who has
taught anything divine approaching this.


That then idolatry would be overthrown, that the Messiah would cast
down all idols, and would bring men into the worship of the true God.

That the idol temples would be overthrown, and that among all
nations and in all places of the world men would offer to God a pure
sacrifice, not of beasts.

That he would be king of the Jews and Gentiles. And we see this king
of Jews and Gentiles oppressed by both, both equally conspiring
his death, we see him bear rule over both, destroying the worship
established by Moses in Jerusalem its centre, where he placed his
earliest Church, as well as the worship of idols in Rome its centre,
where he placed his chief Church.


No Gentile from Moses to Jesus Christ according to the Rabbis
themselves. The crowd of the Gentiles after Jesus Christ believed in
the books of Moses and observed their essence and spirit, casting
away only what was useless.


_Omnis Judaea regio, et Jerosolomitae universi et
baptisabantur._--Because of all the conditions of men who came there.

These stones _can_ become the children of Abraham.


Is. i. 21. Change of good into evil and the vengeance of God.

Is. x. 1. _Vae qui condunt leges iniquas._

Is. xxvi. 20. _Vade populus meus, intra in cubicula tua, claude ostia
tua super te, abscondere modicum ad momentum, donec pertranseat
indignatio._

Is. xxviii. 1. _Vae coronae superbiae._

_Miracles._.--Is. xxxiii. 9. _Luxit, et elanguit terra: confusus est
Libanus, et obsorduit, etc._

_Nunc consurgam, dicit Dominus: nunc exaltabor, nunc sublevabor_.

Is. xl. 17. _Omnes gentes quasi non sint._

Is. xli. 26. _Quis annunciavit ab exordio ut sciamus: et a principio
ut dicamus: Justus es?_

Is. xliii. 13. _Operabor, et quis avertet illud?_

Jer. xi. 21. _Non prophetabis in nomine Domini, et non morieris in
manibus nostris._

_Propterea haec dicit Dominus._

Jer. xv. 2. _Quod si dixerint ad te: Quo egrediemur? dices ad eos:
Haec dicit Dominus: Qui ad mortem, ad mortem: et qui ad gladium,
ad gladium: et qui ad famem, ad famem: et qui ad captivitatem, ad
captivitatem._

Jer. xvii. 9. _Pravum est cor omnium, et inscrutabile: quis cognoscet
illud?_ that is to say, who can know all its evil, for it is already
known to be wicked. _Ego Dominus scrutans cor, et probans renes._

_Et dixerunt: Venite et cogitemus contra Jeremiam cogitationes, non
enim peribit lex a sacerdote, neque sermo a propheta._

Jer. xvii. 17. _Non sis tu mihi formidini, spes mea tu in die
afflictionis._


Trust in exterior sacrifices.

Jer. vii. 14. _Faciam domui huic, in qua invocatum est nomen meum,
et in qua vos habetis fiduciam: et loco, quem dedi vobis et patribus
vestris, sicut feci Silo._

Exterior sacrifice is not the essential point.

_Tu ergo noli orare pro populo hoc._

Jer. vii. 22. _Quia non sum locutus cum patribus vestris, et
non praecepi eis in die, qua eduxi eos de Terra AEgypti, de verbo
holocautomatum, et victimarum._

_Sed hoc verbum praecepi eis, dicens: Audite vocem meam, et ero vobis
Deus, et vos eritis mihi populus: et ambulate in omni via, quam
mandavi vobis, ut bene sit vobis. Et non audierunt._

Exterior sacrifice is not the essential point.

Jer. xi. 13. _Secundum numerum enim civitatum tuarum erant dii tui
Juda: et secundum numerum viarum Jerusalem posuisti aras confusionis.
Tu ergo noli orare pro populo hoc._

A multitude of doctrines.

Is. xliv. 20. _Neque dicet: Forte mendacium est in dextera mea._

Is. xliv. 21, etc. _Memento horum Jacob, et Israel, quoniam servus
meus es tu. Formavi te, servus meus es tu Israel, ne obliviscaris
mei._

_Delevi ut nubem iniquitates tuas, et quasi nebulam peccata tua:
revertere ad me, quoniam redemi te._

xliv. 23, 24. _Laudate caeli, quoniam misericordiam fecit Dominus:...,
quoniam redemit Dominus Jacob, et Israel gloriabitur. Haec dicit
Dominus redemptor tuus, et formator tuus ex utero: Ego sum Dominus,
faciens omnia, extendens caelos solus, stabiliens terram, et nullus
mecum._

Is. liv. 8. _In momento indignationis abscondi faciem meam parumper a
te, et in misericordia sempiterna misertus sum tui: dixit redemptor
tuus Dominus._

Is. lxiii. 12. _Qui eduxit ad dexteram Moysen brachio majestatis suae,
qui scidit aquas ante eos, ut faceret sibi nomen sempiternum._

14. _Sic adduxisti populum tuum ut faceres tibi nomen gloriae._

Is. lxiii. 16. _Tu enim pater noster, et Abraham nescivit nos, et
Israel ignoravit nos._

Is. lxiii. 17. _Quare ... indurasti cor nostrum ne timeremus te?_

Is. lxvi. 17. _Qui sanctificabantur, et mundos se putabant ... simul
consumentur, dicit Dominus._

Jer. ii. 35. _Et dixisti: Absque peccato et innocens ego sum: et
propterea avertatur furor tuus a me._

_Ecce ego judicio contendam tecum, eo quod dixeris: Non peccavi._

Jer. iv. 22. _Sapientes sunt ut faciant mala, bene autem facere
nescierunt._

Jer. iv. 23, 24. _Aspexi terram, et ecce vacua erat, et nihili: et
caelos, et non erat lux in eis._

_Vidi montes, et ecce movebantur: et omnes colles conturbati sunt._

_Intuitus sum, et non erat homo: et omne volatile caeli recessit.
Aspexi, et ecce Carmelus desertus: et omnes urbes ejus destructae sunt
a facie Domini, et a facie irae furoris ejus._

_Haec enim dicit Dominus: Deserta erit omnis terra, sed tamen
consummationem non faciam._

Jer. v. 4. _Ego autem dixi: Forsitan pauperes sunt et stulti,
ignorantes viam Domini, judicium Dei sui._

_Ibo ad optimates, et loquar eis: ipsi enim cognoverunt viam Domini:
et ecce magis hi simul confregerunt jugum, ruperunt vincula. Idcirco
percussit eos leo de silva, pardus vigilans super civitates eorum._

Jer. v. 29. _Numquid super his non visitabo, dicit Dominus? aut super
gentem hujuscemodi non ulciscetur anima mea?_

Jer. v. 30. _Stupor et mirabilia facta sunt in terra:_

Jer. v. 31. _Prophetae prophetabant mendacium, et sacerdotes
applaudebant manibus suis: et populus meus dilexit talia: quid igitur
fiet in novissimo ejus?_

Jer. vi 16._Haec dicit Dominus: State super vias, et videte, et
interrogate de semitis antiquis, quae sit via bona, et ambulate in
ea: et invenietis refrigerium animabus vestris. Et dixerunt: Non
ambulabimus._

_Et constituti super vos speculatores. Audite vocem tubae. Et
dixerunt: Non audiemus._

_Ideo audite Gentes, quanta ego faciam eis. Audi terra: Ecce ego
adducam mala, etc._

Jer. xxiii. 15._A prophetis enim Hierusalem egressa est pollutio
super omnem terram._

Jer. xxiii. 17. _Dicunt his, qui blasphemant me: Locutus est Dominus,
Pax erit vobis, et omni qui ambulat in pravitate cordis sui,
dixerunt: Non veniet super vos malum._

The Jews witnesses for God. Is. xliii. 9, xliv. 8.

_Prophecies accomplished._--Malachi i. 11. The sacrifice of the Jews
rejected, and the sacrifice of the Gentiles, even out of Jerusalem,
and in all places.

--Moses before his death foretold the calling of the Gentiles, Deut.
xxxii. 21, and the reprobation of the Jews.

Moses foretold what would happen to each tribe.

_Prophecy._--Amos and Zechariah. They sold the just one, and
therefore were not recalled.

--Jesus Christ betrayed.

They shall no more remember Egypt. See Is. xliii. 16-19, Jerem.
xxiii. 7.

The Jews shall be scattered abroad. Is. xxvii. 6. A new law. Jer.
xxxi. 31.

Malachi. Grotius.--The second temple glorious. Jesus Christ will come
to it. Haggai ii. 7-10.... The calling of the Gentiles. Joel ii. 28.
Hos. ii. 24. Deut. xxxii. 21. Mal. i. 11.


Moses first taught the Trinity, original sin, the Messiah.

David was a great witness.

A king, good, merciful, a fair soul, a fine mind, powerful. He
prophesied, and his wonders came to pass. This is infinite.

He had only to say that he was the Messiah, had he been vain enough,
for the prophecies are clearer about him than about Jesus Christ. The
same with Saint John.


_Special predictions._--They were strangers in Egypt without any
private possessions, in that country or in any other, when Jacob
dying and blessing his twelve children declared to them that they
should possess a great land, and foretold in particular to the family
of Judah that the kings who would one day govern them should be of
his race, and that all his brethren should be subject to him.

This same Jacob disposing of the future land as though he were its
master, gave a portion to Joseph more than to the others. "I give
thee," said he, "a portion more than to thy brethren." And blessing
his two children, Ephraim and Manasseh, whom Joseph had presented to
him, the elder, Manasseh, on his right, and the young Ephraim on his
left, he put his arms cross-wise, and placing his right hand on the
head of Ephraim, and the left on Manasseh, he blessed them thus. And
when Joseph represented to him that he was preferring the younger he
answered him with admirable decision, "I know it well, my son, I know
it, but Ephraim shall increase in a way quite other than Manasseh."
This has been in fact so true in the result that, being alone almost
as abundant as the two entire lines which compose a whole kingdom,
they have been usually called by the name of Ephraim alone.

This same Joseph when dying commanded his children to bear his bones
with them into that land to which they did not come for two hundred
years afterwards.

Moses, who wrote all these things so long before they happened,
himself made for each family the partition of the land before they
entered it, as though he had been master of it.

He gave them judges to divide it, he prescribed the entire political
form of government which they should observe, the cities of refuge
which they should build, and....


Daniel ii. "All thy sooth-sayers and wise men cannot show unto thee
the secret which thou hast demanded.

"But there is a God in heaven, who can do so, and he has revealed in
thy dream the things which shall be in the latter days." _This dream
must have caused him great uneasiness._

"And it is not by my own wisdom that I have knowledge of this secret,
but by the revelation of this same God who has discovered it to me,
to make it manifest in thy presence.

"Thy dream was of this kind. Thou sawest a great image, high and
terrible, which stood before thee. His head was of gold, his breast
and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass. His legs
of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.

"Thus thou sawest till a stone was cut out without hands, which smote
the image upon his feet, that were of iron and clay and brake them to
pieces.

"Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold,
broken to pieces together, and the wind carried them away, but this
stone which smote the image became a great mountain, and filled
the whole earth. This is the dream, and now I will give thee the
interpretation.

"Thou who art the greatest of kings, and to whom God has given a
power so extended that thou art renowned among all people, art the
golden head of the image which thou hast seen.

"But after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and
another of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.

"But the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, and even as iron
breaketh in pieces, and subdueth all things, so this empire shall
break in pieces and bruise.

"And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of clay and part of
iron, the kingdom shall be divided; and it shall be partly strong and
partly broken.

"But as iron cannot be firmly mixed with clay, so they who are
represented by the iron and by the clay, cannot cleave one to another
though united by marriage.

"Now in the days of these kings will God raise up a Kingdom, which
shall never be destroyed, nor ever be delivered up to another people.

"It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it
shall stand for ever, according as thou sawest that the stone was
cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it fell from the
mountain, and brake in pieces the iron, the clay, the silver and
the gold. This is what God has revealed to thee of the things
which must come in the fulness of time. This dream is true and the
interpretation thereof is faithful. Then Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his
face towards the earth, etc."


Daniel viii. "Daniel having seen the combat of the ram and of the
he-goat, who vanquished him and ruled over the earth, whereof the
principal horn being broken four others came up towards the four
winds of heaven, and out of one of them came forth a little horn,
which waxed exceeding great toward the South and toward the East, and
toward the land of Israel, and it waxed great, even to the host of
heaven, and it cast down some of the stars, and stamped upon them,
and at last overthrew the prince, and by him the daily sacrifice was
taken away and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.

"This is what Daniel saw. He asked the explanation and a voice cried
in this manner, 'Gabriel, make this man to understand the vision.'
And Gabriel said,

"The ram which thou sawest is the king of the Medes and Persians, and
the he-goat is the king of Greece, and the great horn that is between
his eyes is the first king of this monarchy.

"Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms
shall stand up out of the nation, but not with his strength.

"Now in the latter time of their kingdom when iniquities shall be
grown up, there shall arise a king insolent and strong, but his power
shall be not his own. To him all things shall succeed after his will,
and he shall destroy the holy people, and through his policy also he
shall cause craft to prosper in his hand, and he shall destroy many.
He shall also stand up against the Prince of Princes, but he shall
perish miserably, and nevertheless by a violent hand."

Daniel ix. 20.

"As I was praying God with all my heart, and confessing my sin and
the sin of all my people, and prostrating myself before God, even
Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, came to
me and touched me about the time of the evening oblation, and he
informed me and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to teach thee
that thou mightest understand. At the beginning of thy prayer I came
to show thee that which thou didst desire, for thou art greatly
beloved: therefore understand the matter and consider the vision.
Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy
city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and
to abolish iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness; to
accomplish the vision and the prophecies, and to anoint the Most Holy.

"After which this people shall be no more thy people, nor this city
the holy city. The times of wrath are passed and the years of grace
shall come for ever.

"Know therefore, and understand, that from the going forth of the
commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the
Prince, shall be seven weeks, and three score and two weeks: the
street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times."

The Hebrews were accustomed to divide numbers, and to place the
smaller first, so that seven and sixty-two make sixty-nine. Of this
seventy there will then rest the seventieth: that is to say the seven
last years of which he will speak next, and after these sixty-two
weeks which have followed the seven first, the Christ should be
killed, and a people would come with its prince, who should destroy
the city, and the sanctuary, and overwhelm all, and the end of that
war will accomplish the desolation. Christ shall be killed after the
sixty-nine weeks, that is to say, in the last week.

"Now one week, which is the seventieth, which remains, shall confirm
the covenant with many, and in the midst of the week, that is to say
the last three years and a half, he shall cause the sacrifice and the
oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall
make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined
shall be poured upon the desolate."

Daniel xi. The angel said to Daniel:

"There shall stand up yet,"--after Cyrus, under whom all this still
is,--"three kings in Persia,"--Cambyses, Smyrdis, Darius;--"and the
fourth,"--Xerxes, who shall then come,--"shall be far richer than
they all, and far stronger, and shall stir up all his people against
the Greeks, and a mighty king shall stand up,"--Alexander,--"that
shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will. And
when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be
divided in four parts toward the four winds of heaven,"--see also
vii. 6 vii. 8--"but not to his posterity, and his successors shall
not equal his power, for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for
others beside these,"--his four principal successors.

"And the king--Ptolemy son of Lagos,--of the south,"--Egypt,--"shall
be strong,--but one of his princes shall be strong above
him,"--Seleucus king of Syria,--"and his dominion shall be a great
dominion,"--Appian says that he was the most powerful of Alexander's
successors.

"And in the end of years they shall join themselves together, and
the king's daughter of the South,"--Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy
Philadelphus, son of the other Ptolemy--"shall come to the king of
the North to make peace between these princes"--to Antiochus Deus,
king of Syria and of Asia, son of Seleucus Lagidas.

"But neither she nor her seed shall have a long authority, for she
and they that sent her and they that brought her, and her children
and her friends, shall be delivered to death,"--Berenice and her son
were killed by Seleucus Callinicus.

"But out of a branch of her roots"--Ptolemy Euergetes was the son of
the same father as Berenice--"shall one stand up in his estate, who
shall come with an army into the land of the king of the north, and
shall put all under subjection, and carry captives into Egypt their
gods, their princes, their gold, their silver, and all their precious
spoils, and shall continue many years when the king of the North can
do nought against him."--If he had not been called into Egypt by
domestic reasons, says Justin, he would have entirely ruined Seleucus.

"And thus he shall return into his kingdom, but his sons shall be
stirred up and shall prepare an exceeding great multitude"--Seleucus
Ceraunus, Antiochus the Great.

"And their army shall come and overthrow all, whereat the king of
the South being moved with choler, shall come forth and fight with
him and conquer,"--Ptolemy Philopator against Antiochus the Great at
Raphia--"and his troops shall become insolent, and his heart shall be
lifted up,"--this Ptolemy desecrated the temple--Josephus--"and he
shall cast down many ten thousands, but he shall not be strengthened
by it.

"For the king of the North"--Antiochus the Great--"shall return
with a greater multitude than before,"--in the reign of the young
Ptolemy Epiphanes--"and then a great number of enemies shall stand
up against the king of the south, also the apostates and robbers of
thy people shall exalt themselves to establish the vision; but they
shall perish"--those who abandon their religion to please Euergetes,
when he will send his troops to Scopas. For Antiochus will again take
Scopas and conquer them.

"And the king of the North shall destroy the fenced cities and the
armies of the south shall not withstand, and all shall yield to his
will. He shall stand in the land of Israel and it shall yield to him.

"And thus he will think to render himself master of all the empire of
Egypt,"--despising the youth of Epiphanes, says Justin.

"And for that he will make alliance with him and give his
daughter,"--Cleopatra, in order that she may betray her husband. On
which Appian says that doubtful of being able to make himself master
of Egypt by force, because of the protection of the Romans, he wished
to attempt it by craft. "He would fain corrupt her, but she shall not
stand on his side, neither be for him. After this shall he turn his
face unto the isles,"--that is to say, the sea-ports,--"and shall
take many,"--as Appian relates.

"But a prince shall oppose his conquests and cause the reproach
offered by him to cease,"--Scipio Africanus, who stopped the progress
of Antiochus the Great because he offended the Romans in the person
of their allies.--"He will return into his kingdom and perish and be
no more."--He was killed by his soldiers.

"And he who stands in his place shall be a tyrant, a raiser of taxes
in the glory of the kingdom," that is the people, Seleucus Philopator
or Soter, the son of Antiochus the Great--"but within a few days he
shall be destroyed, neither in anger nor in battle;

"And in his place shall stand up a vile person, unworthy of the
honour of the kingdom, but he shall come in by skilful flatteries.

"All armies shall bend before him, he will conquer them, and even the
prince with whom he has made a league. For having renewed the league
with him, he will deceive him, and come in with a few tribes into
his province, calm and without fear. He will take the best places,
and shall do that which his fathers have not done, and ravage on all
sides. He will forecast devices, during his time."


The zeal of the Jews for their law and their temple. Josephus and
Philo the Jew _ad Caium_.

What other people has so great a zeal, but for them it was a
necessity.

Jesus Christ foretold as to the time and the state of the world. The
leader taken from the thigh, and the fourth monarchy.

How fortunate we are to have such light amid such darkness.

How grand it is to see by the eye of faith, Darius and Cyrus,
Alexander, the Romans, Pompey and Herod working, though
unconsciously, for the glory of the Gospel!


How grand to see by the eye of faith the histories of Herod, of
Caesar....


_The reprobation of the Jews and conversion of the Gentiles._--Isaiah
lxv. "I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them
that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that
did not call upon my name.

"I have spread out my hands all the day unto an unbelieving people,
which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts;
a people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that
sacrificeth to idols, etc.

"These shall be scattered like smoke in the day of my wrath, etc.

"Your iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers will I gather,
and will requite you according to your works.

"Thus saith the Lord, As the new wine is found in the cluster, and
one saith, Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it.

"So will I take a seed of Jacob and Judah to possess my mountains,
and mine elect and my servants shall inherit it, and my fertile and
abundant plains, but I will destroy all others, because you have
forgotten your God to follow strange gods. I have called you and you
have not answered, I have spoken and you have not heard, and you have
chosen the things which I forbade.

"Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, my servants shall eat, but ye
shall be hungry; my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed;
my servants shall sing for joy of heart, but ye shall cry and howl
for vexation of spirit.

"And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my chosen: for the
Lord shall slay thee, and call his servants by another name, that he
who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in God, etc.;
because the former troubles are forgotten.

"For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former
things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.

"But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for,
behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I
will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of
weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying....

"Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I
will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion
shall eat straw like the ox: and dust shall be the serpent's meat.
They shall not hurt nor kill in all my holy mountain."

Is. lvi. "Thus saith the Lord, Keep ye judgment, and do justice: for
my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.

"Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that keepeth
my salvation and holdeth his hand from doing any evil.

"Neither let the strangers, that have joined themselves to the Lord,
say, God will separate me from his people. For thus saith the Lord:
Whoso will keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me,
and take hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give in mine
house a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will
give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off....

"Therefore is judgment far from us: we wait for light, but behold
obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the
wall like the blind: we stumble at noon day as in the night; we are
in desolate places as dead men.

"We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for
judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us."

Isaiah lxvi. 18. "But I know their works and their thoughts: I come
that I may gather all nations and tongues, and they shall see my
glory.

"And I will set a sign among them, and I will send of them that shall
be saved unto the nations, to Africa, to Lydia, to Italy, to Greece,
and to the people that have not heard my name, neither have seen my
glory. And they shall bring your brethren."

Jer. vii. _Reprobation of the Temple._

"But go ye to Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what
I did to it for the wickedness of my people. And now, because ye have
done all these works, saith the Lord, I will do unto this house, in
which my name is called upon, wherein ye trust, and unto the place
which I gave to your priests, as I have done to Shiloh." For I have
rejected it and made myself a temple elsewhere.

"And I will cast you out of my sight, as I have cast out all your
brethren, the whole seed of Ephraim." Rejected absolutely.

"Therefore pray not thou for this people."

Jer. vii. 21. "What avails it you to add sacrifice to sacrifice? For
I spake not unto your fathers, when I brought them out of the land
of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: But this thing
commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and
ye shall be my people. For it was only after they had sacrificed to
golden calves that I gave myself sacrifices to turn into good an evil
custom." Jer. vii. 4. "Trust not in lying words, saying, The temple
of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are
these."


_Proofs by the Jews._--Captivity of the Jews without restoration.
Jeremiah xi. 11. "I will bring evil on Judah which they shall not be
able to escape."

_Types._--Isaiah v. "The Lord had a vineyard from which he looked for
grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. I will therefore uproot and
destroy it, the earth shall produce nothing but thorns, and I will
forbid the heaven....

"The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel, and the men of
Judah his pleasant plant. I looked that they should do justice, and
they bring forth only iniquities."

Isaiah viii. "Sanctify the Lord with fear and trembling, and let him
be your fear; but he shall be for a stone of stumbling and for a rock
of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare
to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble
against that stone, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be
taken, and perish. Hide my words and cover my law for my disciples.

"And I will wait upon the Lord, that hideth his face from the house
of Jacob."

Isaiah xxix. "Be astonished, and wonder, O people of Israel; waver
and stagger: be drunken, but not with wine; stagger, but not with
strong drink. For the Lord hath mingled for you the spirit of deep
sleep. He will shut up your eyes: he will cover your prophets
and princes that see visions." Daniel xii. "The wicked shall not
understand, but the wise shall understand." Hosea, the last chapter,
the last verse, after many temporal blessings says: "Who is wise, and
he shall understand these things," etc.

"And the visions of all the prophets are become unto you as a book
that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, and who
can read: and he saith, I cannot read it; for it is sealed: And when
the book is delivered to him that is not learned, he saith, I am not
learned.

"Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people with their lips
do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me,"--there is
the reason and the cause, for they adore God in their heart, and
understand the prophecies,--"and their fear toward me is taught by
the precept of men.

"Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do among this people a
marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall
perish, and the understanding...."

_Prophecies._ _Proof of divinity._ Isaiah xli.

"Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye
are gods: and we will incline our heart unto your words. Teach us the
things that have been from the beginning and prophecy those that are
to come.

"By this we shall know that ye are gods. Yea, do good, or do evil, if
you can. Come now and let us reason together.

"Behold, ye are of nothing, and an abomination, etc. Who hath
declared from the beginning, that we may know? and beforetime, that
we may say, He is righteous? yea, there is none that sheweth, yea,
there is none that declareth the future."

Is. xlii. "I am the Lord: and my glory will I not give to another. I
have foretold the former things which have come to pass, and declare
those which are to come. Sing a new song to God in all the earth."

"Bring forth the blind people that have eyes and see not, and the
deaf that have ears and hear not. Let all the nations be gathered
together. Who among them and their Gods can declare this, and shew
us former things, and things to come? Let them bring forth their
witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, It
is truth.

"Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have
chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he.

"I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed wonders in your
eyes: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God.

"For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all
their nobles. I am the Lord, your sanctifier and creator.

"I have made a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters; I am
he that destroyed for ever the powerful enemies who have resisted you.

"Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of
old.

"Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye
not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in
the desert.

"This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my
praise, etc.

"I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own
sake, and will not remember thy sins. Put me in remembrance: let us
plead together: declare thou, that thou mayest be justified. Thy
first father hath sinned, and thy teachers have transgressed against
me." Is. xliv. "I am the first and the last, saith the Lord. Whoso
will equal himself to me, let him declare the order of things since I
formed the first peoples, and the things which are to come. Fear ye
not, have I not declared all these things, ye are my witnesses."


_Prophecy of Cyrus_--"Because of Jacob whom I have chosen I have
called thee by thy name," "Come and let us reason together. Who has
declared this from ancient time, and foretold things to come? have
not I, the Lord."

Is. xlvi. "Remember the former things of old, and know that there is
none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient
times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall
stand, and I will do all my pleasure."

Is. xlii. 9. "Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new
things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them."

Is. xlviii. 3. "I have declared the former things from the beginning;
and I shewed them; and they came to pass. Because I knew that thou
art obstinate, that thy spirit is rebellious, and thy brow brass; I
have even before it came to pass shewed it thee: lest thou shouldst
say, that it was the work of thy Gods and the effect of their
commands.

"Thou hast seen all this; and will not ye declare it? I have shewed
thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst
not know them. They are created now, and not from the beginning; even
before the day when thou heardst them not; lest thou shouldst say,
Behold, I knew them.

"Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from that time
that thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou wouldst deal very
treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb."


--_Prophecies._ _In Egypt._--_Pugio Fidei_, 659. _Talmud._

It is a tradition among us that when the Messiah shall come, the
house of God, destined for the dispensation of his word, shall be
full of filth and impurity, that the wisdom of the scribes shall be
corrupt and rotten; that those who fear to sin shall be reproved by
the people, and treated as fools and madmen.


Is. xlix.

"Listen, O isles, unto me, and hearken ye people from far: The Lord
hath called me by my name even from the womb of my mother; he hath
hid me in the shadow of his hand, he hath made my words like a sharp
sword, and said: Thou art my servant, in whom I will be glorified.
And I said, Lord, have I laboured in vain? have I spent my strength
for nought? yet is my judgment with thee, O Lord, and my work before
thee. When the Lord, who has formed me from the womb of my mother to
be wholly for himself, in order to bring Jacob and Israel again to
him, said unto me: Thou shalt be glorious in my sight, and I will
be thy strength. It is a light thing that thou shouldst convert the
tribes of Jacob; I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles,
that thou mayest be my salvation unto the ends of the earth. These
are the things which the Lord hath said to him that humbleth his soul
to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers. Princes
and kings shall worship thee because the Lord is faithful that hath
chosen thee.

"Again the Lord said unto me: I have heard thee in the days of
salvation and of mercy, and I have established thee for a covenant of
the people, and to cause thee to inherit the desolate nations, that
thou mayest say to those who are in chains: Go forth, and to those
that are in darkness: Come into the light, and possess these abundant
and fertile lands. They shall no more labour, nor hunger, nor thirst,
neither shall the sun smite them; for he that hath mercy on them
shall lead them, even by the springs of waters shall he guide them,
and make the mountains plain before them. Behold, the peoples shall
come from all parts, from the East and from the West, from the North
and from the South. Let the heaven give glory to God, let the earth
rejoice, for it hath pleased the Lord to comfort his people, and he
will have mercy on the poor who hope in him.

"Yet Sion hath dared to say: The Lord hath forsaken and hath
forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should
not have compassion on the son of her womb, but if she forget, yet
will I not forget thee, O Sion. I will bear thee always between my
hands, and thy walls shall be ever before me. Thy builders are come,
thy destroyers shall go forth of thee. Lift up thy eyes round about,
and see all these are gathered together, to come to thee: as I live,
saith the Lord, thou shall be clothed with all these as with an
ornament, thy deserts, and thy desolate places, and the land of thy
destruction shall now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants,
and the children of thy barrenness shall still say in thy ears: the
place is too strait for me, make me room to dwell in. And thou shall
say in thy heart: Who hath begotten these? I was barren and brought
not forth, led away, and captive: and who hath brought up these? I
was destitute and alone: and these, where were they? And the Lord
shall say: Behold, I will lift up my hand to the Gentiles, and will
set up my standard to the people. And they shall bring thy children
in their arms, and in their bosoms. And kings shall be thy nursing
fathers, and queens thy nursing mothers: they shall worship thee with
their face toward the earth, and they shall lick up the dust of thy
feet. And thou shall know that I am the Lord, for they shall not be
confounded that wait for him. Shall the prey be taken from the strong
and mighty? But even if the captivity be taken away from the strong:
nothing can hinder me to judge those that have judged thee, and thy
children I will save. And all flesh shall know, that I am the Lord
thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer the mighty One of Jacob.

"Thus saith the Lord: What is this divorcement, wherewith I have put
away the synagogue, and why have I delivered it into the hands of
your enemies; is it not for your iniquities and your transgressions
that I have put it away?

"For I came, and no man would receive me, I called and none would
hear. Is my arm shortened that I cannot save?

"Therefore will I show the tokens of my anger, I will clothe the
heavens with darkness, and will make sackcloth their covering.

"The Lord hath given me the tongue of the learned that I should know
how to uphold by word him that is weary. He hath wakened my ear, and
I have heard him as a master.

"The Lord hath revealed his will and I was not rebellious.

"I gave my body to the smiters, and my cheeks to outrage, I hid
not my face from shame and spitting, but the Lord has helped me,
therefore I was not confounded.

"He is near that justifieth me; who will contend with me, and accuse
me of sin, since God himself is my protector?

"All men shall pass and be consumed by time, let those that fear the
Lord hearken to the words of his servant, let him that languisheth in
darkness put his trust in the Lord. But as for you, you do but set
alight upon you the wrath of God, you walk upon the coals and among
the flames you have kindled. This ye have of my hand, ye shall perish
in sorrow.

"Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek
the Lord: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of
the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and
unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him when he was alone, and
childless, and increased him. For the Lord has comforted Zion: and
has heaped on her blessings and consolations.

"Hearken unto me, my people; and give ear unto me, for a law shall
proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of
the Gentiles."

Amos viii. The prophet having enumerated the sins of Israel, said
that God had sworn to take vengeance on them.

He saith also: "And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the
Lord, that the sun shall go down at mid-day, and I will make the
earth dark in the day of light: And I will turn your feasts into
mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.

"You shall have sorrow and suffering, and I will make the sorrow as
the mourning of an only son, and the latter end thereof as a bitter
day. Behold the days come, saith the Lord, and I will send forth a
famine into the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord. And they shall move from sea to
sea, and from the North to the East: they shall go about seeking the
word of the Lord, and shall not find it.

"In that day their fair virgins, and their young men shall faint
for thirst. They that have followed the idols of Samaria, and sworn
by the god of Dan; who have followed the worship of Beersheba; they
shall fall, and shall rise no more."

Amos iii. 2. "Of all nations of the earth, I have chosen you only to
be my people."

Daniel xii. 7. Daniel having described all the extent of Messiah's
reign, says, "All these things shall be done when the dispersion of
my people shall be accomplished."

Haggai ii. 3. "You who compare this second house with the glory of
the first and despise it. Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, saith
the Lord, and take courage O Jesus the high priest, and take courage,
all ye people of the land, and cease not to work. The word that I
covenanted with you when you came out of the land of Egypt stands
yet: and my spirit shall be in the midst of you: Lose not hope. For
thus saith the Lord of hosts: Yet one little while, and I will move
the heaven and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land,"--a mode of
speech to denote a great and extraordinary change. "And I will move
all nations: and the desired of all nations shall come: and I will
fill this house with glory: saith the Lord.

"The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord,"--that is
to say, it is not by that that I will be honoured, as it is said in
another place. All the beasts of the field are mine, what good is
it to me that they are offered me in sacrifice?--"Greater shall be
the glory of this latter house than of the first, saith the Lord of
hosts: and in this place I will establish my house, saith the Lord."

"According to all that you desired of the Lord God in Horeb in the
day of the assembly, saying, Let us not hear again the voice of the
Lord, neither let us see this fire any more, that we die not. And
the Lord said unto me, Their prayer is just. I will raise them up a
prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I will put my
words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall
command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not
hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require
it of him."

Genesis xlix. "Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise, and
thou shall vanquish thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow
down before thee. Judah, lion's whelp, thou art gone up to the prey,
O my son, and art couched as a lion, and as a lioness awakened.

"The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between
his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the
people be."




_OF TYPES IN GENERAL AND OF THEIR LAWFULNESS._


_Proof of the two Testaments at once._--To prove both the Testaments
at one stroke we need only see if the prophecies in one are
accomplished in the other.

To examine the prophecies we must understand them.

For if we believe they have only one sense it is certain that Messiah
has not come; but if they have two senses, it is certain that he has
come in Jesus Christ.

The whole question then is to know if they have two senses....

That the Scripture has two senses, which Jesus Christ and his
Apostles have given, the following are the proofs:

1. Proof by Scripture itself.

2. Proofs by the Rabbis. Moses Maimonides says that it has two faces,
and that the prophets have prophesied Jesus Christ only.

3. Proofs by the Cabala.

4. Proofs by the mystical interpretation which the rabbis themselves
have given to the Scripture.

5. Proofs by the principles laid down by the rabbis that there are
two senses, that there are two advents of the Messiah; one in glory,
and one in humiliation, according to their deserts; that the prophets
have prophesied of Messiah only. The Law is not eternal, but must
change when Messiah comes; that then they shall no more remember the
Red Sea; that the Jews and the Gentiles shall be mingled.


It is as those among whom there is a certain secret language.

Those who do not understand it can see in it only a foolish sense.


_Typical._--The figures of a sword, a shield.

_Potentissime._


To change the type, because of our weakness.


_Types._--The prophets prophesied by figures of a girdle, a beard and
burnt hair, etc.


Two errors: 1, to take all literally; 2, to take all spiritually.


The veil which is upon these books for the Jews is there also for bad
Christians, and for all who do not hate themselves.

But those who truly hate themselves are in a disposition to
understand the Scriptures and to know Jesus Christ.


_Types_.--To show that the Old Testament is only figurative, and
that by temporal possessions the prophets understood others, this
is the proof: 1, that this were unworthy of God; 2, that their
discourses express very clearly the promise of temporal possessions,
and that they say nevertheless that their discourses are obscure,
and that their sense will not be understood. Whence it appears that
this secret sense is not that which they openly expressed, and that
consequently they meant to speak of other sacrifices, of another
deliverer, etc. They say that they will be understood only in the
fulness of time. Jer. xxxiii.

The third proof is that their discourses are contradictory and
destroy each other, so that if we think they did not mean by the
words law and sacrifice aught else than those of Moses, there is a
gross and obvious contradiction. Therefore they meant something else,
occasionally contradicting themselves in the same chapter.

Now to understand the sense of an author....


_A type brings with it absence and presence, pleasure and pain._

A cipher with a double sense, one clear, and in which it is said that
the sense is hidden....


A portrait brings with it absence and presence, pleasure and pain.
The reality excludes absence and pain.

_Types._--To know if the law and the sacrifices are real or
figurative, we must see if the prophets in speaking of these things
limited their view and their thoughts to them, so that they saw only
the old covenant; or if they saw in them somewhat else of which they
were the semblance, for in a portrait we see the thing figured. For
this we need only examine what they say.

When they speak of it as eternal, do they mean that same covenant
which they elsewhere say will be changed; so of the sacrifices, etc.?

A cipher has two senses. If we intercept an important letter in which
we see an obvious meaning, wherein it is nevertheless declared that
the sense is veiled and obscure, that it is concealed, so that the
letter might be read without discovering it, and understood without
understanding, we can but think that here is a cipher with a double
sense, and all the more if we find manifest contradictions in the
literal sense. How greatly we ought to value those who interpret
the cipher, and explain to us the hidden sense, especially if the
principles they extract are wholly natural and clear. This is what
Jesus Christ did, and the Apostles. They broke the seal, he rent
the veil, and revealed the spirit. They have thereby taught us that
man's enemies are his passions; that the Redeemer is to be spiritual
and his reign spiritual; that there are to be two advents, one in
lowliness to abase the proud, the other in glory to exalt the humble;
that Jesus Christ is God and man.

The prophets said clearly that Israel would be always the beloved of
God, that the law would be eternal, they have said also that their
meaning would not be understood, and that it was veiled.


_Types._--When the word of God, which cannot lie, is false literally,
it is true spiritually. _Sede a dextris meis_, is false literally,
therefore it is true spiritually.

In these expressions God is spoken of after the manner of men, and
this means only that the intention which men have in giving a seat
at their right hand, God will also have. It is then a mark of the
intention of God, not of his mode of carrying it out.

Thus when it is said "God has received the odour of your incense
and will in return give you a fat land," this means that the same
intention which a man will have, who, pleased with your perfumes,
will give you a fat land, God will have towards you, because you have
had towards him the same intention as a man has for him to whom he
offers a sweet savour. So _iratus est_, a jealous God, etc., for the
things of God being inexpressible, they cannot be said otherwise. And
the Church uses them still: _Quia confortavit seras_, etc.


Difference between dinner and supper.

In God the word differs not from the intention, for he is true, nor
the word from the effect, for he is powerful, nor the means from the
effect, for he is wise. Bern. _ult. sermo in Missam_.

Aug., _de Civit._ v. 10. This rule is general. God can do all, except
those things which if he could do he would not be almighty, as dying,
being deceived, lying, etc.

Many evangelists for the confirmation of the truth. Their differences
are useful.

The Eucharist after the Lord's Supper. Truth after the type.

The ruin of Jerusalem, a type of the ruin of the world, forty years
after the death of Jesus.

"I know not" as a man or as an ambassador. Matt. xxiv. 36.

Jesus condemned by the Jews and the Gentiles.

The Jews and the Gentiles figured by the two sons.

Aug. _de Civit._ xx. 29.


The figures of the Gospel for the state of the sick soul are sick
bodies, but because one body cannot be sufficiently sick to express
it well, several are needed. Thus there are the deaf, the dumb, the
blind, the paralytic, the dead Lazarus, the possessed; all this
together is in the sick soul.

Isaiah, li. The Red Sea an image of the Redemption.

"_Ut sciatis quod filius hominis habet potestatem remittendi peccata,
tibi dico: Surge._"

God, willing to show that he was able to form a people holy with an
invisible holiness, and to fill them with an eternal glory, made
visible things. As nature is an image of grace, he has done in the
excellences of nature what he would accomplish in those of grace, in
order that men might judge that he could make the invisible since he
made the visible so well.

Thus he saved this people from the deluge, he has raised them up from
Abraham, redeemed them from their enemies, and caused them to enter
into rest.

The object of God was not to save them from the deluge, and raise up
a whole people to Abraham, only in order to bring them into a fat
land.

And so grace itself is but the figure of glory, for it is not the
ultimate end. It was symbolised by the law, and itself symbolises
grace, but it is the figure of it, and the origin or cause.

The ordinary life of man is like that of the saints. They all seek
their satisfaction, and differ only in the object wherein they place
it; they call those their enemies who hinder them, etc. God then has
shown the power which he has to give invisible possessions, by the
power which he has shown over things visible.


And yet this covenant, made to blind some and enlighten others,
marked in those very men whom it blinded the truth which should be
recognised by others. For the visible possessions which they received
from God were so great and so divine that it certainly appeared he
was able to give them those which are invisible, as well as a Messiah.

For nature is an image of grace, and visible miracles are the image
of the invisible. _Ut sciatis, tibi dico: Surge._

Isaiah, li., says that Redemption will be as the passage of the Red
Sea.

God then has shown by the deliverance from Egypt, and from the sea,
by the defeat of the kings, by the manna, by the whole genealogy of
Abraham, that he was able to save, to send down bread from heaven,
etc., so that the people at enmity with him is the type and the
representation of the very Messiah whom they know not, etc.

He has then shown us at last that all these things were only types,
and what is true freedom, a true Israelite, true circumcision, true
bread from heaven, etc.

In these promises each man finds what he chiefly desires, temporal
possessions or spiritual, God or the creatures; but with this
difference, that those who therein seek the creatures find them, but
attended by many contradictions, with a prohibition against loving
them, with the injunction to worship God only, and to love him only,
which is the same thing, and finally that the Messiah came not for
them; whilst on the contrary those who therein seek God find him,
without any contradiction, with the injunction to love him only,
and that the Messiah came in the time foretold, to give them the
possessions which they ask.

Thus the Jews had miracles and prophecies, of which they saw the
accomplishment, and the teaching of their law was that they should
love and worship God alone; it was also perpetual. Thus it had
all the marks of the true religion, as indeed it was, but we must
distinguish between the teaching of the Jews, and the teaching of
the Jewish law. Now the teaching of the Jews was not true, although
it had miracles and prophecy and perpetuity, because it had not this
further point, the worship and love of God only.


_The reason of types._

They had to deal with a carnal people, and to render them the
depositary of a spiritual covenant.

To give faith in the Messiah it was necessary there should have been
antecedent prophecies, in the charge of persons above suspicion,
diligent, faithful, singularly zealous, and known to all the world.

That all this might be accomplished, God chose this carnal people,
to whom he entrusted the prophecies which foretell the Messiah as a
deliverer, and as a dispenser of those carnal possessions which the
people loved. And thus they have had an extraordinary zeal for their
prophets, and, in sight of the whole world, have had charge of these
books which foretell their Messiah, assuring all the nations that he
should come, and in the manner foretold in their books, which they
held open to all the world. But this people deceived by the poor and
ignominious advent of the Messiah have been his most cruel enemies.
So that they, who were of all nations in the world the least open to
the suspicion of favouring us, the most scrupulous and most zealous
that can be named for their law and their prophets, have kept the
records incorrupt.


Therefore the prophecies have a hidden and spiritual sense, which
this people hated, under the carnal sense which they loved. Had the
spiritual sense been disclosed, it being such as they were unable to
love, or even to bear, they would not have been zealous to preserve
their books and their ceremonies; and if they had loved these
spiritual promises, and had preserved them incorrupt till Messiah
came, their witness would have had no force, because they had been
his friends. Therefore it was well that the spiritual sense should
be concealed; but on the other hand, had the sense been so hidden as
not to be at all apparent, it could not have served as a proof of the
Messiah. What then was done? In a crowd of passages the spiritual was
concealed under the temporal sense, and has been clearly revealed in
a few; again, the time and the state of the world were so clearly
foretold that the sun is not so evident. And in some passages this
spiritual sense is so dearly expressed that no less a blindness than
that which the flesh imposes on the spirit when enslaved, can keep us
from discerning it.

See then what God has done. This sense is concealed under another
in an infinite number of passages, in some, though rarely, it is
revealed, yet so that the passages in which it is concealed are
equivocal, and can suit both senses, while those in which it is
disclosed are unequivocal, and can agree with the spiritual sense
alone.

So that this cannot lead us into error, and could only be
misunderstood by so carnal a people.

For when possessions are promised in abundance, what could
hinder them from understanding the true possessions, save their
covetousness, which limited the sense to the good things of this
world? But those whose only good was in God referred the sense to
him alone. For there are two qualities which divide the will of man,
covetousness and charity. Not that covetousness cannot coexist with
faith in God, nor charity with worldly possessions, but covetousness
uses God, and enjoys the world, while the opposite is the case with
charity.

Now the end we pursue gives names to things. All which hinders the
attainment of this end, is said to be at enmity with us. Thus the
creatures, however good, are the enemies of the just, when they turn
them aside from God, and God himself is the enemy of those whose
greed he opposes.

Hence the word enemy being interpreted according to the end
proposed, the just understood by it their passions, and the carnal
understood the Babylonians, so that the term is obscure only for the
unrighteous. And this is what Isaiah says: _Signa legem in electis
meis_, and that Jesus Christ shall be a stone of stumbling. But,
"Blessed are they who shall not be offended in him!" Hosea, xiv. 9,
says excellently: "Where is the wise, and he shall understand these
things. The just shall know them, for the ways of God are right, but
the transgressors shall fall therein."

So that those who rejected and crucified Jesus Christ, being offended
at him, are the same people who bear the books which witness of him,
and which say that he will be rejected and a stumbling stone, so that
their refusal has given an additional mark that it is he, and he has
been proved both by the just Jews who received him, and the unjust
Jews who rejected him, both of whom were foretold.


One of the main reasons why the prophets put a veil on the spiritual
possessions which they promised under the figure of temporal
possessions is, that they had to do with a carnal people whom they
must make the keepers of the spiritual covenant.


Jesus Christ, prefigured by Joseph, the beloved of his father, sent
by his father to visit his brethren, etc., innocent, sold by his
brethren for twenty pieces of silver, and thereby becoming their
lord, their saviour, the saviour of strangers, and the saviour of
the world; all which had not been brought about but for the plot for
his destruction, their sale and rejection of him.

In prison Joseph innocent between two criminals; Jesus Christ on
the cross between two thieves. Joseph foretold deliverance to the
one, and death to the other, from the same omens. Jesus Christ saves
the elect, and condemns the reprobate after the same crimes. Joseph
foretold only, Jesus Christ acts. Joseph asked of him who is saved to
be mindful of him when he has come into his glory, and he whom Jesus
Christ saved asked that he would remember him when he came into his
Kingdom.


_Types._--Saviour, father, sacrificer, sacrifice, food, king, wise,
lawgiver, afflicted, poor, having to create a people, which he must
lead and nourish, and bring into the land.


Fascination.--_Somnum suum. Figura hujus mundi._

The Eucharist.--_Comedes panem tuum. Panem nostrum._

_Inimici Dei terram lingent._ The sinners lick the dust, that is to
say, love earthly pleasures.

The Old Testament contained the types of future joy, and the New
contains the means of attaining it.

The types were of joy, the means of penitence, and nevertheless the
Paschal Lamb was eaten with bitter herbs, _cum amaritudinibus_.

_Singularis sum ego donec transeam._ Jesus Christ before his death
was almost the only martyr.


To speak against too greatly figurative expressions.


There are some types clear and demonstrative, but others which seem
far-fetched, and which bring proof only to those already persuaded.
These may seem like the sayings of the Apocalyptics. But the
difference is that these have none which are not doubtful, so that
nothing is so unjust as to pretend that theirs are as well founded as
some of ours, for they have none so demonstrative as some of ours.
There is no comparison possible. We have no right to compare and
confound things because they agree in one point, while they are so
different in another. What is clear in things divine forces us to
revere what is obscure.


I do not say that the _mem_ is a mystery.


We may not attribute to the Scripture the sense which it has not
revealed to us that it contains. Thus, to say that the closed _mem_
of Isaiah means six hundred, has not been revealed. It might be said
that the final _tsade_ and the _he deficientes_ signify mysteries.
But we are not allowed to say so, and still less to say this is the
way of the philosopher's stone. But we say that the literal sense is
not the true sense, because the prophets said so themselves.


_Extravagances of the Apocalyptics, Preadamites, Millenarians,
etc._--Whoever would found extravagant opinions on the Scripture will
for instance found them on the fact that:

It is said that "This generation shall not pass away till all these
things be fulfilled." On that I will say that after that generation
will come another generation, and so in constant succession.

The Second Book of Chronicles speaks of Solomon and the King as if
they were two different persons. I say that they were two.


_Against those who misuse passages of Scripture, and who are puffed
up when they find one which seems to favour their error._

The chapter for Vespers, on Passion Sunday, the prayer for the King.

Explanation of these words: "He that is not with me is against me."
And these others: "He that is not against you is with you." A person
who says: I am neither for nor against; we ought to answer him....
One of the Antiphons for Vespers at Christmas: _Exortum est in
tenebris lumen rectis corde_.




_THAT THE JEWISH LAW WAS FIGURATIVE._


_Contradiction._--It is not possible to give a good expression to
a portrait save by bringing all contraries into harmony, and it is
not enough to dwell upon a series of accordant qualities, without
reconciling the contraries. To understand the meaning of an author we
must harmonise all the contrary passages.

Thus, to understand Scripture, we must find a sense in which all
the contrary passages are reconciled; it is not enough to have one
which agrees with many consonant passages, but we must find one which
reconciles even dissonant passages.

Every author has a sense in which all the contradictory passages
agree, or he has no meaning at all. The latter cannot be said of
Scripture and the prophets, which assuredly abound in good sense. We
must then seek for a meaning which harmonises all contraries.

The true sense then is not that of the Jews, but in Jesus Christ all
dissonances are brought into harmony.

The Jews could not make the cessation of the royalty and principality
foretold by Hosea accord with the prophecy of Jacob.

If we take the law, the sacrifices, the kingdom as realities, we
cannot reconcile all the passages. Of necessity then they are but
figures. We cannot even reconcile the passages of the same author,
nor of the same book, nor sometimes of the same chapter, which
abundantly denotes what was the meaning of the author. As when
Ezekiel, chap. xx., says that man will live by the commandments of
God and will not live by them.


It was not lawful to sacrifice elsewhere than at Jerusalem, the
place which the Lord had chosen, nor even to eat the tithes in any
other place. Deut. xii. 5, etc.; Deut. xiv. 23, etc.; xv. 20; xvi.
2-15.

Hosea foretold that the Jews should be without king, without prince,
without sacrifice and without idols, which is accomplished at this
day, since they are not able to make a lawful sacrifice out of
Jerusalem.

_Types._--If the law and the sacrifices are the truth it must be
pleasing to God, and not displeasing to him. If they are figures they
must be both pleasing and displeasing.

Now through the whole of Scripture they are both pleasing and
displeasing. It is said that the law shall be changed, that the
sacrifice shall be changed, that they shall be without law, without
a prince and without sacrifices, that a new covenant shall be made,
that the law shall be renewed, that the precepts which they have
received are not good, that their sacrifices are abominations, that
God has required none of them.

It is said, on the contrary, that the law shall abide for ever, that
the covenant shall be eternal, that sacrifice shall be eternal, that
the sceptre shall never depart from among them, because it shall not
depart from them till the coming of the eternal King.

Now are all these passages obviously literal? No. Are they obviously
typical? No, they are obviously either real or typical. But the first
set, which bar a literal interpretation, prove that the whole are
typical.

All these passages together cannot apply to the thing signified, all
can apply to the type, therefore they are not spoken of the thing
signified, but of the type.

_Agnus occisus est ab origine mundi._ A sacrificing judge.


_Types._--God willing to form to himself an holy people, whom he
should separate from all other nations, whom he should deliver from
their enemies, and should establish in a place of rest, has not
only promised this, but has foretold by his prophets the time and
the manner of his coming. And yet, to confirm the hope of his elect
through all ages, he made them to see it in a figure, but never left
them without assurances of his power and of his will to save them.
For at the creation of man, Adam was the witness, and the guardian
of the promise made concerning the Saviour who should be born of the
woman, when men were still so near the creation that they could not
have forgotten their creation and their fall. When those who had seen
Adam were no longer in the world, God sent Noah, whom he saved, and
drowned the whole earth by a miracle which marked sufficiently both
the power which he had to save the world, and the will which he had
to do so; and to raise up of the seed of the woman him whom he had
promised.

This miracle was enough to confirm the hope of men. The memory of the
deluge being fresh among men while Noah was still living, God made
promises to Abraham, and while Shem was still living God sent Moses,
etc....


_Types._--God, willing to deprive his own of perishable possessions,
made the Jewish people in order to show that this arose from no lack
of power.


The Jews had grown old in these earthly thoughts, that God loved
their father Abraham, his flesh, and all that would spring from it;
that for this reason he had multiplied them, and set them apart
from all other peoples, without allowing them to intermingle; that
when they were languishing in Egypt he brought them out with many
wonderful signs in their favour; that he fed them with manna in the
wilderness, and brought them out into a very fat land; that he gave
them kings and a well-built temple, there to offer beasts before
him, by the shedding of whose blood they were purified; that at last
he would send Messiah to make them masters of the whole world, and
foretold the time of his coming.

The world having grown old in these carnal errors, Jesus Christ came
at the time foretold, but not with the expected glory, and therefore
men did not think it was he. After his death Saint Paul came to teach
that all these things had happened in figures, that the Kingdom of
God was not in the flesh, but in the spirit; that the enemies of
men were not the Babylonians, but the passions; that God delighted
not in temples made with hands, but in a pure and contrite heart;
that bodily circumcision was unprofitable, but that of the heart was
needed; that Moses gave them not that bread from heaven, etc.

But God, not willing to disclose these things to a people unworthy
of them, yet nevertheless willing to foretell them, in order that
they might be believed, foretold the time dearly, and expressed the
things sometimes clearly, but generally in figures, so that those who
loved the emblems might rest in them, and those who loved the things
figured might see them therein.

All that tends not to charity is figurative.

The sole aim of the Scripture is charity.

All which tends not to that only end is figurative, for since there
is but one end, all which does not refer to it in express terms is
figurative.

God has so varied that sole precept of charity to satisfy our
curiosity, which seeks for diversity, by that diversity which still
leads us to the one thing needful. For one only thing is needful, yet
we love diversity, and God satisfies both by these diversities, which
lead to the one thing needful.

The Jews so loved the mere shadows, and waited for them so entirely,
that they misunderstood the substance, when it came in the time and
manner foretold.

The rabbis take the breasts of the Spouse for figures, as they do
every thing which does not express the only aim they had, that of
temporal good.

And Christians take even the Eucharist as a type of the glory for
which they strive.


Charity is no figurative precept. It is horrible to say that Jesus
Christ, who came to take away the figure and establish the truth,
came only to establish the type of charity and take away the existing
reality.

If the light be darkness, what must the darkness be?


When David foretold that Messiah would deliver his people from their
enemies, we may believe that these according to the flesh were the
Egyptians, and then I know not how to show that the prophecy was
fulfilled. But we may well believe also that the enemies were their
sins, for in truth the Egyptians were not their enemies, and their
sins were. This word enemies is therefore equivocal.

But if he say, as in fact he does elsewhere, that he will save his
people from their sins, as do also Isaiah and others, the ambiguity
is removed, and the double sense of enemies is reduced to the single
sense of iniquities. For if he had sins in his mind he might well
denote them by the word enemies, but if he thought of enemies, he
could not designate them by the word iniquities.

Now Moses, David, and Isaiah employ the same terms. Who will say then
that they have not all the same meaning, and that the sense of David
which is plainly that of iniquities when he spoke of enemies, is not
the same as that of Moses when speaking of enemies.

Daniel prays that the people may be delivered from the captivity of
their enemies, but he was thinking of sins, and to show this, he
says that Gabriel came to tell him that his prayer was heard, and
that there were only seventy weeks to wait, after which the nation
would be delivered from iniquity, that sin would have an end, and the
Redeemer, the Most Holy, should bring in eternal righteousness, not
legal, but eternal.


The Jews had a doctrine of God as we have one of Jesus Christ, and
confirmed by miracles; they were forbidden to believe every worker of
miracles, and more, they were ordered to have recourse to the chief
priests, on whom only they should rely.

Thus, in regard to their prophets, they had all those reasons which
we have for refusing to believe the workers of miracles.

And yet they were very blameworthy in refusing the prophets because
of their miracles, and had not been blameworthy had they not seen the
miracles. _Nisi fecissem, peccatum non haberent._

Therefore all belief rests on miracles.


Whoever estimates the Jewish religion by its coarser minds will
know it but ill. It is to be seen in the sacred books, and in the
tradition of the prophets, who have made it plain enough that they
did not understand the law according to the letter. So our Religion
is divine in the Gospel, in the Apostles, and in tradition, but
ridiculous in those who corrupt it.

The Messiah, according to the carnal Jews, was to be a mighty
temporal prince. Jesus Christ, according to carnal Christians, has
come to dispense us from the love of God, and to give us sacraments
which shall operate without our concurrence. This is no more the
Christian religion than was the other the Jewish.

True Jews and true Christians have always expected a Messiah who
should inspire them with the love of God, and by that love should
make them triumph over all their enemies.


The carnal Jews hold a midway place between Christians and Pagans.
The Pagans know not God, and love this world only. The Jews know the
true God, and love this world only. Christians know the true God,
and love not the world. Jews and Pagans love the same good. Jews and
Christians know the same God.

The Jews were of two kinds, one having merely Pagan, the other having
Christian affections.


The carnal Jews understood neither the greatness nor the humiliation
of Messiah as foretold by their prophecies. They misunderstood him in
his foretold greatness, as when he said that Messiah should be lord
of David, through his son, and that he was before Abraham who yet had
seen him. They did not believe him so great as to be eternal, and
so too they misunderstood him in his humiliation and in his death.
Messiah, said they, abideth for ever, and this man has said that he
shall die. They believed him then neither mortal nor eternal, and
they only looked in him for a carnal greatness.


_Typical._--God availed himself of the lust of the Jews to make them
avail for Jesus Christ.


_Typical._--Nothing is so like charity as covetousness, and nothing
is so contrary to it. Thus the Jews, full of possessions which
flattered their covetousness, were very like Christians and very
contrary. And by this means they had the two qualities which were
necessary to them, to be very like the Messiah in order to be figures
of him, and very contrary that they might not be suspected witnesses.


_Antiquity of the Jews._--What difference there is between book and
book. I am not surprised that the Greeks made the Iliad, nor the
Egyptians and the Chinese their histories.

We have only to see how this comes about. These fabulous historians
are not contemporaneous with the facts they narrate. Homer writes a
romance, which he puts forth as such, and which is received as such,
for no one supposed that Troy or Agamemnon existed more than did the
golden apple. So he thought not of making a history, but solely a
book to amuse; he is the only man who wrote in his time, the beauty
of his work has made it last, every one learns it and talks of it, we
are bound to know it, and we each get it by heart. Four hundred years
afterwards the witnesses of these things are no more, no one knows of
his own knowledge if it be fable or history; he has only learnt it
from his ancestors, and this may pass for true.


_The sincerity of the Jews._--They preserve with faithfulness and
zeal the book in which Moses declares that they have been all their
life ungrateful to God, and that he knows they will be still more so
after his death; that he therefore calls heaven and earth to witness
against them, and that he has taught them enough.

He declares that finally God, being angry with them, would scatter
them among all the nations of the earth, that as they have angered
him, in worshipping gods who were not their God, so he will provoke
them by calling a people which is not his people, and wills that
all his words shall be eternally preserved, and that his book shall
be placed in the Ark of the Covenant to serve for ever as a witness
against them.

Isaiah says the same thing, xxx. 8.


However, they have kept at the cost of their life this very book
which dishonours them in so many ways. This is a sincerity which has
no example in the world, and no root in nature.


Every history which is not contemporaneous is open to suspicion, thus
the books of the Sibyls and Trismegistus and so many others which
have been credited by the world are false, and found to be false in
course of time. It is not so with contemporaneous authors.

There is a great difference between a book written by a private man,
and dispersed among a whole people, and a book which itself creates a
people. We cannot doubt that the book is as old as the people.


The sincerity of the Jews.

Defective and final letters.

Sincere against their honour, and dying in its defence; this has no
example in the world's history, and no root in nature.


They are visibly a people expressly formed to serve as witnesses to
the Messiah, Isaiah xliii. 9; xliv. 8, they bear the books, and love
them while they understand them not. And all this was foretold, that
God's judgments might be entrusted to them, but as a sealed book.


_Types._--When once the secret is disclosed it is impossible not to
see it If the Old Testament be read in this light, we shall see if
the sacrifices were real; if the fatherhood of Abraham was the true
cause of the friendship of God; that the promised land was not the
true place of rest. These were then but types. If in the same way we
examine all those ordained ceremonies, and all those commandments
which are not of charity, we shall see that they are types.

All these sacrifices and ceremonies were then either figures or
absurdities. But there are things which are clear, and yet too lofty
for us to think them absurdities.


Adam _forma futuri_. Six days to form the one, six ages to form the
other. The six days which Moses represents for the formation of
Adam, are but the representation of the six ages to form Jesus Christ
and the Church. If Adam had not sinned, and Jesus Christ had not
come, there had been only one covenant, only one age of men, and the
creation would have been represented as done at one single time.


The six ages, the six Fathers of the six ages, the six miracles at
the opening of the six ages, the six mornings at the opening of the
six ages.


_Types._--The Jewish and Egyptian peoples were visibly foretold by
the two men whom Moses met, the Egyptian beating the Jew, Moses
avenging him and slaying the Egyptian while the Jew was ungrateful.


The conversion of the Egyptians, Isaiah xix. 19. An altar in Egypt to
the true God.


The sabbath was only a sign, Exodus xxxi. 13, and in memory of
the deliverance from Egypt. Deut. v. 19. Therefore it is no more
necessary, for we ought to forget Egypt.

Circumcision was only a sign, Gen. xvii. 13, therefore it came to
pass that in the desert they were not circumcised, because they could
not be confounded with other peoples, and after Jesus Christ came it
was no longer needful.


Those who ordained these sacrifices knew their uselessness, and those
who have declared their uselessness, ceased not to practise them.


Your name shall be accursed to my elect, and I will give them another
name.

Harden their heart. How? By flattering their lust, and making them
hope to accomplish it.


_Fac secundum exemplar quod tibi ostensum est in monte._

The Jewish religion then was formed on its likeness to the truth
of the Messiah, and the truth of the Messiah was recognised by the
religion of the Jews which was the figure of it.

Among the Jews the truth was only prefigured. In heaven it is
revealed.

In the Church it is hidden, yet recognised by its correspondence with
the type.

The type was made according to the truth, and the truth is recognised
according to the type.

Saint Paul says himself that people would forbid to marry, and he
himself speaks to the Corinthians, in a way which is a trap. For if
a prophet had said the one, and Saint Paul had afterwards said the
other, he would have been accused.


_Typical._--Make all things like unto the pattern which was showed
thee in the mount. On which Saint Paul says that the Jews shadowed
forth heavenly things.


_Typical._ The key of the cipher. _Veri adoratores. Ecce agnus Dei
qui tollit peccata mundi._


_That the law was typical. Types._--The letter kills. All happened in
a figure. This is the cipher which Saint Paul gives us. Christ must
suffer. An humiliated God. Circumcision of the heart, a true fast, a
true sacrifice, a true temple. The prophets indicated that all these
must be spiritual.

Not the meat which perishes, but that which perishes not.

You shall be free indeed. Then the former liberty was only a type of
liberty.

I am the true bread from heaven.


_Particular types._-- A double law, double tables of the law, a
double temple, a double captivity.


The Synagogue did not perish because it was a type, but because it
was no more than a type it fell into servitude. The type subsisted
till the reality came, in order that the Church should be always
visible, either in the representation which promised it, or in the
substance.


In the time of the Messiah the people were divided. Those that were
spiritual embraced the Messiah, the carnal remained to serve as
witnesses of him.




_OF THE TRUE RELIGION AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS._


_For Port Royal. The Beginning, after having explained the
incomprehensibility._--Since the greatness and the vileness of man
are so evident, it is necessary that the true religion should declare
both that there is in man some great principle of greatness, and a
great principle of vileness.

It must therefore explain these astonishing contradictions.

In order to make man happy, it must show him that there is a God;
that we ought to love him; that our true happiness is to be in him,
our sole evil to be separated from him; it must recognise that we
are full of darkness which hinders us from knowing and loving him;
and that thus, as our duties oblige us to love God, and our lusts
turn us from him, we are full of injustice. It must explain to us
our opposition to God and to our own good; it must teach us the
remedies for these infirmities, and the means of obtaining them. We
must therefore examine all the religions of the world from this point
of view, and see if there be any other than the Christian which is
sufficient for this end.

Shall it be that of the philosophers, who proposed as the only good
the good which is in ourselves? Is this the true good? Have they
found a remedy for our evils? Is the pride of man cured by equalling
him with God? Have those who would level us to the brutes, or the
Mahomedans who present us with pleasures of the world as the sole
good, even in eternity, found any remedy for our lusts? What religion
then will teach us to cure our pride and our lust? What religion will
teach us our good, our duty, the infirmity which turns us from it,
the cause of this infirmity, the remedies which can cure it, and the
means of obtaining those remedies? All other religions have failed,
let us see what the wisdom of God can do.

"Look neither for truth," she says, "nor consolation from men. I am
she who framed you, and who alone can teach you what you are. But
you are not now in the state in which I framed you. I created man
holy, innocent, perfect; I filled him with light and intelligence;
I communicated to him my glory and my wondrous acts. The eye of man
beheld then the majesty of God; he was not then in the darkness which
blinds him, nor subject to death and the miseries which afflict him.
But he could not bear so great a glory without falling into pride.
He would make himself his own centre, and independent of my aid. He
withdrew himself from my rule; and when he made himself equal to me
by the desire of finding his happiness in himself, I gave him over to
self. Then setting in revolt the creatures that were subject to him,
I made them his enemies; so that man is now become like the beasts,
and removed from me until there scarce remains to him a confused ray
of his Creator, so far has all his knowledge become extinguished or
disturbed. His senses, never the servants, and often the masters of
reason, have carried him astray in pursuit of pleasure. All creatures
either torment or tempt him; and have dominion over him, either as
they subdue him by their strength, or as they melt him by their
charms, a tyranny more terrible and more imperious.

"Such is the present state of man. There remains to him some feeble
instinct of the happiness of his primitive nature, and he is plunged
in the misery of his blindness and his lusts, which have become his
second nature.

"From this principle which I have here laid open to you, you may
discern the cause of those contradictions which, while they astonish
all men, have divided them among such various opinions. Now mark all
the movements of greatness and glory which the trials of so many
miseries are unable to stifle, and see if the cause of them must not
be in another nature...."

_For Port Royal to-morrow. Prosopopaea._--"It is in vain, O men, that
you seek from yourselves the remedy for your miseries. All your
light can only enable you to know that not in yourselves will you
find truth or good. The Philosophers promised you these, but gave
them not. They neither apprehend what is your true good nor what
is....

"How could they then apply remedies to your diseases, since they did
not even know them? Your chief maladies are pride, which alienates
you from God, and lust, which binds you down to earth; and they do
nought else but nourish one or the other of these disorders. If they
presented God as your end it was only done to gratify your pride; by
making you think that you are by nature like him and conformed to
him. Those who saw the extravagance of such an assertion did but set
you on an opposite precipice, by tempting you to believe that your
nature was of a piece with that of the beasts, and by inclining you
to seek your good in the lusts which are shared by brutes. This is
not the way to cure you of your unrighteousness, which these sages
never knew. I alone can teach you who you are....

"If you are united to God it is by grace, not by nature.

"If you are abased it is by penitence, not by nature. So this twofold
capacity....

"You are not in the state wherein you were created.

"These two states being presented to you, you cannot but recognise
them.

"Follow your own movements, observe yourselves, and see if you do not
trace the lively characters of these two natures.

"Could so many contradictions be found in a subject that was simple?"


I do not mean that you should submit your belief to me without
reason, neither do I aim at your subjection by tyranny. I do not
aim at giving you a reason for everything. And to reconcile these
contradictions, I wish to make you see by convincing proofs, those
divine tokens in me, which will assure you who I am and will verify
my authority by wonders and proofs which you cannot reject; so that
you may then have a reasonable belief in what I teach you, when you
find no other ground for refusing it, but that you cannot know of
yourselves whether it is true or not.


The true nature of man, his true good, true virtue and true religion
are things of which the knowledge is inseparable.


_After having understood the whole nature of man._--That a religion
may be true, it must show knowledge of our nature. It must know its
greatness and meanness, and the cause of both. What religion but the
Christian has shown this knowledge?


The true religion teaches our duties; our weaknesses, pride and lust;
and the remedies, humility and mortification.

The true religion must teach greatness and misery; must lead to the
esteem and despising of self; to love and to hate.


The note of true religion must be that it obliges man to love his
God. This is very right, and yet no other religion than ours has thus
commanded; ours has done so. It must also be cognizant of man's lust
and weakness, ours is so. It must have applied remedies for these
defects; one is prayer. No other religion has asked of God the power
to love and obey him.


If there be one only origin of all things, there must be one only
end of all things; all by him, all for him. The true religion then
must teach us to adore him only, and to love him only. But since we
find ourselves unable to adore what we know not, or to love aught but
ourselves, the same religion which instructs us in these duties must
instruct us also of this inability, and teach us also the remedies
for it. It teaches us that by one man all was lost, and the bond
broken between God and us, and that by one man the bond has been
repaired.

We are born so contrary to this love of God, and it is so necessary
that we must be born sinful, or God would be unjust.


Every religion is false which as to its faith does not adore one God
as origin of all things, and as to its morals does not love one sole
God as the object of all things.


In every religion we must be sincere, true heathens, true Jews, true
Christians.




_THE EXCELLENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION._


When I see the blindness and the misery of man, when I survey the
whole dumb Universe, and man without light, left to himself, and
lost, as it were, in this corner of the Universe, not knowing who
has placed him here, what he has come to do, what will become of
him when he dies, and incapable of any knowledge whatever, I fall
into terror like that of a man who, having been carried in his sleep
to an island desert and terrible, should awake ignorant of his
whereabouts and with no means of escape; and thereupon I wonder how
those in so miserable a state do not fall into despair. I see other
persons around me, of like nature, I ask them if they are better
informed than I am, and they say they are not; and thereupon these
miserable wanderers, having looked around them, and seen some objects
pleasing to them, have given and attached themselves to these. As
for me, I cannot attach myself to them, and considering how strongly
appearances show that there is something else than what is visible
to me, I have sought to discover whether this God have not left some
impress of himself.

I see many contrary religions, and consequently all false but one.
Each wishes to be believed on its own authority, and menaces the
unbeliever, but I do not therefore believe them. Every one can say
the same, and every one can call himself a prophet. But I see the
Christian religion fulfilling prophecy, and that is what every one
can not do.


Without this divine knowledge what could men do but either uplift
themselves by that inward conviction of their past greatness
still remaining to them, or be cast down in view of their present
infirmity? For, not seeing the whole truth, they could not attain
to perfect virtue. Some considering nature as incorrupt, others as
incurable, they could not escape either pride or idleness, the two
sources of all vice; since they cannot but either abandon themselves
to it by cowardice, or escape it by pride. For if they were aware
of the excellency of man, they were ignorant of his corruption, so
that they very easily avoided idleness, but only to fall into pride.
And if they recognized the infirmity of nature, they knew not its
dignity, so that though they might easily avoid presumption, it was
only to plunge into despair.

Thence come the various sects of the Stoics and Epicureans, the
Dogmatists, Academicians, etc. The Christian religion alone has
been able to cure these two distempers, not so as to drive out the
one by the other according to the wisdom of the world, but so as to
expel them both by the simplicity of the Gospel. For it teaches the
righteous that it lifts them even to a participation of the divine
nature; that in this exalted state they still bear within them the
fountain of all corruption, which renders them during their whole
life subject to error and misery, to death and sin; and at the same
time it proclaims to the most wicked that they can receive the grace
of their Redeemer. Thus making those tremble whom it justifies, and
consoling those whom it condemns, religion so justly tempers fear
with hope by means of that double capacity of grace and of sin which
is common to all, that it abases infinitely more than reason alone,
yet without despair; and exalts infinitely higher than natural pride,
yet without puffing up: hereby proving that alone being exempt
from error and vice, it alone has the office of instructing and of
reforming men.

Who then can withhold credence and adoration to so divine a light?
For it is clearer than day that we feel within ourselves indelible
characters of goodness; and it is equally true that we experience
every hour the effects of our deplorable condition. This chaos then,
this monstrous confusion, does but proclaim the truth of these two
states, with a voice so powerful that it cannot be resisted.


The Philosophers never prescribed feelings proper to these two
states.

They inspired motions of simple greatness, and that is not the state
of man.

They inspired motions of simple vileness, and that is not the state
of man.

There must be motions of abasement, yet not from nature, but from
penitence, not to rest in them, but to go onward to greatness. There
must be motions of greatness, not from merit, but from grace, and
after having passed through abasement.


This double nature of man is so evident, that there are those who
have imagined us to have two souls.

One single subject seemed to them incapable of so great and sudden
variations from unmeasured pride to an horrible dejection of spirit.


All these contradictions which seemed to have taken me further from
the knowledge of religion, are what most rapidly led me into truth.


Did we not know ourselves full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness,
misery and injustice, we were indeed blind. And if knowing this we
did not desire deliverance, what could be said of a man.... What then
can we feel but esteem for that Religion which is so well acquainted
with the defects of man, and desire for the truth of a religion which
promises remedies so precious.


The corruption of reason is shown by the number of differing and
extravagant customs; it was necessary that truth should come in order
that man should no longer live in himself.


_Incomprehensible._--Not all that is incomprehensible is therefore
non existent. Infinite number. An infinite space equal to a finite.

_It is incredible that God should unite himself to us._--This
consideration is drawn only from the view of our vileness. But if it
be sincere, follow it as far as I have done, and recognise that we
are in fact so vile as to make us by ourselves incapable of knowing
whether his mercy may not render us capable of him. For I would
know how this animal, who is aware of his weakness, has the right
to measure the mercy of God and set to it bounds suggested by his
fancy. He knows so little what God is that he does not even know
what himself is, and troubled with the view of his own state, boldly
declares that God cannot render man capable of communion with him.

But I would ask if God demands aught else from him than to know him
and to love him, and why, since man is by nature capable of love and
knowledge, he believes that God cannot make himself known and loved
by him. He certainly knows at least that he is, and that he loves
something. Therefore if he see anything in his darkness, and if
among the things of earth he find any subject of his love, why, if
God impart to him some ray of his essence, should he not be capable
of knowing and of loving him in the manner in which it shall please
him to communicate himself to us? There must be then an intolerable
arrogance in these sort of arguments, though they seem founded on
apparent humility, which is neither sincere nor reasonable, unless it
makes us confess that not knowing of ourselves what we are, we can
learn it from God alone.


For myself, I declare that so soon as the Christian religion reveals
the principle that human nature is corrupt and fallen from God, my
eyes are opened to see everywhere the characters of this truth: for
nature is such that she everywhere indicates, both within man and
without him, a God whom he has lost and a corrupt nature.


Whatever may be said, it must be conceded that the Christian religion
has something astonishing in it. Perhaps someone will say: "This
is because you were born in it." It may be: then I stiffen myself
against it by this very reason, for fear this prejudice should bias
me; but although I am born in it I cannot but find it so.


The whole course of things must have for its object the establishment
and the grandeur of Religion: that there should be implanted in men
sentiments conformable to its precepts, and in a word, that it
should be so completely the aim and the centre to which all things
tend, that whoever understands its principles can give an explanation
as of human nature in particular, so in general of the whole order of
the world.


Our religion is wise and foolish. Wise, because it is the most
learned, and the most founded on miracles, prophecies, etc. Foolish,
because it is not all this which causes us to belong to it; this
makes us indeed condemn those who are not of it, but is not the cause
of belief in those who are. It is the cross that makes them believe,
_ne evacuata sit crux_. And thus Saint Paul, who came with wisdom
and signs, says that he came neither with wisdom nor with signs, for
he came to convert. But those who come only to convince may say that
they come with wisdom and with signs.


That religion, great as she is in miracles, with holy and blameless
Fathers, learned and great witnesses, with martyrs and kings, as
David, and Isaiah, a prince of the blood; great as she is in science,
after having displayed all her miracles and all her wisdom, rejects
it all, and says she has neither wisdom nor signs, but only the cross
and foolishness.

For those, who by these signs and that wisdom have deserved your
belief, and who have proved to you their character, declare to you
that nothing of all this can change you, and render you capable of
knowing and loving God, but the power of the foolishness of the cross
without wisdom and signs, and not the signs without this power. Thus
our Religion is foolish when we consider the effective cause, wise
when we consider the wisdom which has prepared it.


How strange is Christianity! It enjoins man to acknowledge himself
vile, even abominable, and enjoins him to aspire to be like God.
Without such a counterpoise, this elevation would make him horribly
vain, or that vileness would make him terribly abject


Misery counsels despair, pride counsels presumption.


The incarnation shows man the greatness of his misery by the
greatness of the remedy of which he stood in need.


Not a vileness such as renders us incapable of good, nor a holiness
exempt from evil.


No doctrine is more suited to man than this; for it teaches him his
double capacity of receiving and losing grace, because of the double
peril to which he is always exposed, of despair and of pride.


No other religion has enjoined hate of self. No other religion
then can be pleasing to those who hate themselves, and who seek a
Being wholly to be loved. And these, if they had never heard of the
religion of an humiliated God, would embrace it at once.


No other has recognised that man is of all creatures the most
excellent. Some, having apprehended the reality of his excellence,
have blamed as mean and ungrateful the low opinion which men
naturally have of themselves, and others, well aware how real is this
vileness, have treated with haughty ridicule those sentiments of
greatness which are no less natural to man.

"Lift your eyes to God," say these, "see him in whose image you are,
who has made you to worship him. You can make yourselves like unto
him; wisdom will equal you to him if you will follow it." But others
say: "Bend your eyes to the earth, poor worm that you are, and look
upon the brutes your comrades." What then will man become? Will he
equal God or the brutes? What an awful gulf! What then shall we be?
Who does not see from all this that man has gone astray, that he has
fallen from his place, that he seeks it with disquiet, that he cannot
regain it? And who shall direct him, since the greatest men have not
availed?


What men could scarcely know by their greatest light, this Religion
has taught to babes.


Other religions, as those of heathendom, are more popular since they
consist only in externals, but they have no effect on the educated. A
purely intellectual religion would be more adapted to the educated,
but it would be of no use to the people. The Christian religion alone
is fitted for all, being composed of externals and internals. It
elevates the people to interior acts, it abases the proud to external
rites, and it is not complete without both, for the people must
understand the spirit which is in the letter, and the educated must
submit their spirit to the letter.


Philosophers have consecrated vices in attributing them to God
himself, Christians have consecrated virtues.




_OF ORIGINAL SIN._


There are two truths of faith equally sure: the one, that man in the
state of creation, or in that of grace, is raised above all nature,
is made like unto God and is a sharer in divinity; the other, that
in the state of corruption and sin, he has fallen from the higher
state and is made like unto the beasts. These two propositions are
equally firm and certain. The Scripture declares it plainly, as when
it says in certain places: _Deliciae meae, esse cum filiis hominum.
Effundam spiritum meum super omnem carnem. Dii estis, etc._; and when
it says in others: _Omnis caro faenum. Homo comparatus est jumentis
insipientibus, et similis factus est illis. Dixi in corde meo de
filiis hominum, ut probaret eos Deus et ostenderet similes esse
bestiis, etc._


The wicked, who abandon themselves blindly to their passions, without
the knowledge of God, and without taking the trouble to seek him,
themselves confirm this foundation of the faith which they attack,
that the nature of man is corrupt. And the Jews, who so obstinately
assail the Christian religion, again confirm that other foundation of
the same faith which they assail, namely, that Jesus Christ is the
true Messiah, who has come to redeem men, and deliver them from the
corruption and misery in which they were, as much by the condition
in which we see them at this day, and which was foretold by the
prophets, as by these same prophecies which they possess and keep so
inviolably as the tokens whereby the Messiah is to be recognised.


I would ask them if it is not true that they themselves confirm this
foundation of the faith they assail, which is that the nature of man
is corrupt.


Marton sees indeed that nature is corrupt, and that men are opposed
to honourable conduct, but he knows not why they cannot fly higher.


The meaning of the words _good_ and _evil_.


Original sin is foolishness to men, but it is admitted to be so. This
doctrine must not then be reproached with want of reason, since I
admit that it has no reason. But this foolishness is wiser than all
the wisdom of men, _sapientius est hominibus_. For without this how
can we say what man is? His whole state depends on this imperceptible
point, and how should it be perceived by his reason, since it is a
thing against reason, and since reason, far from finding it out by
her own ways, revolts from it when it is offered her?


There is nothing on earth which does not show either human misery or
divine mercy; either the weakness of man without God, or the power of
man with God.


Thus the whole universe teaches man, either that he is corrupt,
or that he is redeemed; every thing teaches him his greatness or
his misery; the abandonment by God is shown in the heathen, the
protection of God is shown in the Jews.


Nature has her perfections to show that she is the image of God, and
her defects to show that she is no more than his image.

Men being unaccustomed to form merit, but only to recompense it when
they find it formed, judge of God by themselves.


When we wish to think of God, there is a something which turns us
aside, and tempts us to think on other subjects; all this is evil and
born with us.


Lust has become natural to us, and has made our second nature. Thus
there are two natures in us, one good, the other evil.--Where is
God? Where you are not, and the kingdom of God is within you.--_The
Rabbis._


It is then true that everything instructs man concerning his
condition, but the statement must be clearly understood, for it is
not true that all reveals God, and it is not true that all hides
him. But it is true both that he hides himself from those who tempt
him, and that he reveals himself to those who seek him, because men
are both unworthy and capable of God; unworthy by their corruption,
capable by their original nature.


We cannot conceive the glorious state of Adam, nor the nature of his
sin, nor the transmission of it to us. These things took place under
the conditions of a nature quite different to our own, transcending
our present capacity.

The knowledge of all this would be of no use in helping us to escape
from it, and all we need know is that we are miserable, corrupt,
separate from God, but ransomed by Jesus Christ, and of this we have
on earth wonderful proofs.

Thus the two proofs of corruption and redemption are drawn from the
wicked, who live indifferent to religion, and from the Jews who are
its irreconcilable enemies.


All faith consists in Jesus Christ and in Adam, and all morality in
lust and in grace.


Shall he only who knows his nature know it only to his misery? Shall
he alone who knows it be alone miserable?

He must not see nothing whatever, nor must he see so much as to
believe he possesses it, but he must see enough to know that he has
lost it; for to be aware of loss he must see and not see, and that is
precisely the state in which he is by nature.


We wish for truth, and find in ourselves only uncertainty.

We seek after happiness, and find only misery and death.

We cannot but wish for truth and happiness, and we are incapable
neither of certainty nor of happiness. This desire is left to us, as
much to punish us as to make us feel whence we are drawn.


Will it be asserted that because men have spoken of righteousness
as having fled from the earth, therefore they knew of original
sin?--_Nemo ante obitum beatus est._--That therefore they knew death
to be the beginning of eternal and essential happiness?


The dignity of man while innocent consisted in using and having
dominion over the creatures, but now in separating himself from them,
and subjecting himself to them.


_Source of contradictions._--A God humbled, even to the death of the
cross, a Messiah by his death triumphing over death. Two natures in
Jesus Christ, two advents, two states of human nature.


_Of original sin.--Ample tradition of original sin according to the
Jews._

On the word in Genesis, viii. 21. The imagination of man's heart is
evil from his youth.

R. Moses Haddarschan: This evil leaven is placed in man from the time
that he is formed.

_Massechet Succa_: This evil leaven has seven names in Scripture.
It is called evil, an unclean prepuce, an enemy, a scandal, a heart
of stone, the north wind; all this signifies the malignity which is
concealed and ingrained in the heart of man.

_Midrasch Tillim_ says the same thing, and that God will free the
good nature of man from the evil.

This malignity is renewed every day against man, as it is written,
Psalm xxxvii. The wicked watcheth the just, and striveth to kill him,
but God will not abandon him.

This malignity tries the heart of man in this life, and will accuse
him in the other.

All this is found in the _Talmud_.

_Midrasch Tillim_ on Ps. iv.: "Stand in awe and sin not." Stand in
awe and be afraid of your lust, and it will not lead you into sin.
And on Ps. xxxvi. "The wicked has said in his heart: Let not the fear
of God be before me." That is to say that the malignity natural to
man has said that to the wicked.

_Misdrasch el Kohelet_: "Better is a poor and a wise child than an
old and foolish king who cannot foresee the future." The child is
virtue, and the king is the malignity of man. It is called king
because all the members obey it, and old because it is in the heart
of man from infancy to old age, and foolish because it leads man in
the way of perdition which he does not foresee.

The same thing is in _Misdrasch Tillim_.

_Bereschist Rabba_ on Ps. xxxv.: "Lord, all my bones shall bless
thee, who deliverest the poor from the tyrant." And is there a
greater tyrant than the evil leaven? And on Proverbs xxv., "If thine
enemy be hungry, feed him." That is to say, if the evil leaven
hunger, give him the bread of wisdom of which speaks Prov. ix., and
if he be thirsty, give him the water of which speaks Isaiah lv.

_Misdrasch Tillim_ says the same thing, and that the Scripture in
that passage speaking of our enemy, means the evil leaven, and that
in giving it that bread and that water, we heap coals of fire on his
head.

_Misdrasch Kohelet_ on Ecclesiastes ix. "A great king besieged a
little city." This great king is the evil leaven, the great engines
with which he surrounds it are temptations, and there has been found
a poor wise man who has delivered it, that is to say virtue.

And on Ps. xli. "Blessed is he that considereth the poor."

And on Ps. lxxviii. The spirit goeth and returneth not again, whereof
some have taken occasion of error concerning the immortality of the
soul; but the sense is that this spirit is the evil leaven, which
accompanies man till death, and will not return at the resurrection.

And on Ps. ciii. the same thing.

And on Ps. xvi.


_Chronology of Rabbinism._

The citations of pages are from the book _Pugio_.

Page 27, R. Hakadosch, _anno_ 200, author of the Mischna or vocal
law, or second law.

Commentaries on the Mischna, _anno_ 340:

  The one, _Siphra_.
    _Barajetot._
    _Talmud Hierosol._
    _Tosiphtot._

_Bereschit Rabah_, by R. Osaiah Rabah, commentary on the Mischna.

_Bereschit Rabah, Bar Naconi_, are subtle and agreeable discourses,
historical and theological. The same author wrote the books called
Rabot.

A hundred years after the _Talmud Hierosol. anno_ 440, was made the
_Babylonian Talmud_, by R. Ase, by the universal consent of all the
Jews, who are necessarily obliged to observe all that is contained
therein.

The addition of R. Ase is called the _Gemara_, that is to say the
commentary on the _Mischna_.

And the _Talmud_ as a whole comprises the _Mischna_ and the _Gemara_.




_THE PERPETUITY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION._


_Perpetuity._--That religion has always existed on earth, which
consists in believing that man has fallen from a state of glory
and of communion with God into a state of sorrow, penitence, and
estrangement from God, but that after this life we shall be restored
by a Messiah who was to come. All things have passed away, and this
has subsisted for which are all things.

Men in the first age of the world were carried away into every
kind of misconduct, and yet there were holy men, as Enoch, Lamech
and others, who awaited with patience the Christ promised from the
beginning of the world. Noah saw the evil of men at its height; and
he was found worthy to save the world in his person, by the hope of
the Messiah of whom he was the type. Abraham was compassed round
about by idolaters, when God revealed to him the mystery of the
Messiah, whom he greeted from afar. In the days of Isaac and Jacob
abomination was spread over the whole earth, but these holy men
lived in faith, and Jacob dying and blessing his children, cried in
a transport which made him break off his discourse, "I await, O my
God, the Saviour whom thou hast promised. _Salutare tuum expectabo,
Domine_." The Egyptians were infected both with idolatry and magic,
even the people of God were led astray by their example. Yet Moses
and others saw him whom they saw not, and adored him, looking to
the eternal gifts which he was preparing for them. The Greeks and
Latins then enthroned false deities, the poets made a hundred divers
theologies, the philosophers separated into a thousand different
sects, and yet in the heart of Judaea were always chosen men who
foretold the advent of this Messiah, known to them alone. He came
at length in the fulness of time, and since then, notwithstanding
the birth of so many schisms and heresies, so many revolutions in
government, such great changes in all things, this Church, adoring
him who has ever been adored, has subsisted without a break. It is a
wonderful, incomparable and wholly divine fact, that this Religion
which has ever endured, has ever been assailed. A thousand times has
it been on the eve of an universal ruin, and whenever it has been in
that state God has restored it by extraordinary manifestations of
his power. This is marvellous, so also that it has survived without
yielding to the will of tyrants. For it is not strange that a State
subsists when its laws sometimes give way to necessity, but that....


States would perish if they did not often make their laws bend to
necessity, but Religion has never suffered this or practised it. And
indeed there must be either compromise or miracles. There is nothing
unusual in being saved by yielding, and strictly speaking this is
not endurance, besides in the end they perish utterly: there is none
which has endured a thousand years. But that this Religion, although
inflexible, should always have been maintained, shows that it is
divine.


The religion which alone is contrary to our nature, to common sense,
and to our pleasures, is that alone which has always existed.


The science which alone is contrary to common sense and human nature,
is that alone which has always subsisted among men.


_To show that the true Jews and the true Christians have one and
the same Religion._--The religion of the Jews seemed to consist
essentially in the fatherhood of Abraham, in circumcision, sacrifices
and ceremonies, in the ark, in the temple at Jerusalem, and lastly,
in the Law, and the Covenant with Moses.

I say that it consisted in none of these, but solely in the love of
God, and that all else was rejected by him;

That God did not accept the posterity of Abraham;

That the Jews if they transgressed were to be punished like
strangers. Deut. viii. 19. "If thou at all forget the Lord thy God,
and walk after other gods, I testify against you this day that ye
shall surely perish as the nations which God has destroyed before
you."

That strangers if they loved God were to be received by him as the
Jews. Isaiah lvi. 3. "Let not the stranger say, The Lord will not
receive me.--The strangers that join themselves unto the Lord God
to serve him and love him, will I bring unto my holy mountain, and
accept their sacrifices, for mine house is an house of prayer."

That the true Jews ascribed all their merit to God, and not to
Abraham. Isaiah lxiii. 16. "Doubtless thou art our Father, though
Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not. Thou art
our Father and our Redeemer."

Moses himself said that God would not accept the person of any.

Deut. x. 17. "God," said he, "accepteth neither persons nor
sacrifices."

That the circumcision commanded was that of the heart. Deut. x.
16; Jeremiah iv. 4. "Be ye circumcised in heart. Cut off the
superfluities of your heart, harden not your hearts, for your God is
a great God, strong and terrible, who accepteth not the person of
any."

That God said he would one day do it. Deut. xxx. 6. "God will
circumcise thine heart, and thy children's heart, that thou mayest
love him with all thine heart."

That the uncircumcised in heart should be judged.

Jer. ix. 26. For God will judge the uncircumcised peoples, and all
the people of Israel, because he is uncircumcised in heart.

That the exterior is nothing in comparison of the interior. Joel. ii.
13. _Scindite corda vestra_, etc. Isaiah lviii. 3,4, etc.

The love of God is commanded in the whole of Deuteronomy, Deut. xxx.
19: "I call heaven and earth to witness that I have set before you
death and life, that you may choose life, and that you may love God,
and obey him, for God is your life."

That the Jews, for lack of their love, should be rejected for their
crimes, and the Gentiles chosen in their stead.

Hosea i. 10.

Deut. xxxii. 20. "I will hide myself from them in view of their
latter sins, for they are a froward generation. They have provoked
me to anger by things which are no gods, and I will provoke them
to jealousy by a people which is not my people, by an ignorant and
foolish nation."

Isaiah lxv. 1. That temporal goods are false, and that the true good
is to be united to God.

Psalm cxliii. 15. That their feasts were displeasing to God.

Amos v. 21. That the sacrifices of the Jews were displeasing to God.

Isa. lxvi. 1-3; l. 11; Jerem. vi. 20.

David, _Miserere_. Even on the part of the good, _Expectavi_.

Psalm xlix. 8-14. That he has established them only for their
hardness. Micah, admirably, vi. 6-8.

I. Kings xv. 22; Hosea vi. 6.

That the sacrifices of the Gentiles should be accepted of God, and
that God would none of the sacrifices of the Jews. Malachi i. 11.

That God would make a new covenant with the Messiah, and that the Old
should be disannulled. Jer. xxxi. 31.

_Mandata non bona._ Ezek. xx. 25.

That the old things should be forgotten. Isa. xliii. 18, 19; lxv. 17,
18.

That the ark should come no more to mind. Jer. iii. 15, 16.

That the temple should be rejected. Jer. vii. 12-14.

That the sacrifices should be rejected, and purer sacrifices
established. Malachi i. 11.

That the order of Aaron's priesthood should be rejected and that of
Melchizedek introduced by the Messiah. _Dixit Dominus._

That this sacrifice should be eternal. _Ib._

That Jerusalem should be rejected, and Rome admitted.

That the name of the Jews should be rejected and a new name given.
Isa. lxv. 15.

That this new name should be more excellent than that of the Jews,
and eternal. Isa. lvii. 5.

That the Jews should be without prophets, Amos, without a king,
without princes, without sacrifice, without an idol.

That the Jews should nevertheless always remain a people. Jer. xxxi.
36.


_Perpetuity._--Men have always believed in a Messiah. The tradition
from Adam was still fresh in Noah and in Moses. After these the
prophets bore witness, at the same time foretelling other things
which being from time to time fulfilled in the eyes of all,
demonstrated the truth of their mission, and consequently that of
their promises touching the Messiah. Jesus Christ worked miracles,
and the Apostles also, who converted all the Gentiles; and the
prophecies being thus once accomplished, the Messiah is for ever
proved.


... On that account I reject all other religions.

In that I find an answer to all objections.

It is just that a God so pure should only disclose himself to those
whose hearts are purified.

Therefore that religion is lovable to me, and I find it sufficiently
authorized by so divine a morality, but I find yet more....

I find it a convincing fact that since the memory of man has lasted,
it was constantly declared to men that they were universally corrupt,
and that a Redeemer should come;

That it was not one man who said it, but an infinity of men, and
a whole nation lasting for four thousand years, prophesying, and
created for that very purpose.... So I stretch out my arms to my
Redeemer, who having been foretold for four thousand years, has come
to suffer and to die for me on earth at the time and under all the
circumstances which had been foretold, and by his grace I await death
in peace, in the hope of being eternally united to him; yet I live
with joy, whether in the good which it pleases him to bestow on me,
or in the ill which he sends for my good, and which he has taught me
to bear by his example.


The Synagogue preceded the Church, the Jews preceded the Christians,
the prophets foretold the Christians, Saint John foretold Jesus
Christ.


No religion but our own has taught that man is born in sin; no sect
of philosophers ever said this, therefore none has said the truth.

No sect or religion has always existed on earth, except the Christian
religion.


The Christian religion is that alone which renders man lovable and
happy at once. Living in the world he cannot be lovable and happy at
the same time.


In all times either men have spoken of the true God, or the true God
has spoken to men.

There are two foundations, one interior and the other exterior, grace
and miracles, and both are supernatural.




_PROOFS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION._


_Proofs of Religion._

Morals--Doctrine--Miracles--Prophecies--Figures.


_Proof_--1. The Christian religion having established itself so
strongly, yet so quietly, whilst contrary to nature.--2. The
sanctity, the dignity, and the humility of a Christian soul.--3. The
wonders of holy Scripture.--4. Jesus Christ in particular.--5. The
apostles in particular.--6. Moses and the prophets in particular.--7.
The Jewish people.--8. The Prophecies.--9. Perpetuity. No religion
has perpetuity.--10. The Doctrine, which explains all.--11. The
sanctity of this law.--12. By the course of the world.

It is beyond doubt that after considering what is life and what is
religion we cannot refuse to act on the inclination to follow it, if
it comes into our heart, and it is certain there is no ground for
jeering at those who follow it.


_The general conduct of the world towards the Church._--God willing
both to blind and enlighten.--The event having proved that these
prophecies were divine, the remainder ought to be believed, and hence
we see that the order of the world is on this manner.

The miracles of the creation and the deluge being forgotten, God
sent the law and the miracles of Moses, the prophets who prophesied
particular things, and to prepare an abiding miracle he prepares
prophecies and their fulfilment. But as the prophecies might be
suspected he wishes to make them beyond suspicion, etc.


... But even those who seem most opposed to the glory of religion are
not in that respect useless for others. We draw from them the first
argument, that here is something supernatural, for a blindness of
that kind is not natural, and if their folly renders them so opposed
to their own good, it will serve to guarantee others against it, by
the horror of an example so deplorable, and a folly so worthy of
compassion.


... Men revile what they do not understand. The Christian religion
consists in two points. It is of equal moment to men to know them
both, and equally dangerous to ignore either. And it is equally of
God's mercy that he has given marks of both.

Yet they take occasion to conclude that one of these points does not
exist from that which is intended to make them certain of the other.
Those sages who have said there is a God have been persecuted, the
Jews were hated, and still more the Christians. They saw by the light
of nature, that if there be a true religion on earth, the course of
all things must tend to it as to a centre. And on this ground they
venture to revile the Christian religion because they misunderstand
it. They imagine that it consists simply in the adoration of a God
conceived as great, powerful and eternal; which is in fact deism,
almost as far removed from the Christian religion as atheism, its
exact opposite. And hence they infer the falsehood of our religion,
because they do not see that all things concur to the establishment
of this point, that God does not manifest himself to man with all the
evidence which is possible.

But let them conclude what they will against deism, they can conclude
nothing on that account against the Christian religion, which
properly consists in the mystery of the Redeemer, who, uniting in
himself the two natures human and divine, has withdrawn men from the
corruption of sin that he might in his divine person reconcile them
to God.

True religion then teaches these two truths to men, that there is
a God whom they are capable of knowing, and that there is such
corruption in their nature as to render them unworthy of him. It is
of equal importance to men that they should apprehend the one and the
other of these points, and it is alike dangerous for man to know God
without the knowledge of his own worthlessness, and to know his own
worthlessness without the knowledge of the Redeemer who may deliver
him from it. To apprehend the one without the other begets either the
pride of philosophers, who knew God, but not their own wretchedness;
or the despair of atheists, who know their own wretchedness, but not
the Redeemer. And as it is alike necessary for man to know these
two points, so it is alike of the mercy of God to have given us the
knowledge. The Christian religion does this; it is in this that it
consists. Let us herein examine the order of the world, and see if
all things do not tend to establish these two main points of our
Religion.


It is a remarkable fact that no canonical writer has ever employed
nature to prove God. All tend to make him be believed. David, Solomon
and others have never said: "There is no vacuum, therefore there is a
God." They must have been cleverer than the cleverest in after days
who have all used this argument.

This is well worth considering.


If it be a mark of weakness to prove God by nature, despise not the
Scripture for not doing so: if it be a mark of power to know these
contradictions, value the Scriptures on that account.


What! Do you not say yourself that the sky and the birds prove
God?--No.--And does not your religion say so?--No. For however it may
be true in a sense for some souls to whom God has given this light,
it is nevertheless false in regard to the majority.


Think you it is impossible that God is infinite, without
parts?--Yes.--I will then make you see something which is infinite
and indivisible. A point moving everywhere with infinite swiftness,
for it is in all places, and is whole and entire in each situation.

Perhaps this effect of nature, which seems to you impossible
beforehand, may teach you to know that there may be others also which
you know not as yet. Do not then draw this conclusion from your
apprenticeship, that nothing remains for you to know, but rather that
an infinity remains for you to know.


It is incomprehensible that there should be a God, and
incomprehensible that there should not be; that there should be a
soul in the body, and that we should have no soul; that the world
should have been created, and that it should not, etc.; that original
sin should be, and that it should not be.


If we choose to say that man is too little to merit communion with
God, we must be indeed great to form a judgment on the subject.


The Eternal is for ever, if he is at all.


But it is impossible that God should ever be the end, if he is not
the beginning. We look above, but lean upon the sand, and the earth
will melt, and we shall fall whilst looking towards heaven.


_Objection._ The Scripture is plainly full of matters which were not
dictated by the Holy Spirit.

_Answer._ Then they do no harm to faith.

_Objection._ But the Church has decided that all is of the Holy
Spirit.

_Answer._ I answer two things: 1. That the Church has never so
decided; 2. That if she should so decide it might be maintained.


My God! what trash is all this talk: "Has God made the world but
to condemn it? will he ask so much of creatures so weak?" etc.
Scepticism is the remedy for this evil, and will lower this vanity.


God has willed to redeem mankind and to open salvation to those who
seek him. But men render themselves so unworthy of it, that it is
just that God should refuse to some because of their hardness of
heart what he grants to others out of a mercy not their due. Had it
been his will to overcome the stubbornness of the most hardened, he
could have rendered them unable to doubt the truth of his essence, in
revealing himself manifestly to them as he will appear at the last
day, amid thunderings and lightnings, and so great a convulsion of
nature, that the dead will rise again, and the blindest shall see
him.

Not thus willed he to appear in his gentle advent, because since so
many men make themselves unworthy of his mercy, he willed to leave
them deprived of the good which they refuse. It had not then been
just that he should appear in a manner plainly divine, and wholly
capable of convincing all men, but neither had it been just that he
should come in so hidden a manner as not to be recognised of those
who sincerely sought him. He has willed to reveal himself wholly to
these, and thus willing to appear openly to those who seek him with
their whole heart, and to hide himself from those who fly him with
all their heart, he has so tempered the knowledge of himself as to
give signs of himself visible to those who seek him, and obscure to
those who seek him not.

There is enough light for those who wish earnestly to see, and enough
obscurity for those of a contrary mind.


Therefore let men recognise the truth of religion in the very
obscurity of religion, in the little light we have of it, and in our
indifference to the knowledge of it.


The prophecies, the very miracles and proofs of our Religion, are
not of such a nature that we can say they are absolutely convincing.
But they are also of such a kind, that none can say that it is
unreasonable to believe in them. Thus there is both evidence and
obscurity to enlighten some and blind others; but the evidence
is such that it surpasses or at least equals the evidence to the
contrary, so that it is not reason which can determine us not to
follow it, and therefore it can only be lust and malice of heart. And
by this means there is evidence enough to condemn, and not enough to
convince; so it appears in those who follow it, that it is grace and
not reason which causes them to follow it; and in those who fly it,
it is lust, not reason, which causes them to fly it.


Who can help admiring and embracing a religion which thoroughly knows
that which we recognise more and more in proportion to our light?


_That God has willed to hide himself._--If there were only one
Religion God would certainly be manifest; so also if there were no
martyrs but in our own Religion.

God being thus hidden, every religion which does not say that God
is hidden is not the true religion, and every religion which does
not show the reason of it is unedifying. Our religion does all this:
_Vere tu es Deus absconditus_.


Religion is so great a thing, that it is right that those who will
not take the trouble to seek if it be obscure should be deprived of
it. Why then should any complain, if it be such as to be found by
seeking?


The obscurity would be too great, if truth had not visible signs.
This is a marvellous one, that it has always been preserved in a
Church and a visible assembly. The clearness would be too great if
there were only one opinion in this Church, but to recognise what is
true is only to see what has always existed, for it is certain that
truth has always existed, and that nothing false has been always in
existence.


Recognise then the truth of religion even in the obscurity of
religion, in the little light we have of it, and in the indifference
we have to its knowledge.


God chooses rather to sway the will than the intellect. Perfect
clearness would be useful to the intellect but would harm the will.
To humble pride.


Were there no obscurity man would not be sensible of his corruption;
were there no light man would despair of remedy. Thus it is not only
just, but useful for us, that God should be partly hidden and partly
revealed, because it is equally dangerous for man to know God without
the knowledge of his misery, and to know his misery without the
knowledge of God.


If the mercy of God is so great that his teaching is salutary even
when he hides himself, what great light may we not expect when he
reveals himself?


We shall understand nothing of the works of God if we do not take it
as a principle that he has willed to blind some and enlighten others.


What say the prophets of Jesus Christ? That he will be manifestly
God? No: but that he is a God truly hidden, that he will be
misunderstood; that none would think it was he; that he would be a
stone of stumbling on which many would fall, etc. Let us no longer
then be reproached with want of clearness, since we make profession
of it.

But, it is said, there are obscurities.--And without that, no one
would have stumbled at Jesus Christ, which is one of the formal
announcements of the prophets: _Excaeca_....


Instead of complaining that God is hidden, you will give him thanks
for having revealed so much of himself; and you will give him thanks
again for not having revealed himself to the proudly wise, who are
unworthy to know so holy a God.

Two sorts of persons know: those whose heart is humble, and who love
lowliness, whatever their order of intellect, whether high or low,
and those who have understanding enough to see the truth, whatever
opposition they may feel to it.


I may well love total darkness, but if God keep me in a state of
semi-obscurity, this partial darkness is unpleasant to me, and
because I do not see in it the advantages of total darkness it
pleases me not. This is a fault, and a proof that I am making an idol
of darkness apart from God's order. Now his order alone is to be
worshipped.


Did the world exist to instruct man concerning God, his divinity
would shine out incontestably from every part of it, but as it exists
only by Jesus Christ, and for Jesus Christ, and to instruct men
concerning their corruption and their redemption, proofs of these two
truths start up everywhere.

What is seen does not denote either the total exclusion or the
manifest presence of divinity, but the presence of a God who hides
himself. All bears this character.


Had nought of God ever appeared, this eternal deprivation would have
been equivocal, and might as well be interpreted of the total absence
of divinity, as of man's unworthiness to know him; but by occasional
and not continual appearances he has taken away all ambiguity. If he
have appeared once, he is for ever, and thus it must be concluded
both that there is a God, and that men are unworthy of him.


God, that he may reserve to himself alone the right to instruct us
and that he may render the difficulty of our being unintelligible to
us, has hidden the knot so high, or rather so low, that we cannot
reach it. So that it is not by the efforts of our reason, but by the
simple submission of our reason, that we can truly know ourselves.


Wisdom sends us to childhood: _nisi efficiamini sicut parvuli_.


"A miracle," says one, "would strengthen my faith." He says so when
he does not see one. Reasons seen from afar seem to limit our view,
but as we reach them we begin to see beyond. Nothing stops the
activity of our spirit. There is no rule, we say, which has not its
exception, no truth so general but that there is a side on which it
is lacking. If it be not absolutely universal, we have a pretext for
applying the exception to the matter in hand, and for saying: _This
is not always true, hence there are cases in which it is not so. It
only remains to show that this is one of them._ And we must be very
awkward or unlucky if we do not find one some day.


_Contradictions._

Infinite wisdom and wisdom of Religion.


Contradiction is a bad mark of truth.

Much that is certain is contradicted.

Much that is false passes without contradiction.

Contradiction is not a mark of falsehood, nor the want of
contradiction a mark of truth.


There is a pleasure in being in a vessel beaten about by a storm,
provided we are certain it will not founder. The persecutions which
try the Church are of this kind.

The history of the Church should rightly be called the history of
truth.


Those who find difficulties of belief seek an excuse in the unbelief
of the Jews. "If it was so clear," say they, "why did not the Jews
believe?" And they almost wish the Jews had believed, that they
might not be deterred by the example of their refusal. But their
very unbelief is the foundation of our faith. We should be much less
disposed to believe if they were on our side. We should then have a
far more ample pretext. This is the wonderful point, to have made the
Jews great lovers of the things foretold, and great enemies of their
accomplishment.


What could the Jews, his enemies, do? Receiving him they give proof
of him by that reception, for then the Messiah is acknowledged by
those to whom was committed the expectation of his coming; rejecting
him they prove his truth by that rejection.


_On the fact that the Christian Religion does not stand alone._--This
is so far from being a reason against believing it the true one that,
on the contrary, it proves it to be so.


Those who love not the truth take as a pretext that it is contested,
and that a multitude deny it; and thus their error comes from this
alone, that they love neither truth nor charity. So they are without
excuse.


The wicked who profess to follow reason, ought to be extremely strong
in reason.

What then do they say?

Do we not see, say they, beasts live and die like men, and Turks
like Christians? They have their ceremonies, their prophets, their
doctors, their saints, their religious, as well as we, etc. _But how
is this contrary to the Scripture? Does it not say all this?_

If you care but little to know the truth, here is enough for your
peace. But if you desire to know it with your whole heart, this is
not enough, look to the details. This would suffice for a question in
philosophy, but not here, where your all is concerned. And yet, after
a slight meditation of this kind, we shall go off to amuse ourselves,
etc. We should acquaint ourselves with this religion; even if it does
not disclose the reason for such obscurity, it will perhaps teach it
to us.


If God had permitted one only Religion, it would have been too easily
recognised. But when we look at it near we can easily see the true
through the confusion.




_PROOFS OF THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST._


_Perpetuity._--Let it be considered that from the beginning of the
world the expectation or the worship of the Messiah has subsisted
without a break; that there have been men who said that God had
revealed to them the future birth of a Redeemer who should save his
people; that afterwards came Abraham saying he had had a revelation
that the Messiah was to spring from him by a son who should be born;
that Jacob declared that of his twelve sons the Messiah would spring
from Judah; that Moses and the prophets then came to declare the
time and the manner of his advent; that they said their law was only
provisional till that of the Messiah, that it should last till then
but the other should endure eternally; that thus either their law or
that of the Messiah, of which it was the promise, would be always
upon earth; that in fact it has always endured; that at last Jesus
Christ has come with all the circumstances foretold. How wonderful is
this!


The two most ancient books in the world are those of Moses and Job,
the one a Jew, the other a Gentile, both of whom regard Jesus Christ
as their common centre and object: Moses in reporting the promises of
God to Abraham, Jacob, etc., and his prophecies. And Job, _Quis mihi
det ut, etc. Scio enim quod redemptor meus vivit, etc._


I believe that Joshua was the first of God's people who had this
name, as Jesus Christ was the last of God's people.


What man had ever so great renown! The whole Jewish people foretold
him before his coming. The Gentile world worships him after his
coming. The two worlds, Gentile and Jewish, regard him as their
centre.

Yet what man ever had less enjoyment of his renown! Of thirty-three
years he spent thirty in retirement. For three years he passed as
an impostor, the priests and rulers rejected him, his friends and
kinsmen despised him. At the end he died, betrayed by one of his own
disciples, denied by another, abandoned by all.

What part then had he in all this renown? Never man had more glory,
never man more ignominy. All this renown was for our sakes, to enable
us to recognise him, he took none of it for himself.


_Office of Jesus Christ._--He alone was to produce a great people,
elect, holy, and chosen, to lead it, to nourish it, to bring it into
a place of rest and holiness, to make it holy to God, to make it the
temple of God, to reconcile it to God, to save it from the wrath of
God, to deliver it from the slavery of sin, which visibly reigns in
man, to give laws to this people, to engrave these laws on their
heart, to offer himself to God for them, to sacrifice himself for
them, to be a victim without spot, himself the priest, needing to
offer himself, his body and his blood, and yet to offer bread and
wine to God....


After many persons had come before, at last came Jesus Christ,
to say: "Here am I and this is the hour, that which the prophets
had said was to come in the fulness of time. I tell you what my
apostles will do. The Jews shall be cast out, Jerusalem shall be soon
destroyed, and the Gentiles shall enter into the knowledge of God. My
apostles shall do this after you have slain the heir of the vineyard."

Then the Apostles said to the Jews, "You shall be accursed," and to
the Gentiles, "You shall enter into the knowledge of God;" and that
came to pass. _Celsus laughed at it._


Then Jesus Christ came to tell men that they had no enemies but
themselves, that their passions cut them off from God, that he
came to destroy these, and give them his grace to unite them all
in an holy Church, that he came to call into this Church Gentiles
and Jews, that he came to destroy the idols of the former and the
superstition of the latter. To this all men are opposed, not only
by the natural opposition of lust; but above all, the kings of the
earth, as had been foretold, gathered together to destroy this
religion in its infancy. _Quare fremuerunt gentes. Reges terrae
adversus Christum._

All that was great on earth was united together, the learned, the
wise, the kings. The first wrote, the second condemned, the last
slew. Yet notwithstanding all these oppositions, these men, so simple
and so weak, resisted all these forces, subduing even the mighty, the
learned and the wise, and removed idolatry from all the earth. And
all this was done by the power which had foretold it


And prediction crowns all this, so that none may say that chance has
done it all.

Whosoever having only a week to live, does not perceive that belief
is the right side to take, and that all this is not a stroke of
chance....

Now were we not slaves to passion, a week and a hundred years would
seem one and the same thing.


The prophets foretold, and were not foretold. The saints were
foretold, but were not foretellers. Jesus Christ was foretold and
foreteller.


If I had never heard anything of the Messiah, yet after the admirable
predictions of the course of the world which I see accomplished, I
see that it is divine. And if I knew that these same books foretold a
Messiah, I should be certain that he would come. And seeing that they
place his time before the destruction of the second temple, I should
say that he had come.


_Ingrediens mundum._

Stone upon stone.

That which preceded, that which followed. All the Jews still exist,
and are wanderers.


Why did not Jesus Christ come in a visible manner, instead of drawing
proof from the prophecies which went before him?

And why did he cause himself to be foretold in figures?


God, to enable the Messiah to be recognised by the good and
unrecognised by the wicked, caused him to be so foretold. If the
manner of the Messiah had been clearly foretold there had been no
obscurity, even for the wicked. If the time had been obscurely
foretold, there had been obscurity even for the good, for their
goodness of heart would not have made them understand, for instance,
that the closed _mem_ means six hundred years. But the time has been
foretold clearly and the manner in figures only.

By this means the wicked, mistaking the promised for material
blessings, have gone astray, in spite of clear indications of the
time, and the good have not gone astray; for the interpretation of
the promised blessings depends on the heart, wont to call that _good_
which it loves, but the interpretation of the promised time does not
depend on the heart. Thus the clear prediction of the time, and the
obscure intimation of the blessings, deceives only the wicked.


If Jesus Christ had come only for sanctification, the whole of
Scripture and all things would tend to this end, and it would be easy
to convince unbelievers. If Jesus Christ had come only to blind,
all his conduct would be confused, and we should have no means of
convincing unbelievers. But as he came _in sanctificationem et in
scandalum_, as says Isaiah, we cannot convince unbelievers, and they
cannot convince us; but by that very fact we overcome them because we
say that there is nothing in his conduct conclusive on one side or
the other.


Jesus Christ has come to blind those who saw clearly, and to give
sight to the blind; to heal the sick and let the sound perish; to
call sinners to repentance and justification, and leave the just in
their sins; to fill the hungry with good things and to send the rich
empty away.


We can have nothing but veneration for a man who clearly foretells
events which take place, and who declares his design both to blind
and to enlighten, and who mixes obscurities among the clear things
which happen.


_During the life of the Messiah.--AEnigmatis._--Ezek. xvii.--His
forerunner. Malachi ii.

He will be born an infant. Is. ix. 6.

He will be born at Bethlehem. Micah v. He will appear chiefly in
Jerusalem, and will spring from the family of Judah and of David.

He will blind the learned and the wise, Is. vi 8, 29, and preach the
Gospel to the poor and the lowly, will open the eyes of the blind,
restore health to the sick, and bring light to those who languish in
darkness. Is. lxi.

He must show the perfect way, and be the teacher of the Gentiles. Is.
lv.

The prophecies must be unintelligible to the wicked, Dan. xii., Hos.
xiv. 10, but intelligible to those who are well instructed.

He must be the precious corner stone. Is. xxviii. 16.

He must be the stone of stumbling and offence. Is. viii.

Jerusalem must dash against this stone.

The builders must reject this stone. Ps. cxvii. 22.

God will make of this stone the head of the corner.

And this stone will grow into a mountain, and fill the whole earth.
Dan. ii.

Thus he must be rejected, disowned, betrayed, sold, Zach. xi. 12,
spit upon, buffeted, mocked, afflicted in a thousand ways, be given
gall to drink, Ps. lxviii., pierced, Zach. xii., his feet and his
hands pierced, killed, and lots cast upon his vesture.

He must rise again, Ps. xv., the third day. Hos. vi. 3.

He must ascend to heaven to sit on the right hand. Ps. cx.

The kings will arm themselves against him. Ps. ii.

Being on the right hand of the Father, he will have victory over all
his enemies.

The kings of the earth, and all nations shall worship him. Is. lx.

The Jews will remain as a nation. Jer.

They will be dispersed, without kings, etc., Hos. iii; without
prophets. Amos;

Waiting for salvation and finding it not. Is.

The calling of the Gentiles by Jesus Christ. Is. lii., Ps. lxxi.


The Jews in slaying him that they might not receive the Messiah,
stamped him with the final proof of his Messiahship.

And by continuance in denial, they made themselves unimpeachable
witnesses; and in slaying him, and continuing to reject him, they
have fulfilled the prophecies.


The word _Galilee_, which the Jewish rabble pronounced as if by
chance, in their accusation of Jesus Christ before Pilate, gave
Pilate a reason for sending Jesus Christ to Herod, so that the
mystery was accomplished, that he should be judged by Jews and
Gentiles. Chance was apparently the cause that the mystery was
accomplished.


The conversion of the Gentiles was only reserved for the grace of
the Messiah. The Jews so long opposed them without success; all that
Solomon and the prophets had said was useless. Wise men like Plato
and Socrates could not persuade them.


If this was so clearly foretold to the Jews, why did they not believe
it, or why were they not exterminated for resisting what was so clear?

I answer first: it was foretold both that they would not believe what
was so clear, and that they would not be exterminated. And nothing is
more glorious to the Messiah, for it is not enough that there should
be prophets, they must be kept above suspicion. Now, etc.


Had the Jews been all converted by Jesus Christ, we should have none
but doubtful witnesses, and had they been entirely destroyed we
should have had no witnesses at all.


The Jews rejected him, but not all. The saints receive him, but not
carnal men. Yet this is far from being against his glory, it is the
last stroke which perfects it. The argument on their side, the only
one which is found in the Talmud and the rabbinical writings, is that
Jesus Christ has not subdued the nations sword in hand, _gladium
tuum, potentissime_. Is this all they can allege? Jesus Christ has
been slain, they say, he was subdued, he has not had dominion over
the heathen by his power, he has not distributed the spoil among us,
he does not give riches. Is this all they have to allege? This is
the very point wherein he seems to me so lovable. I would none of
such an one as they represent. It is plain that his life only hinders
them from receiving him, by their refusal they become irreproachable
witnesses, and what is more, they thereby fulfil the prophecies.


There are those who see clearly that man has no other enemy than
lust, which turns him from God, and not God, and that there is no
other good but God, not a fat land. Let those who believe that the
good of man is in the flesh, and evil that which turns him away from
sensual pleasures, besot themselves with them and die in them. But
those who seek God with their whole heart, whose only ill is not to
see him, whose only desire is to possess him, whose only enemies are
those who would turn them from him, who are afflicted when they are
surrounded and overwhelmed by such enemies, may take comfort, for I
declare to them this joyful news: there is for them a Redeemer, whom
I will show them; I will show them that there is for them a God, and
I will not show him to others. I will show them that a Messiah has
been promised, who will deliver them from their enemies, and that
one has come to deliver them from their iniquities, not from their
enemies.


It is a wonderful thing, and worthy of all attention, to see the
Jewish nation existing so many years in constant misery, it being
necessary as a proof of Jesus Christ, both that they should exist
to be his witnesses, and should be miserable because they crucified
him, and though to be miserable and to exist, are contradictory, this
nation still exists in spite of its misery.


When Nebuchadnezzar carried away the people, for fear they should
believe that the sceptre had departed from Judah, they were assured
beforehand that they would be but a short time in captivity, and
would be restored.

They were never without the comfort of their prophets, or the
presence of their kings. But the second destruction is without
promise of restoration, without prophets, without kings, without
comfort, without hope, for the sceptre is taken away for ever.


_Proofs of Jesus Christ._--To have been captive with the assurance of
deliverance in seventy years was no true captivity. But now they are
captives without hope.

God has promised them that even though he should disperse them to
the ends of the earth, nevertheless if they were faithful to the law
he would gather them together. They are now very faithful to it, yet
remain oppressed.


_Blindness of Scripture._--The Scripture, say the Jews, says that we
know not whence Christ should come.

John vii. 27 and xii 34.

The Scripture says that Christ abideth for ever, and he said that
he should die. Therefore, says Saint John, they believed him not,
though he had done so many miracles, that the word of Isaiah might be
fulfilled: _He hath blinded them, etc._


_Contradictions._--The sceptre until Messiah come. Without king or
prince.

The eternal law, changed.

The eternal covenant, a new covenant.

The good law, evil precepts, Ezekiel xx.


Apparent discord of the Evangelists.


_Proofs of Jesus Christ._

Why the book of Ruth was preserved.

Why the story of Tamar.


The genealogy of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament is intermixed with
so many that are useless, that it cannot be distinguished. If Moses
had kept only the register of the ancestors of Jesus Christ, that had
been too plain. If he had not marked that of Jesus Christ, it had not
been plain enough. But after all, whoso looks closely sees that of
Jesus Christ distinctly traced through Tamar, Ruth, etc.


Jesus Christ in an obscurity--as the world calls obscurity--so great,
that the historians who wrote only the important matters of States
hardly perceived him.


_On the fact that neither Josephus, nor Tacitus, nor other
historians, have spoken of Jesus Christ._--So far from this being any
argument against, it is rather one for us. For it is certain that
Jesus Christ has existed, that his religion has made a great noise,
and that these people were not ignorant of it; thus it is plain that
they designedly concealed it, or perhaps that they did speak of it,
and what they said has been suppressed or altered.


When Augustus learnt that Herod's own son was among the children
under the age of two years whom he had commanded to be slain, he said
that it was better to be Herod's pig than his son. Macrob. _Saturn_.
Lib. ii., c. 4.


Macrobius, on the Innocents slain by Herod.


_Prophecies._--Great Pan is dead.


Herod believed to be the Messiah. He had taken away the sceptre of
Judah, but he was not of Judah. This was held by a considerable sect.

Both Barcoseba and another received by the Jews. And the rumour which
was everywhere in those times. Suetonius, Tacitus, Josephus.

In what sort should Messiah come, seeing that by him the sceptre
should be eternally in Judah, and at his coming the sceptre should
depart from Judah?

To the end that seeing they should not see, and understanding they
should not understand, nothing could be better done.

Curse of the Greeks against those who count periods of time.


_Proofs of Jesus Christ._--Jesus Christ said great things so simply
that he seems not to have considered them, and yet so tersely that
it is clear he had considered them. This clearness joined with
simplicity is wonderful.


Who taught the evangelists the qualities of an entirely heroic soul,
that they should paint it so perfectly in Jesus Christ? Why did they
describe him weak in his agony? Did they not know how to paint a
steadfast death? No doubt they did, for the same Saint Luke paints
the death of Saint Stephen as braver than that of Jesus Christ.

They describe him therefore as capable of fear before the need of
dying came, and then wholly strong.

But when they represent him as so afflicted, it is when he afflicts
himself, and when men afflict him, then is he wholly strong.


The style of the Gospel is wonderful in many ways, and in this among
others, that it contains no invectives against the executioners and
enemies of Jesus Christ. The historians do not rail against Judas,
Pilate, nor any of the Jews.

If this modesty of the evangelical writers had been simulated, as
well as many other traits of a beautiful character, and they had
only simulated it to attract observation, even if they had not dared
to draw attention to it themselves, they would not have failed to
procure friends, who would have remarked on it to their advantage.
But as they acted thus without dissimulation, and from perfectly
disinterested motives, they pointed it out to no one, and I believe
that many points of this kind have never been noticed till now, which
is an evidence of how dispassionately all was done.


The apostles were either deceived or deceivers. Both hypotheses are
difficult; for it is not possible to mistake a man raised from the
dead....

While Jesus Christ was with them, his presence might sustain them,
but after that, what gave them force to act if he did not appear to
them?


_Proof of Jesus Christ._--The supposition that the apostles were
deceivers is thoroughly absurd. Suppose we follow it out, and imagine
these twelve men assembled after the death of Jesus Christ, making
a plot to say that he was risen again. By this they attack all
earthly powers. The heart of man is strangely inclined to fickleness
and change, swayed by promises and by wealth. Had one of these men
contradicted themselves under these temptations, nay more, had they
done so in prison, in torture and in death, they were lost. Let that
be followed out.


  Hypothesis that the apostles were deceivers.
  The time clearly.
  The manner obscurely.
  Five typical proofs.
        1,600 prophets.
  2,000
          400 scattered.


_Atheists._--What reason have they to say it is not possible to rise
again? Which is the more difficult, to be born or to rise again; that
that which has never been should be, or that what has been should be
again? Is it more difficult to come into being than to return to it?
Habit causes the one to seem easy to us, the want of habit causes the
other to seem impossible. The popular way of judging.

Why should not a virgin bear a child? does not a hen lay eggs without
a cock? What distinguishes these outwardly from others? and who has
told us that the hen may not form the germ as well as the cock?


What have they to say against the resurrection, or against the
child-bearing of the Virgin? which is the more difficult; to produce
a man or an animal, or to reproduce it? And if they had never seen
any species of animal, could they guess that they were not produced
without connection with each other?


How I hate these follies of not believing in the Eucharist, etc....
If the Gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is
there?


It is impiety not to believe in the Eucharist on the ground that we
do not see it.




_THE MISSION AND GREATNESS OF JESUS CHRIST._


We know God only by Jesus Christ. Without this mediator all communion
with God is taken away, by Jesus Christ we know God. All who have
thought to know God, and to prove him without Jesus Christ, have
had but feeble proofs. But for proof of Jesus Christ we have
the prophecies, which are solid and palpable proofs. And these
prophecies, accomplished and proved true by the event, mark the
certainty of these truths, and consequently the divinity of Jesus
Christ. In him then, and by him we know God; apart from him, and
without the Scripture, without original sin, without a necessary
mediator, foretold and come, we could not absolutely prove God, nor
teach sound doctrine and sound morality. But by Jesus Christ, and
in Jesus Christ we prove God and teach morality and doctrine. Jesus
Christ is then the true God of men.

But we know at the same time our misery, for this God is none other
than he who repairs our misery. Thus we can only know God well by
knowing our sins. Therefore those who have known God without knowing
their misery, have not glorified him, but have glorified themselves.
_Quia non cognovit per sapientiam, placuit Deo per stultitiam
praedicationis salvos facere._


Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves
by Jesus Christ alone. We know life and death by Jesus Christ alone.
Apart from Jesus Christ we know not what is our life, nor our death,
nor God, nor ourselves.

Thus without the Scripture, which has Jesus Christ alone for its
object, we know nothing, and see only obscurity and confusion in the
nature of God, and in our own nature.


Without Jesus Christ man must be plunged in vice and misery; with
Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery, in him is all our
virtue and all our happiness. Apart from him is nought but vice and
misery, error and darkness, death and despair.


Without Jesus Christ the world would not exist, for it could only be
either destroyed, or a very hell.


It is not only impossible but useless to know God without Jesus
Christ. They have not withdrawn from him, but drawn near; they have
not abased themselves, but....

_Quo quisque optimus est, pessimus, si hoc ipsum, quod sit optimus,
ascribat sibi._


The Gospel only speaks of the virginity of the Virgin up to the time
of the birth of Jesus Christ. All with reference to Jesus Christ


Jesus Christ, whom the two Testaments regard, the Old as its end, the
New as its model, both as their centre.


Scepticism is the truth. For, after all, men before Jesus Christ did
not know either where they were or if they were great or little. And
those who said one or the other knew nothing about it, and guessed
without reason and by chance, yet they always erred in excluding one
or the other.

_Quod ergo ignorantes quaeritis, Religio annuntiat vobis._


If Epictetus had seen the way with certainty he would have said to
men: "You follow a false road"; he shows that there is another, but
he does not lead there; it is the way of willing what God wills;
Jesus Christ alone leads thither, _via_, _veritas_.


Jesus Christ did nothing but teach men that they were lovers of
themselves, that they were slaves, blind, sick, miserable, and
sinners, that he would deliver them, enlighten, bless, and heal them,
that this would be brought about by hatred of self, and by following
him through poverty and the death of the cross.


An artisan who speaks of riches, a lawyer who speaks of war, or of
kingship, etc., but the rich man rightly speaks of riches, a king
speaks slightingly of a great gift he has just made, and God rightly
speaks of God.


Hosea iii.

Isaiah xlii, xlviii., liv., lx., lxi. The last verse. I have foretold
it long since, that they might know that it is I.

Jaddus to Alexander.


Man is not worthy of God, but he is not incapable of being rendered
worthy.

It is unworthy of God to unite himself to miserable man, but it is
not unworthy of God to raise him from his misery.


The infinite distance between body and mind is a figure of the
infinitely more infinite distance between mind and charity, for this
is supernatural.

All the splendour of greatness has no lustre for those who seek
understanding.

The greatness of men of understanding is invisible to kings, to the
rich, to conquerors, and to all the great according to the flesh.

The greatness of wisdom, which has no existence save in God, is
invisible to the carnal and to men of understanding. These are three
orders differing in kind.

Men of great genius have their empire, their glory, their grandeur,
their victory, their lustre, and do not need worldly greatness, with
which they have nothing to do. They are seen, not by the eye, but by
the mind; and that is enough.

The saints have their empire, their glory, their victory, their
lustre, and want no glory of the flesh or of the mind, with which
they have nothing to do, for these add nothing to them neither do
they take away. They are seen of God and the angels, and not by the
bodily eye, nor by the curious spirit; God suffices them.

Archimedes without worldly pomp would have had the same reverence. He
fought no battles for the eye to gaze on, but he left his discoveries
to all minds. O! how brilliant was he to the mind.

Jesus Christ, without riches, and without any exterior manifestation
of science, is in his own order of holiness. He gave forth no
scientific inventions to the world, he never reigned; but he was
humble, patient, holy; holy before God, terrible to devils, without
spot of sin. O! in what great pomp, and with what transcendent
magnificence did he come to the eyes of the heart, which discern
wisdom.

It would have been needless for Archimedes, though of princely birth,
to have played the prince in his books on geometry.

It would have been needless to our Lord Jesus Christ for the purpose
of shining in his kingdom of holiness, to come as kings come; but he
did come in the glory proper to his order.

It is most unreasonable to be offended at the lowliness of Jesus
Christ, as if this lowliness were in the same order as was the
greatness which he came to display. Let us consider this greatness
in his life, in his passion, in his obscurity, in his death, in the
choice of his disciples, in their desertion of him, in the secrecy of
his resurrection, and the rest, and it will seem so vast as to give
no room for offence at a lowliness in another order.

But there are those who can only admire carnal as though there were
no mental greatness, and others who only admire mental greatness, as
though there were not infinitely greater heights in wisdom.

All bodies, the firmament, the stars, the earth and the kingdoms
thereof, are not comparable to the lowest mind, for mind knows all
these, and itself; the body nothing.

All bodies together and all minds together, and all they can effect,
are not worth the least motion of charity. This is of an order
infinitely more exalted.

From all bodies together, we cannot extract one little thought:
this is impossible and in another order. From all bodies and minds
it is impossible to produce a single motion of true charity, it is
impossible, it is in another and a supernatural order.


The Jews, in testing if he were God, have shown that he was man.


The Church has had as much difficulty in showing that Jesus Christ
was man, against those who denied it, as in showing that he was God.
And the evidences were equally great.


Jesus Christ is a God to whom we draw near without pride, and before
whom we abase ourselves without despair.


Jesus Christ for all, Moses for a people.

The Jews were blessed in Abraham. "I will bless those that bless
thee." But all nations are blessed in his seed.

_Parum est ut_, etc. Isaiah.

_Lumen ad revelationem gentium._

_Non fecit taliter omni nationi_, said David in speaking of the Law.
But in speaking of Jesus Christ it must be said: _Fecit taliter omni
nationi_.

So it is the property of Jesus Christ to be universal; even the
Church offers the sacrifice only for the faithful. Jesus Christ
offered that of the cross for all.


The victory over death. What advantageth it a man that he gain the
whole world and lose his own soul? He that will save his soul shall
lose it.

I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil. Lambs took not away
the sins of the world, but I am the lamb who take away sins. Moses
gave you not that bread from heaven. Moses has not led you out of
captivity, and made you truly free.


_Types._--Jesus Christ opened their mind to understand the Scriptures.

There are two great revelations.

1. All things happened to them in figures: _vere Israelitae, vere
liberi_, true bread from heaven.

2. A God humbled to the cross. It was necessary that Christ should
suffer and enter into glory, that he should conquer death by death.
Two advents.


The types of the completeness of redemption, as that the sun gives
light to all, denote only completeness, but they figuratively imply
exclusions, as the Jews elected to the exclusion of the Gentiles
denote exclusion.


Jesus Christ the Redeemer of all.--Yes, for he has offered, like
a man who has ransomed all who willed to come to him. It is the
misfortune of those who die on the way, but as far as he is
concerned, he offers them redemption.--That holds good in the
example, where he who ransoms and he who hinders from dying are two,
but not in Jesus Christ, who does both one and the other.--No, for
Jesus Christ in his quality of Redeemer, is not perhaps master of
all, and thus so far as in him lies, he is the Redeemer of all.


Jesus Christ would not be slain without the forms of justice, for it
is much more ignominious to die by justice than by an unjust sedition.


The elect will be ignorant of their virtues and the reprobate of the
greatness of their crimes. "Lord, when saw we thee an hungered or
athirst?" etc.

Jesus Christ would none of the testimony of devils, nor of those who
were not called, but of God and John the Baptist.


Jesus Christ says not that he is not of Nazareth, to leave the wicked
in their blindness; nor that he is not the son of Joseph.


The calling of the Gentiles by Jesus Christ.

The ruin of the Jews and heathen by Jesus Christ.




_THE MYSTERY OF JESUS._


Jesus suffered in his passion the torments which men inflicted on
him, but in his agony he suffered torments which he inflicted on
himself: _turbare semetipsum_. This is a suffering from no human, but
an almighty hand, and he who bears it must also be almighty.

Jesus sought some comfort at least in his three dearest friends, and
they were asleep. He prayed them to watch with him awhile, and they
left him with utter carelessness, having so little compassion that it
could not hinder their sleeping even for a moment. And thus Jesus was
left alone to the wrath of God.

Jesus was without one on the earth not merely to feel and share his
suffering, but even to know of it; he and heaven were alone in that
knowledge.

Jesus was in a garden, not of delight as the first Adam, in which he
destroyed himself and the whole human race; but in one of agony, in
which he saved himself and the whole human race.

He suffered this sorrow and this desertion in the horror of night.

I believe that Jesus never complained but on this single occasion,
but then he complained as if he could no longer restrain his extreme
sorrow. "My soul is sorrowful, even unto death."

Jesus sought companionship and consolation from men. This was the
only time in his life, as it seems to me; but he received it not, for
his disciples were asleep.

Jesus will be in agony even to the end of the world. We must not
sleep during that time.

Jesus in the midst of this universal desertion, even that of his
own friends chosen to watch with him, finding them asleep, was
vexed because of the danger to which they exposed, not him, but
themselves; he warned them of their own safety and of their good,
with a heartfelt tenderness for them during their ingratitude, and
warned them that the spirit is willing and the flesh weak.

Jesus, finding them still sleeping, unrestrained by any consideration
for themselves or for him, had the tenderness not to wake them but to
let them sleep on.

Jesus prayed, uncertain of the will of his Father, and feared death;
but so soon as he knew it he went forward to offer himself to death:
_Eamus. Processit._ John.

Jesus asked of men, and was not heard.

Jesus, while his disciples slept, wrought their salvation. He has
wrought that of each of the just while they slept both in their
nothingness before their birth, and in their sins after their birth.

He prayed only once that the cup should pass away, and then with
submission; but twice that it should come if need were.

Jesus was weary.

Jesus, seeing all his friends asleep and all his enemies wakeful,
gave himself over entirely to his Father.

Jesus did not regard in Judas his enmity, but God's order, which he
loves and admits, since he calls him friend.

Jesus tore himself away from his disciples to enter into his agony;
we must tear ourselves from our nearest and dearest to imitate him.

Jesus being in agony and in the greatest sorrow, let us pray
longer....

Console thyself, thou wouldest not seek me hadst thou not found me.

I thought of thee in mine agony, such drops of blood I shed for thee.

It is tempting me rather than proving thyself, to think if thou
wouldest act well in a case which has not occurred, I will act in
thee if it occur.

Let my rules guide thy conduct; see how I have led the Virgin and the
saints who have let me act in them.

The Father loves all that I do.

Must I ever shed the blood of my humanity and thou give no tears?

Thy conversion is my affair; fear not and pray with confidence as for
me.

I am present with thee by my word in the Scriptures, by my Spirit
in the Church and by inspiration, by my power in the priest, by my
prayer in the faithful.

Physicians will not heal thee, for thou wilt die at last. But it is I
who heal thee and make the body immortal.

Suffer chains and bodily servitude, I deliver thee now only from what
is spiritual.

I am to thee more a friend than such or such an one, for I have done
for thee more than they; they have not borne what I have borne from
thee, they have not died for thee as I have done in the time of thine
infidelities and thy cruelties, and as I am ready to do and do in my
elect and at the Holy Sacrament.

If thou knewest thy sins thou wouldest lose heart.--I shall lose it
then O Lord, for on thy word I believe their malice.--No, for I by
whom thou learnest it can heal thee of them, and what I tell thee
is a sign that I will heal thee. As thou dost expiate them, thou
wilt know them, and it will be said to thee: "Behold, thy sins are
forgiven thee!"

Repent then for thy secret sins, and for the hidden malice of those
which thou knowest.

Lord, I give thee all.--

I love thee more ardently than thou hast loved thine uncleannesses,
_ut immundus pro luto_.

To me be the glory, not to thee, thou worm of earth.

Ask thy director, when my own words are to thee occasion of evil, or
vanity, or curiosity.

I see the depths which are in me of pride, curiosity and lust. There
is no relation between me and God, nor Jesus Christ the Just One. But
he has been made sin for me, all thy scourges are fallen upon him. He
is more abominable than I, and far from abhorring me he holds himself
honoured that I go to him and succour him.

But he has healed himself, and still more will he heal me.

I must add my wounds to his, and join me to him, and he will save me
in saving himself.

But this must not be put off to a future day.

Do little things as though they were great, because of the majesty of
Jesus Christ who does them in us, and who lives our life; do great
things as though they were small and easy, because of his omnipotence.


_The Sepulchre of Jesus Christ._--Jesus Christ was dead, but seen on
the Cross. He was dead, and hidden in the sepulchre.

Jesus Christ was buried by the saints alone.

Jesus Christ worked no miracles at the sepulchre.

Only the saints entered it.

There, not on the Cross, Jesus Christ took a new life.

It is the last mystery of the passion and the redemption.

Jesus Christ had no where to rest on earth but in the sepulchre.

His enemies only ceased to persecute him at the sepulchre.


I consider Jesus Christ in all persons and in ourselves. Jesus Christ
as a father in his father, Jesus Christ as a brother in his brethren,
Jesus Christ as poor in the poor, Jesus Christ as rich in the rich,
Jesus Christ as doctor and priest in priests, Jesus Christ as
sovereign in princes, etc. For by his glory he is all that is great,
since he is God; and he is by his mortal life all that is miserable
and abject. Therefore he has taken this wretched state, to enable him
to be in all persons, and the model of all conditions.


The false justice of Pilate only caused the suffering of Jesus
Christ; for he caused him to be scourged by his false justice, and
then slew him. It would have been better that he had slain him at
first. Thus is it with those who are falsely just. They do good works
or evil to please the world, and show that they are not altogether
of Jesus Christ, for they are ashamed of him. Then at last in great
temptations and on great occasions, they slay him.


It seems to me that Jesus Christ after his resurrection allowed his
wounds only to be touched: _Noli me tangere_. We must unite ourselves
to his sufferings only.


At the Last Supper he gave himself in communion as one about to die;
to the disciples at Emmaus as one risen from the dead; to the whole
Church as one ascended into heaven.


Compare not thyself with others, but with me. If thou findest me not
in those with whom thou comparest thyself, thou comparest thyself
with him that is abominable. If thou findest me there compare thyself
to me. But who is it that thou dost compare? Thyself, or me in thee?
If it be thyself it is one that is abominable; if it be me thou
comparest me to myself. Now I am God in all.

I speak and often counsel thee because thy Guardian can not speak to
thee, for I will not that thou shouldest lack a guide.

And perhaps I do so at his prayers, and thus he leads thee without
thy seeing it.

Thou wouldest not seek me unless thou didst possess me.

Therefore be not troubled.


Be comforted; it is not from yourself that you must expect it; but on
the contrary, expecting nothing from yourself, you must await it.


Pray that ye enter not into temptation. It is dangerous to be
tempted, and those alone are tempted who do not pray.

_Et tu conversus confirma fratres tuos._ But before, _conversus Jesus
respexit Petrum_.

Saint Peter asked permission to strike Malchus, and struck before
having the answer; Jesus Christ answered afterwards.


I love poverty because he loved it. I love wealth because it gives
the power of helping the miserable. I keep my troth to everyone;
rendering not evil to those who do me wrong; but I wish them a lot
like mine, in which I receive neither good nor evil from men. I try
to be just, true, sincere, and faithful to all men; I have a tender
heart for those to whom God has more closely bound me; and whether I
am alone or seen of men I place all my actions in the sight of God,
who shall judge them, and to whom I have consecrated them all.

Such are my opinions, and each day of my life I bless my Redeemer
who has implanted them in me, who has transformed me, a man full of
weakness, misery, and lust, of pride and ambition, into a man exempt
from all these evils, by the power of his grace, to which all the
glory is due; since of myself I have only misery and sin.




_OF THE TRUE RIGHTEOUS MAN AND OF THE TRUE CHRISTIAN._


_Members. To begin with that._--To regulate the love which we owe
to ourselves, we must imagine a body full of thinking members, for we
are members of the whole, and see how each member should love itself,
etc....


If the feet and the hands had each a separate will they could only be
in their order in submitting this separate will to the primary will
which governs the whole body. Apart from that they are in disorder
and misfortune, but in willing only the good of the body they find
their own good.


_Morality._--God having made the heavens and the earth, which cannot
feel the happiness of their being, he has been pleased to make
beings who should know it, and who should compose a body of thinking
members. For our members do not feel the happiness of their union,
of their admirable intelligence, of the care which nature has taken
to infuse into them a mind, and to make them grow and endure. How
happy would they be if they could see and feel it. But in order to
this they must needs have intelligence to know it, and good will
to consent to that of the universal soul. For if, having received
intelligence, they used it to retain nourishment for themselves
without allowing it to pass to the other members, they would be not
only unjust but also miserable, and would hate rather than love
themselves, their blessedness as well as their duty consisting in
their consent to the guidance of the general soul to which they
belong, who loves them better than they love themselves.


To be a member, is to have neither life, being, nor movement save by
the spirit of the body, and for the body; the separate member, seeing
no longer the body to which it belongs, has only a waning and dying
existence. Yet it believes it is a whole, and seeing not the body
on which it depends, it believes it depends only on self and wills
to constitute itself both centre and body. But not having in itself
a principle of life, it only goes astray, and is astonished in the
uncertainty of its being; fully aware that it is not a body, yet not
seeing that it is a member of a body. Then when at last it arrives at
the knowledge of self, it has returned as it were to its own home,
and loves itself only for the body's sake, bewailing that in the past
it has gone astray.

It cannot by its nature love aught else, if not for itself and to
subject it to self, since each thing loves itself above all. But in
loving the body it loves itself, because it has no being but in it,
by it, and for it. _Qui adhaeret Deo unus spiritus est._

The body loves the hand, and the hand, if it had a will, should love
itself in the same proportion as that in which it is loved by the
soul. All love beyond this is unjust.

_Adhaerens Deo unus spiritus est._ We love ourselves because we are
members of Jesus Christ. We love Jesus Christ because he is the body
of which we are members. All is one, one is in the other, like the
Three Persons.


The examples of the noble deaths of the Lacedaemonians and others
scarce touch us, for what good do they to us? But the example of the
death of the martyrs touches us, for they are our members. We have
a common tie with them, their resolution can form ours, not only by
example, but because it has perhaps merited ours. There is nothing
of this in the examples of the heathen; there is no bond between us.
As we do not become rich by seeing a rich stranger, but by seeing a
father or a husband who is so.


We must love God only, and hate self only.

If the foot had always been ignorant that it belonged to the body,
and that there was a body on which it depended, if it had only had
the knowledge and the love of self, and if it came to know that it
belonged to a body on which it depended, what regret, what confusion
for the past life, for having been useless to the body from which its
whole life was derived, which would have reduced it to nothing if it
had rejected it and separated it from itself, as it held itself apart
from the body. What prayers for its preservation in the body, with
what submission would it allow itself to be governed according to
the will which rules the body, even to consent, if need be, that it
should be cut off, or it would lose its character of member. For each
member must be content to perish for the body, for which alone the
whole exists.


To ensure the happiness of the members, they must have one will, and
submit it to the body.


It is false that we are worthy of the love of others, it is unjust
that we should desire it. If we were born reasonable and impartial,
knowing ourselves and others, we should not give this bias to our
will. But we are born with it; we are therefore born unjust, for all
tends to self. This is contrary to all order. We should look to the
general advantage, and the inclination to self is the beginning of
all disorder, in war, in politics, in economy, and in man's own body.

The will therefore is depraved. If the members of natural and civil
communities tend towards the well-being of the body, the communities
themselves should tend to the welfare of another more general body of
which they are members. We should therefore look to the whole. We are
therefore born unjust and depraved.


He who hates not in himself his self-love, and that instinct which
leads him to make himself a God, is indeed blinded. All must see
that nothing is so opposed to justice and truth. For it is false
that we deserve this, and it is unjust and impossible to attain it,
since all demand the same. Manifestly then injustice is innate in us,
from which we cannot free ourselves, yet from which we ought to free
ourselves.

But no religion has pointed out that this is a sin, or that we are
born in it, or that we are bound to resist it, or has thought of
offering us a cure.


It is unjust that any should attach themselves to me, even though
they do it with pleasure, and voluntarily. I should deceive those
in whom I aroused this desire, for I am not the final end of any,
nor have I that which can satisfy them. Am I not about to die? And
thus the object of their attachment will die. Thus as it would
be blameworthy in me to cause a falsehood to be believed, though
I should gently insinuate it, though it should be believed with
pleasure, and though it should give me pleasure; in like manner it
is blameworthy in me if I make myself beloved, and if I draw persons
to attach themselves to me. I ought to warn those who are ready to
consent to a lie, that they should not believe it, whatever advantage
accrues to me from it; and in the same way that they should not
attach themselves to me; for they ought to spend their life and their
pains in pleasing God, or in seeking him.


Self-will never will be satisfied, though it should have power for
all it would; but we are satisfied from the moment we renounce it.
Without it we cannot be discontented, with it we cannot be content.


To hate self, and to seek a truly lovable being to love, is therefore
the true and only virtue, for we are hateful because of lust. But as
we cannot love what is outside us, we must love a being which is in
us, yet not ourselves, and that is true of each and all men. Now the
universal Being is alone such. The Kingdom of God is within us; the
universal good is within us, is our very selves, yet not ourselves.


If there be a God we ought to love him alone, and not the creatures
of a day. The reasoning of the wicked in the _Book of Wisdom_ is
only founded on the non-existence of God. "Given that there is no
God," say they, "let us take delight in the creature. It is because
there is nothing better." But were there a God to love they would not
have come to this conclusion, but to the contrary. And this is the
conclusion of the wise: "There is a God, therefore we ought not to
take delight in the creature."

Therefore all that leads us to attach ourselves to the creature is
evil, because it hinders us from serving God if we know him, and from
seeking him if we know him not. Now we are full of lust. Therefore we
are full of evil, therefore we should hate ourselves and all which
urges us to attach ourselves to aught but God only.


That we must love one God only is a thing so plain, that no miracles
are needed to prove it.

That is a good state of the Church in which it is upheld by God alone.


Two laws suffice to regulate the whole Christian republic better than
all political laws.


_Against those who trusting in the mercy of God live carelessly,
without doing good works._--As the two sources of our sins are pride
and indolence, God has revealed to us two of his attributes for their
cure, mercy and justice. The property of justice is to abase our
pride, however holy may be our works, _et non intres in judicium,
etc._; and the property of mercy is to combat indolence by exciting
to good works, according to that passage: "The goodness of God leads
to repentance," and that other of the Ninevites: "Let us do penance
to see if peradventure he will pity us." Thus mercy is so far from
authorising slackness, that it is on the contrary the quality which
formally assails it, so that instead of saying: "Were there not mercy
in God, we must make every effort after virtue," we should say, on
the contrary, that because there is mercy in God we must make every
effort.


The world exists for the exercise of mercy and judgment, not as if
men were in it as they came from the hands of God, but as the enemies
of God, to whom he gives by grace light enough to return, if they
will seek him and follow him, and to punish them, if they refuse to
seek him and follow him.


We implore the mercy of God, not that he may leave us in peace in our
vices, but that he may free us from them.


There are but two kinds of men, the righteous, who believe themselves
sinners, and sinners, who believe themselves righteous.


_There are two kinds of men in each religion._--Among the heathen,
worshippers of beasts, and the worshippers of the one God revealed by
natural religion.

Among the Jews, the carnal and the spiritual, who were the Christians
of the old law.

Among the Christians, those coarser ones, who are the Jews of the new
law.

The carnal Jews looked for a carnal Messiah, and the coarser
Christians believe that the Messiah has dispensed them from the love
of God. True Jews and true Christians adore a Messiah who makes them
love God.


Carnal Jews and the heathen have their miseries, and Christians also.
There is no Redeemer for the heathen, for they do not even hope for
one. There is no Redeemer for the Jews, who hope for him in vain.
There is a Redeemer only for the Christians.


The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, pride, etc.

There are three orders of things: the flesh, the spirit, and the will.

The carnal are the rich and kings, who have the body as their object.

Enquirers and men of science, who have mind for their object.

The wise, who have right for their object.

God must reign over all, and all must be referred to him. In things
of the flesh lust reigns especially, in men of intellect curiosity
especially, in wisdom pride especially.

Not that a man may not boast of wealth or knowledge, but there is no
room for pride, for in granting that a man is learned there will be
no difficulty in proving to him that he is wrong to be proud. Pride
finds its proper place in wisdom, for it cannot be granted to a man
that he has made himself wise and that he is wrong to be proud of
it. For that is just. Now God alone gives wisdom, and therefore _qui
gloriatur in Domino, glorietur_.


All that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the
eyes, or the pride of life; _libido sentiendi, libido sciendi,
libido dominandi_. Woe to the accursed land which these three rivers
of flame enkindle rather than moisten. Happy they who are on these
rivers, not overwhelmed nor carried away, but immovably fixed upon
the floods, not standing, but seated, and on a firm and sure base,
whence they rise not before the dawn; but where, having rested in
peace, they stretch forth their hands to him who will lift them
up, and cause them to stand firm and upright in the porches of the
heavenly Jerusalem, where pride may no more assail nor cast them
down; and who yet weep, not to see all those perishable things
crumble which the torrents sweep away, but at the remembrance of
their dear country, that heavenly Jerusalem, which they remember
without ceasing while the days of their exile are prolonged.


The rivers of Babylon rush and fall and sweep away.

O holy Sion, where all is firm and nothing falls.

We must sit upon the floods, not under them or in them, but on them;
not standing but seated, being seated to be humble, and above them in
security. But in the porches of Jerusalem we shall stand.

Let us see if our pleasure is stable or transitory, if it pass away,
it is a river of Babylon.


There are few true Christians, I say this even in regard to faith.
There are many who believe, but from superstition. There are many who
believe not, out of reckless living; few are between the two.

I do not include here those whose morality is true holiness, nor
those whose belief springs from the heart.


It is not a rare thing to have to blame the world for too much
docility, it is a vice as natural as unbelief, and as pernicious.
Superstition.


Abraham took nothing for himself, but only for his servants; so the
just man takes for himself nothing of the world, nor of the applause
of the world, but only for his passions, which he uses as their
master, saying to the one, 'Go,' and to another, 'Come.' _Sub te erit
appetitus tuus._ The passions thus subdued are virtues. God himself
attributes to himself avarice, jealousy, anger; and these are virtues
as well as kindness, pity, constancy, which are also passions. We
must treat them as slaves, and leaving to them their food hinder the
soul from taking any of it. For when the passions gain the mastery
they are vices, then they furnish nutriment to the soul, and the soul
feeds on it and is poisoned.


The just man acts by faith in the smallest things; when he blames his
servants, he wishes for their conversion by the spirit of God, and
prays God to correct them; for he expects as much from God as from
his own blame, and he prays God to bless his corrections. And so with
all his other actions.


Of all that is in the world he takes part only in what is unpleasant,
not in what is pleasant. He loves his neighbours, but his charity
does not restrict itself within these bounds, but flows out to his
enemies, and then to those of God.


This is common to ordinary life and that of the saints, that all
endeavour after happiness, and differ only in the object in which
they place it. Both call those their enemies who hinder them from
attaining it.

We should judge of what is good or bad by the will of God, who cannot
be either unjust or blind; and not by our own will, which is always
full of malice and error.


Joh. viii. _Multi crediderunt in eum. Dicebat ergo Jesus: "Si
manseritis..., vere mihi discipuli eritis, et veritas liberabit
vos." Responderunt: Semen Abrahae sumus et nemini servimus unquam._

There is a great difference between disciples and true disciples.
They are recognised by saying to them that the truth will make them
free; for if they answer that they are free, and that it is in their
power to come out of slavery to the devil, they are indeed disciples,
but not true disciples.


"Might I but see a miracle," men say, "I would become a Christian."
How can they be sure they would do that of which they are ignorant?
Men imagine that conversion consists in making of the worship of God
such a transaction and way of life as they picture to themselves.
True conversion consists in the annihilation of self before that
universal Being whom we have so often provoked, and who might with
justice destroy us at any moment; in recognising that we can do
nought without him, and have merited nothing from him but his wrath.
It consists in knowing that there is unconquerable opposition between
us and God, and that without a mediator there could be no communion
with him.


_Comminutum cor._ Saint Paul. There is the Christian character.
_Albe vous a nomme, je ne vous connais plus._ Corneille. That is the
inhuman character. The human character is the contrary.


With how little pride a Christian believes himself united to God,
with how little abasement does he rank himself with the worms of
earth. What a way is this to receive life and death, good and evil.


It is true there is difficulty in entering into a devout life, but
this difficulty does not arise from the religion which begins in us,
but from the irreligion which is still there. If our senses were
not opposed to penitence, and if our corruption were not opposed to
the purity of God, there would be nothing in this painful to us. We
suffer only in proportion as the vice which is natural to us resists
supernatural grace; our heart feels torn asunder by these conflicting
efforts, but it would be most unjust to impute this violence to God,
who draws us, instead of attributing it to the world, which holds us
back. As a child which a mother tears from the robbers' arms, in the
anguish it suffers should love the loving and legitimate violence
of her who procures its liberty, and detest only the imperious and
tyrannical violence of those who retain it unjustly. The most cruel
war which God can make against men in this life is to leave them
without that war which he came to bring. "I came to bring war," he
says, and to inform them of this war, "I came to bring fire and the
sword." Before him the world lived in a false peace.


The exterior must be joined to the interior to obtain aught from God,
that is to say, we must kneel, pray with the lips, etc., in order
that proud man, who would not submit himself to God, should now be
subject to the creature. To expect succour from these externals is
superstition, to refuse to join them to interior acts is pride.


_External works._--There is nothing so perilous as that which is
pleasing to God and to man; for those conditions which are pleasing
to God and man, have one side which is pleasing to God, and another
which is pleasing to man; as the greatness of Saint Theresa. That
which was pleasing to God was her profound humility under her
revelations, what was pleasing to men was her light. And thus we
torment ourselves to imitate her discourses, thus thinking to imitate
her condition, and thereby to love what God loves, and to place
ourselves in a state which God loves.

It is better not to fast, and be thereby humbled, than to fast and be
puffed up therewith.

The pharisee and the publican.


What will memory avail me if it be alike hurtful and helpful, since
all depends upon the blessing of God, who gives only to things done
for him according to his rules and in his ways, the manner being thus
as important as the thing, and perhaps more; since God can bring good
out of evil, and because without God we bring evil out of good.


The hope which Christians have of possessing an infinite good is
mingled with actual enjoyment as well as with fear; for it is not
as with those who should hope for a kingdom, of which they being
subjects would have nothing; but they hope for holiness, and freedom
from injustice, of which they possess somewhat.


None is so happy as a true Christian, none so reasonable, none so
virtuous, none so amiable.


We remove ourselves from God only by removing ourselves from love.

Our prayers and our virtues are abomination before God if they are
not the prayers and the virtues of Jesus Christ. And our sins will
never be the object of the mercy, but of the justice of God, if they
are not those of Jesus Christ.

He has adopted our sins, and has admitted us into covenant with him,
for virtues are his own, and sins are strange to him; while virtues
are strange to us, and sins are our own.

Let us change the rule which we have hitherto adopted for judging
what is good. We have had our own will as our rule in this respect,
let us now take the will of God, all that he wills is good and right
to us, all that he wills not is evil.

All that God allows not is forbidden; sins are forbidden by the
general declaration that God has made, that he allows them not.
Other things which he has left without general prohibition, and
which for that reason are said to be permitted, are nevertheless not
always permitted; for when God removes any one of them from us, and
when, by the event, which is a manifestation of the will of God, it
appears that God allows not that we should have a thing, that is then
forbidden to us as sin, since the will of God is that we should not
have one more than the other. There is this sole difference between
these two things, that it is certain God will never allow sin, while
it is not certain that he will never allow the other. But so long
as God allows it not, we must look upon it as sin, so long as the
absence of God's will, which alone is all goodness and all justice,
renders it unjust and evil.


True Christians nevertheless submit to folly, not because they
respect folly, but the commandment of God, who for the punishment of
men has put them in subjection to their follies. _Omnis creatura
subjecta est vanitati. Liberabitur._ Thus Saint Thomas explains the
passage in Saint James on giving place to the rich, that if they do
it not in the sight of God the commandment of religion is set at
naught.


All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life, but among
all those which the world has invented none is so much to be feared
as the theatre. It is so natural and so delicate a representation
of the passions that it moves them, and makes them spring up in our
heart, above all that of love, principally when it is represented as
very chaste and very honourable. For the more innocent it seems to
innocent souls, the more are they capable of being touched by it; its
violence pleases our self-love, which at once forms the desire of
causing the same effects which we see so well represented, and at the
same time we make for ourselves a conscience founded on the honour of
the feelings which we see there. And this extinguishes the fear of
pure souls which imagine there is no harm to purity in loving with a
love which seems to them so moderate.

Thus we leave the theatre with our heart so full of all the beauty
and tenderness of love, the soul and the mind so persuaded of
its innocence, that we are fully prepared to receive its first
impressions, or rather to seek occasion to let them be born in the
heart of some one, in order that we may receive the same pleasures
and the same sacrifices which we have seen so well depicted in the
theatre.


The circumstances in which it is easiest to live according to the
world are those in which it is most difficult to live according to
God, and _vice versa_. Nothing is so difficult according to the world
as the religious life; nothing is more easy according to God. Nothing
is easier than to live in great office and great wealth according to
the world; nothing is more difficult than to live in them according
to God, and not to take part in them and love them.


Those who believe without having read the Old and New Testaments, do
so because they have a saintly frame of mind, with which all that
they hear of our Religion agrees. They feel that a God has made them;
their will is to love God only, their will is to hate themselves
only. They feel that they have no power of themselves, that they are
unable to come to God, and if God come not to them, they can have
no communion with him. And they hear our Religion declare that men
must love God only, and hate self only, but that all being corrupt,
and unfit for God, God made himself man to unite himself to us. No
more is needed to convince men who have such a disposition and have a
knowledge of their duty and of their incompetence.


Those whom we see to be Christians without the knowledge of the
prophecies and evidences, are able to judge of their religion as well
as those who have that knowledge. They judge of it by the heart, as
others by the understanding. God himself inclines them to believe,
and thus they are effectually persuaded.

I admit that one of those Christians who believe without proof is not
perhaps qualified to convince an infidel who will say the same of
himself; but those who know the proofs of religion can prove without
difficulty that such a believer is truly inspired by God, though he
cannot prove it himself.

For God having said by his prophets, who are beyond a doubt prophets,
that in the reign of Jesus Christ he will spread his spirit abroad
among all nations, that the young men and maidens and the children of
the Church will prophesy, there is no doubt that the spirit of God is
upon these, and not upon the others.


Wonder not to see simple souls believe without reasoning. God gives
to them the love of him, and the hate of self, he inclines their
heart to belief. No man will ever believe with true and saving faith
if God incline not the heart, but each will believe as soon as he
inclines it And this is what David knew well: _Inclina cor meum,
Deus, in testimonia tua_.


Romans iii. 27: Boasting is excluded, by what law? Of works? no, but
by that of faith. Therefore faith is not in our power, like the
works of the law, and it is given us in another way.


Faith is a gift of God, do not suppose us to say it is a gift
of reason. Other religions do not say this of their faith, they
proffered only reason as a means of attaining to it, which after all
does not lead to it.


Faith, it is true, says what the senses do not say, but not the
contrary of what they perceive. It is above them, not contrary to
them.


I am envious of those whom I see professing the true faith, but
living and abusing a gift of which it seems to me I should make a
very different use.


The law imposed what it did not bestow; grace bestows that which it
imposes.


The law has not destroyed Nature, but has instructed it; grace has
not destroyed the law, but has called it into action.

Faith received at baptism is the source of the whole life of the
Christian and of the converted.


We make an idol of truth itself, for truth apart from charity is not
God, it is his image and idol, which we must neither love nor adore;
still less must we love and adore its opposite, which is falsehood.


Submission and use of reason, in which consists true Christianity.


The last process of reason is to recognise that there is an infinity
of things which transcend it; it is but weak if it does not go so far
as to know that.

And if natural things transcend it, what shall we say of the
supernatural?


_Submission._--We must know when to doubt, when to feel certain,
when to submit. Who fails in this understands not the force of
reason. There are those who offend against these three rules, either
by accepting everything as evidence, for want of knowing what
evidence is; or by doubting everything, for want of knowing when to
submit; or by yielding in everything, for want of knowing when to use
their judgment.


There are three means of belief; reason, habit, inspiration. The
Christian religion, which only has reason, does not admit as her true
children those who believe without inspiration; not that she excludes
reason or habit, rather the contrary, but it is necessary to open
the mind to proofs, to confirm ourselves by habit, and then to offer
ourselves humbly to inspiration, which alone can produce a true and
salutary effect. _Ne evacuetur crux Christi._


There are two ways of urging the truths of our religion; one by the
force of reason, the other by the authority of the speaker.

We use not the last, but the first. We do not say: "You must believe
this, for the Scripture which says so is divine," but we say: You
must believe for such and such a reason, which are weak arguments,
since reason bends itself to all.


If we submit all to reason our religion will have nothing in it
mysterious or supernatural. If we violate the principles of reason,
our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.


Saint Augustine. Reason would never submit if it did not judge that
on some occasions submission is a duty.

It is then right that it should submit, when it judges that it ought
to submit.


Piety is different from superstition.

To carry piety as far as superstition is to destroy it.

Heretics reproach us with this superstitious submission. This is to
do that with which they reproach us.

There is nothing so conformable to reason as the disavowal of reason.

Two excesses: to exclude reason, and to admit reason only.


Superstition and lust. Scruples, evil desires, evil fear.

Fear, not such as arises from a belief in God, but that which springs
from doubt whether he is or is not. True fear comes from faith, false
fear from doubt. True fear is allied to hope, because it is born of
faith, and because men hope in the God in whom they behave; false
fear is allied to despair, because they fear the God in whom they do
not believe. The one class fears to lose him, the other fears to find
him.


A person said to me one day that when he came from confession he
felt great joy and confidence. Another said to me that he was still
fearful, whereupon I thought that these two together would make one
good man, and that each was so far wanting in that he had not the
feelings of the other. The same is often true in other matters.


The knowledge of God is very far from the love of him.


We are not wearied of eating and sleeping every day, because hunger
and drowsiness are renewed; without that we should be weary of them.
Thus without the hunger of spiritual things we grow weary of them.
Hunger after righteousness, the eighth beatitude.


The conduct of God, who disposes all things gently, is to put
religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace. But to
will to put it into the mind and heart by force and menace is not to
put religion there, but terror, _terrorem potius quam religionem_.




_THE ARRANGEMENT._


_First part_: Misery of man without God.

_Second part_: The happiness of man with God.

Or. _First part_: That Nature is naturally corrupt.

_Second part_: That the Scripture shows a Redeemer.


_The arrangement by dialogues._--What ought I to do? I see only
obscurity everywhere. Shall I believe that I am nothing, shall I
believe that I am God?

All things change and succeed each other.--You are mistaken; there
is....


A letter to lead to the search after God.

And then to cause him to be sought for among the philosophers,
sceptics and dogmatists, who trouble all who seek them.


To pity those atheists who seek, for are they not unhappy enough?--To
rail against those who make a boast of it.


To begin by pitying unbelievers, they are miserable enough by their
condition. We ought not to revile them except where it may be
serviceable, but it does them harm.


_The arrangement._ A letter of advice to a friend to lead him to
seek, and he will answer: What is the good of seeking, since nothing
comes to light.--Then to answer him: "Do not despair."--And he will
answer that he would be glad to find some light, but that according
to this very Religion, thus to believe, will be of no use to him: and
that therefore he would as soon not seek. And to answer to that: The
machine.


_The arrangement._ After the letter _that we ought to seek God_,
to write the letter on _the removal of obstacles_; which is the
discourse on the machine, on preparing the machine, on seeking by
reason.


_The letter which shows the use of proofs by the machine._ Faith is
different from proof; the one is human, the other the gift of God.
_Justus ex fide vivit._ It is this faith that God himself puts into
the heart, of which the proof is often the instrument, _fides ex
auditu_; but this faith is in the heart, and makes us say not _scio_,
but _credo_.


In the letter _on Injustice_ may come the absurdity of the rule
that the elder takes all. My friend, you were born on this side the
mountain, it is therefore just that your elder brother should take
all.


_The arrangement._--Why should I take on myself to divide my moral
qualities into four rather than into six? Why should I rather
establish virtue in four, in two, in one? Why into _Abstine et
sustine_ rather than into _Follow nature_, or, _Conduct your private
affairs without injustice_, as Plato, or anything else?

But there, you will say, is everything contained in one word. Yes,
but that is useless, if not explained, and when we begin to explain
it, as soon as the precept is opened which contains all the others,
they issue in that first confusion which you wished to avoid. Thus
when they are all enclosed in one they are concealed and useless, as
in a box, and never appear but in their natural confusion. Nature has
established them all without enclosing one in the other.


_The arrangement._--Men despise Religion, they hate it, and fear it
may be true. To cure this we must begin by showing that Religion is
not contrary to reason; then that it is venerable, to give respect
for it; then to make it lovable, to make good men hope that it is
true; then to show that it is true.

Venerable because it knows man well, lovable because it promises the
true good.


_The arrangement._--I should be far more afraid of making a mistake
myself, and of finding that the Christian religion was true, than of
not deceiving myself in believing it true.


_The arrangement._--_After_ corruption to say: "It is right that
those who are in that state should know it, both those who are
contented with it, and those who are discontented; but it is not
right that all should see Redemption."


_The arrangement._--To see what is clear and indisputable in the
whole state of the Jews.


To the chapter on _Fundamentals_ must be added that on _Things
figurative_ touching the reason of types. Why Jesus Christ was
foretold at his first coming, why foretold obscurely as to the manner.


A letter, on the folly of human knowledge and philosophy.

This letter before _Diversion_.


_The arrangement._--I might well have taken this discourse in some
such order as the following: To show the vanity of every state of
life, to show the vanity of ordinary lives, and then the vanity of
philosophic lives, sceptics, stoics; but the order would not have
been kept. I know a little what it is, and how few people know it. No
human science can keep it. Saint Thomas did not keep it. Mathematics
keep it, but these are useless by reason of their depth.


Without examining each particular occupation it will be enough to
class them under Diversion.




_OF MIRACLES IN GENERAL._

_THE MIRACLE OF THE HOLY THORN._


_The beginning._--Miracles are the test of doctrine, and doctrine is
the test of miracles.

Of these there are false and true. There must be a mark whereby to
know them, or they would be useless.

Now they are not useless, and are on the contrary fundamental Now
it must be that the rule which he gives us be such as shall not
impair the proof afforded by true miracles to the truth, which is the
principal end of miracles.

Moses has given two; that the prediction does not come to pass, Deut.
xviii., and that they do not lead to idolatry, Deut. xiii.; and Jesus
Christ one.

If doctrine regulate miracles, miracles are useless for doctrine.

If miracles regulate....

_Objection to the rule._

Discrimination between times. One rule in Moses's day, another at
present.


Miracle. An effect which exceeds the natural force of the means
employed, and non-miracle an effect not exceeding the natural force
of the means employed. Thus those who heal by invocation of the devil
work no miracle, for that does not exceed the natural power of the
devil But....


The combinations of miracles.

A second miracle may suppose a first, but a first cannot suppose a
second.


No one has ever suffered martyrdom for the miracles he says he has
seen; the folly of men would perhaps go as far as martyrdom, for
those which the Turks believe by tradition, but not for those they
have seen.


Were there no false miracles there would be certainty.

Were there no rule to test them, miracles would be useless, and there
would be no reason for belief.

Now, humanly speaking, there is no human certainty, but reason.


It is said: _Believe the Church_, but it is not said: _Believe in
Miracles_, because the last is natural and not the first. The one had
need of a precept, not the other.


_Miracles._--How I hate those who make men doubt of miracles.
Montaigne speaks of them as he should in the two passages. In one we
see how careful he is, yet in the other he believes, and laughs at
unbelievers.

However it may be, the Church has no proofs if they are right.


Montaigne against miracles.

Montaigne for miracles.


_The reason why men do not believe._

Joh. xii. 37. _Cum autem tanta signa fecisset, non credebant in eum,
ut sermo Isaye impleretur. Excecavit, etc._

_Haec dixit Isaias, quando vidit gloriam ejus, et locutus est de eo._

--_Judaei signa petunt, et Graeci sapientiam quaerunt._

_Nos autem Jesum crucifixum._

_Sed plenum signis, sed plenum sapientia._

_Vos autem Christum non crucifixistis, et religionem sine miraculis
et sine sapientia._

The ground of disbelief in true miracles is want of charity. Joh.
_Sed vos non creditis quia non estis ex ovibus._ The ground of belief
in false miracles is want of charity.

2 Thess. ii.

The foundation of religion. This is miracle. Does God then speak
against miracles, against the foundations of the faith which we have
in him?

If there be a God, faith in God must exist on earth. Now the miracles
of Jesus Christ are not foretold by Antichrist, but the miracles
of Antichrist are foretold by Jesus Christ. Thus if Jesus Christ
were not the Messiah he would have certainly led into error, but
Antichrist could not certainly lead into error.

When Jesus Christ foretold the miracles of Antichrist, did he think
of destroying faith in his own miracles?

Moses foretold Jesus Christ, and commanded to follow him; Jesus
Christ foretold Antichrist, and forbade to follow him.

It was impossible that in the time of Moses any should assert their
faith in Antichrist, who was unknown to them, but it is easy in the
time of Antichrist to believe in Jesus Christ, already known.

There is no reason to believe in Antichrist which there is not to
believe in Jesus Christ, but there are reasons for believing in Jesus
Christ, which do not exist for the other.


_Title: How it happens that men believe so many liars, who say they
have seen miracles, and do not believe any of those who say they have
secrets to make men immortal or render them young again._--Having
considered how it happens that men have believed so many impostors,
who pretend they have remedies, often to the length of putting their
lives into their hands, it appears to me that the true cause is that
there are true remedies. For it would not be possible there should
be so many false, to which so much credence is given, were there
none true. Were there no remedy for any evil, and were all diseases
incurable, it is impossible that men should ever have imagined that
they could give remedies, and still more impossible that so many
others should have believed those who boasted that they had them.
Just as if a man boasted that he could prevent death, no one would
believe him because there is no example of this. But as there are a
number of remedies which are approved as true, even by the knowledge
of the greatest men, the belief of men is thereby inclined; and
since the thing was known to be possible, it has been therefore
concluded that it was. For the public as a rule reasons thus: A thing
is possible, therefore it is; because the thing cannot be denied
generally, since there are particular effects which are true, the
people, who cannot discriminate which among particular effects are
true, believe them all. This is the reason that so many false effects
are attributed to the moon, because there are some true, such as the
tide.

It is the same with prophecies, miracles, divination by dreams,
casting lots, etc. For if in all these matters nothing true had ever
taken place, nothing of them had ever been believed; and so instead
of concluding that there are no true miracles, because so many are
false, we must on the contrary say that there are certainly true
miracles because there are false, and that the false only exist
because some are true. We must reason in the same way about Religion,
for it would not be possible that men should have imagined so many
false religions had there not been one that is true. The objection to
this is that savages have a religion, but we answer that they have
heard speak of the true, as appears by the deluge, circumcision,
Saint Andrew's cross, etc.


Having considered how it comes that there are so many false miracles,
false revelations, castings of lots, etc., it has appeared to me
that the real cause is that there are true ones, for it would not be
possible that there should be so many false miracles unless there
were true, nor so many false revelations unless there were true,
nor so many false religions unless there were one that is true. For
if all this had never been, it is impossible that men should have
imagined it, and still more impossible that so many others should
have believed it. But as there have been very great things which are
true and as they have been believed by great men; this impression
has been produced, that almost everybody has been made capable of
believing the false also; and thus instead of concluding that there
are no true miracles since there are so many false, we must on the
contrary say that there are true miracles since there are so many
false, and that false miracles only exist for the reason that there
are true; so also that there are false religions only because there
is one that is true.--The objection to this is that savages have a
religion. But this is because they have heard speak of the true,
as appears by Saint Andrew's cross, the deluge, the circumcision,
etc.--This comes from the fact that the spirit of man, finding
itself inclined to that side by truth, becomes therefore susceptible
of all the falsehoods of that....


I should not be a Christian were it not for the miracles, said Saint
Augustine.


But for the miracles there would have been no sin in not believing in
Jesus Christ.


It is not possible to believe reasonably against miracles.


Miracles have so great a force that it was needful that God should
warn us not to credit them against him, clear as it may be that there
is a God; without this they would have been able to disturb.

And thus so far from these passages, Deut. xiii., making against the
authority of miracles, nothing more marks their force. The same with
Antichrist; "to seduce if it were possible even the very elect."


Abraham and Gideon are above revelation.

The Jews blinded themselves in judging of miracles by the Scripture.
God has never left his true worshippers.

I prefer to follow Jesus Christ than any other, because he has
miracle, prophecy, doctrine, perpetuity, etc.

The Donatists. No miracle which obliged them to say it was the devil.

The more we specialise God, Jesus Christ and the Church.


Jesus Christ worked miracles, then the apostles, and the early saints
in great number, because the prophecies not being yet fulfilled,
but only in the way of fulfilment by them, miracles were their only
witness. It was foretold that the Messiah should convert the nations,
and this prophecy could not be fulfilled without the conversion of
the nations. Nor could the nations be converted to Messiah unless
they saw the final effect of the prophecies concerning him. Till
therefore he died and rose again, and had converted the nations, all
was not fulfilled, wherefore miracles were needed during that time.
We now need no more miracles against the Jews, for the fulfilment of
prophecy is an enduring miracle.


Prophecy is not called _miracle_, as Saint John speaks of the first
miracle in Cana, then of what Jesus Christ said to the woman of
Samaria, revealing to her all her hidden life. Then he healed the
centurion's son, and Saint John calls this the second sign.


Jesus Christ has verified that he was the Messiah, never in verifying
his doctrine by Scripture and the prophecies, but always by his
miracles.

He proves by a miracle that he remits sins.

Rejoice not that you work miracles, said Jesus Christ, but rather
that your names are written in heaven.

If they believe not Moses, neither will they believe one risen from
the dead.

Nicodemus recognised by his miracles, that his doctrine was of God.
_Scimus quia venisti a Deo, magister, nemo enim potest facere quae tu
facis, nisi Deus fuerit cum eo._ He judged not of the miracles by the
doctrine, but of the doctrine by the miracles.


Here is no country for truth, she wanders unknown among men. God has
covered her with a veil which leaves her unrecognised by those who
hear not her voice; the way is open for blasphemy even against those
truths which are at the least very apparent. If the truths of the
Gospel are published, the contrary is also published, and questions
are obscured, so that the people cannot discern, and they ask us,
"What have you to make you believed rather than others? what sign
do you give? you have words only, so have we, if you have miracles,
good." That doctrine must be supported by miracle is a truth of which
they make a pretext to blaspheme against doctrine. And if miracles
happen, it is said that miracles are not enough without doctrine, and
that is another way of blaspheming against miracles.

Jesus Christ healed the man born blind, and worked many miracles
on the sabbath day, and thus he blinded the Pharisees who said that
miracles must be tested by doctrine.

"We have Moses, but as for this man, we know not whence he is." It
is wonderful that you know not whence he is, and yet he works such
miracles.

Jesus Christ spoke neither against God, nor against Moses.

Antichrist and the false prophets foretold by both Testaments, will
speak openly against God, and against Jesus Christ, who is not
hidden. Whoever will be a secret enemy, God will not permit that he
work miracles openly.

In a public dispute where the two parties declare themselves on the
side of God, of Jesus Christ, or the Church, there have never been
miracles on the side of the false Christians, while the other party
has remained without miracle.

"He hath a devil," John x. 21. "And others said, Can a devil open the
eyes of the blind?"

The proofs which Jesus Christ and the Apostles draw from Scripture
are not decisive, for they say only that Moses foretold that a
prophet would come; but they do not thereby prove that Jesus Christ
was that prophet, which is the whole question. These passages, then,
serve only to show that we are not contrary to Scripture, and that
there is no contradiction, not that there is accord. Now this is
enough, there is no contradiction; and there are miracles.

It follows, then, that he judged miracles to be certain proofs of
what he taught, and that the Jews were bound to believe him. And as a
fact, it was the miracles especially which made the unbelief of the
Jews so blameworthy.

There is a reciprocal duty between God and men. We must forgive him
this saying: _Quid debui_. "Accuse me," said God in Isaiah.

God must accomplish his promises, etc.

Men owe it to God to receive the Religion which he sends them. God
owes it to men not to lead them into error. Now they would be led
into error, if the workers of miracles should announce a doctrine
which did not appear visibly false to the light of common sense, and
if a greater worker of miracles had not already given warning not to
believe in them.

Thus if there were division in the Church, and the Arians, for
example, who no less than Catholics said they were founded on
Scripture, had worked miracles, and the Catholics had worked none,
men had been led into error.

For, as a man, who announces to us the secret things of God is not
worthy to be believed on his private testimony, and on that very
ground the wicked doubt him; so when a man as a sign of the communion
which he has with God raises the dead, foretells the future, moves
the seas, heals the sick, there is none so wicked as not to yield,
and the incredulity of Pharaoh and the Pharisees is the effect of a
supernatural hardening.

When, therefore, we see miracles and doctrine not open to suspicion
both on one side, there is no difficulty. But when we see miracles
and suspicious doctrine on the same side we must see which is the
clearest. Jesus Christ was suspected.

Barjesus was blinded. The power of God is above that of his enemies.

The Jewish exorcists were beaten by devils, who said, "Jesus we know,
and Paul we know, but who are ye?"

Miracles are for doctrine, and not doctrine for miracles.

But if miracles are true we cannot persuade men of all doctrine, for
that will not come to pass: _Si angelus_....

_Rule._ We must judge of doctrine by miracles, we must judge of
miracles by doctrine. All this is true, but there is no contradiction.

For we must distinguish the times.

You are glad to know general rules, thinking by that to introduce
difficulties, and render all useless. We shall stop you, my good
father; truth is one, and strong.

It is impossible from the duty God owes us, that a man, concealing
his evil doctrine, and only allowing the good to appear, pretending
that he is in conformity with God and the Church, should work
miracles to insinuate insensibly a false and subtle doctrine. This
cannot be.

Still less, that God who knows the heart, should work miracles in
favour of such an one.


There is much difference between temptation and leading into error.
God tempts, but he leads not into error. To tempt is to present
occasions which impose no necessity; if we love not God we shall do a
certain thing. To lead into error, is to place a man in a necessity
of forming and following false conclusion.


This is what God cannot do, which nevertheless he would do, if in an
obscure question he wrought miracles on the side of falsehood.


In the Old Testament, when they would turn you from God, in the New
when they would turn you from Jesus Christ.

Such are the occasions on which we exclude certain miracles from
credence. There need be no other exclusions.

But it does not therefore follow that they had the right to exclude
all the prophets who came to them. They would have sinned in not
excluding those who denied God, and would also have sinned in
excluding those who denied him not.

So soon, then, as we see a miracle we should at once either acquiesce
or have signal marks against it. We must see if it denies either a
God, or Jesus Christ, or the Church.


Miracles avail not for conversion, but for condemnation. I P. ix.
113, a. 10, ad. 2.


_Si tu es Christus, dic nobis._

_Opera quae ego facio in nomine patris mei, haec testimonium perhibent
de me._

_Sed non vos creditis quia non estis ex ovibus meis. Oves mei vocem
meam audiunt._

Joh. vi. 30. _Quod ergo tu facis signum ut videamus, et credamus
tibi? Non dicunt: Quam doctrinam praedicas?_

_Nemo potest facere signa quae tu facis, nisi Deus fuerit cum illo._

2 Mach. xiv. 15. _Deus qui signis evidentibus suam portionem
protegit._

_Volumus signum videre de coelo tentantes eum._ Luc. xi. 16.

_Generatio prava signum quaerit; sed non dabitur._

_Et ingemiscens ait; Quid generatio ista signum quaerit._ Marc. viii.
12. They asked a sign with a bad intent. _Et non poterat facere._
And nevertheless he promises them the sign of Jonah, the great and
incomparable evidence of his resurrection.

_Nisi videritis signa non creditis._ He does not blame them for not
believing without there having been miracles, but without their
having been themselves witnesses of them.

Antichrist _in signis mendacibus_, says St Paul. 2 Thess. ii.

_Secundum operationem Satanae. In seductione ii qui pereunt eo quod
charitatem veritatis non receperunt ut salvi fierent. Ideo mittet
illis Deus operationem erroris ut credant mendacia._

As in the passage of Moses: _Tentat enim vos Deus, utrum diligatis
eum_.

_Ecce praedixi vobis, vos ergo videte._


The Church has three kinds of enemies, the Jews, who have never
been of her body; the heretics, who have withdrawn from it; and bad
Christians, who rend her from within.

These three different kinds of enemies generally assail her in
different ways, but here they assail her in the same fashion. As they
are all without miracles, and as the Church has always had miracles
against them, they have all had the same interest in eluding them;
and all avail themselves of this pretext, that we must not judge of
doctrine by miracles, but of miracles by doctrine. There were two
parties among those who heard Jesus Christ, those who followed his
doctrine by reason of his miracles; others who said.... There were
two parties in the time of Calvin. There are now the Jesuits, etc.


Miracles are the test in doubtful matters, between Jew and Gentile,
Jew and Christian, catholic and heretic, slanderer and slandered,
between the two crosses.

But miracles would be useless to heretics, for the Church, authorised
by miracles which have already obtained credence, tells us that they
have not the true faith. There is no doubt that they are not in it,
because the first miracles of the Church exclude belief in theirs.
Thus there is miracle against miracle, and the first and greatest are
on the side of the Church.


_Controversy._ Abel, Cain;--Moses, the Magicians;--Elijah, the false
prophets;--Jeremiah, Hananiah;--Micaiah, the false prophets;--Jesus
Christ, the Pharisees;--Saint Paul, Barjesus;--the Apostles,
the Exorcists;--the Christians and the infidels;--Catholics,
heretics;--Elijah, Enoch, Antichrist.

In the trial by miracles truth always prevails. The two crosses.


Miracles are no longer needful, because they have already been. But
when we listen no more to tradition, when the pope alone is proposed
to us, when he has been taken by surprise, and when the true source
of truth, which is tradition, is thus excluded, the pope, who is its
guardian, is thus prejudiced, truth is no longer allowed to appear;
then, since men speak no longer of truth, truth herself must speak to
men. This is what happened in the time of Arius.


Religion is adapted to every kind of intellect. Some consider
only its establishment, and this Religion is such that its very
establishment is enough to prove its truth. Some trace it as far as
the apostles; the more learned go back to the beginning of the world;
the angels see it better still, and from earlier time.


1. Objection. _An angel from heaven._

We must not judge of truth by miracles, but of miracles by truth.

Therefore miracles are useless.

Now they serve, and cannot be against the truth.

Therefore what Father Lingende says, that God will not allow a
miracle to lead into error....

When there shall be a dispute in the same Church, miracle will decide.

2. Objection.

_But Antichrist will work miracles._

The Magicians of Pharaoh did not lead into error. Thus on Antichrist
we cannot say to Jesus Christ: You have led me into error. For
Antichrist will work them against Jesus Christ, and thus they cannot
lead into error. Either God will not permit false miracles, or he
will procure greater.

If in the same Church a miracle should occur on the side of those in
error, men would be led into error.

A schism is visible, a miracle is visible. But a schism is more a
mark of error than a miracle is a mark of truth, therefore a miracle
cannot lead into error.

But apart from schism the error is not so visible as the miracle is
visible.

Therefore miracle may lead into error.

_Ubi est Deus tuus?_--Miracles show him and are a light to him.

Joh. vi. 26. _Non quia vidisti signum, sed quia saturati estis._

Those who follow Jesus Christ because of his miracles honour his
power in all the miracles which it produces. But those who, making
profession to follow him because of his miracles, only follow him
indeed because he consoles them and satisfies them with worldly
goods, disparage his miracles when they are contrary to their own
convenience.

Joh. ix: _Non est hic homo a Deo, quia sabbatum non custodit_. _Alii:
Quomodo potest homo peccator haec signa facere?_

Which is the most clear?

This house is not of God, for they do not there believe that the five
propositions are in Jansenius.

Others: This house is of God, for in it strange miracles are done.

Which is the most clear?

_Tu quid dicis? Dico quia propheta est.--Nisi esset hic a Deo, non
poterat facere quidquam._


There is much difference between not being for Jesus Christ, and
saying it, and not being for Jesus Christ, yet feigning to be so. The
one party can work miracles, not the others, for it is clear that the
one party are against the truth, but not that the others are; and
thus miracles are the more clear.


"If you believe not in me, believe at least in the miracles." He puts
them forward as the strongest.

He had said to the Jews as well as to the Christians, that they
should not always believe the prophets; but nevertheless the
pharisees and scribes made much of his miracles, and tried to show
that they were false or worked by the devil, since they were bound to
be convinced, if they admitted that these were of God.


We are not in these days obliged so to discriminate. Yet it is very
easy to do so; those who deny neither God nor Jesus Christ work no
miracles which are not quite certain.

_Nemo facit virtutem in nomine meo, et cito possit de me male loqui._

But we have not to use this discrimination. Here is a sacred relic,
here is a thorn from the crown of the Saviour of the world, on whom
the prince of this world has no power, which works miracles by the
immediate power of the blood that was shed for us. Thus God has
himself chosen this house wherein openly to show forth his power.

Here are not men who work miracles by an unknown and doubtful virtue,
obliging us to a difficult discrimination; it is God himself, it is
the instrument of the passion of his only Son, who being in many
places chose this, and made men come from all sides, there to receive
miraculous succour in their weaknesses.


If the devil were to favour the doctrine which destroys him, he would
be divided against himself, as Jesus Christ said. If God favoured
the doctrine which destroys the Church, he would be divided against
himself. _Omne regnum divisum._

For Jesus Christ acted against the devil, and destroyed his empire
over the heart, of which exorcism is the figure, to establish the
kingdom of God. And so he adds: _Si in digito Dei, regnum Dei ad vos_.

Either God has confounded the false miracles or he has foretold them,
and both by the one and the other he has raised himself above the
supernatural in regard to us, and has raised us also.


Jer. xxiii. 32. The _miracles_ of the false prophets. In the Hebrew
and Vatable they are called _trifles_.

_Miracle_ does not always mean miracle. 1 Kings xiv. 15. _Miracle_
signifies _fear_, and is the same in Hebrew.

The same plainly in Job xxxiii. 7.

So in Isaiah xxi. 4. Jeremiah xliv. 12.

_Portentum_ means _images_, Jer. l. 38, and it is the same in Hebrew
and Vatable. Isaiah viii. 18. Jesus Christ says that he and his will
be in _miracles_.


Jesus Christ said that the Scriptures bear witness of him, but he did
not show in what respect.

Even the prophecies could not prove Jesus Christ during his life,
and thus if miracles had not sufficed without doctrine, men would
not have been blameworthy who did not believe in him before his
death. Now those who did not believe in him during his life were
sinners, as he says himself, and without excuse. Therefore they must
have resisted a conclusive proof. Now they had not our proof, but
only miracles, therefore miracles are enough when doctrine is not
contrary, and they ought to be believed.

John vii. 40. _Controversy among the Jews as among Christians of our
day._ The one party believed in Jesus Christ, the other believed not,
because of the prophecies which said he should be born in Bethlehem.
They should have enquired more diligently whether he was not. For
his miracles being convincing, they ought to have been quite certain
of these alleged contradictions of his doctrine to the Scripture,
and this obscurity did not excuse, but blinded them. Thus those who
refuse to believe miracles in our day on account of an alleged but
unreal contradiction, are not excused.

When the people believed on him because of his miracles, the
pharisees said: "This people, which doeth not the law, is accursed,
but there is none of the princes or the pharisees who has believed on
him, for we know that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet." Nicodemus
answered, "Doth our law judge any man before it heareth him?"


Judges xiii. 23. "If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not
have shewed us all these things."

Hezekiah, Sennacherib.

Jeremiah, Hananiah, the false prophet, died in seven months.

2 Macc. iii. The temple, ready for pillage, miraculously
succoured.--2 Macc. xv.

1 Kings xvii. The widow to Elijah, who had restored her son. "By this
I know that thy words are true."

1 Kings xviii. Elijah, with the prophets of Baal.

Never in a contention concerning the true God or of the truth of
Religion has any miracle happened on the side of error and not of
truth.


_Miracle._--The people believe this of themselves, but if the reason
must be given you....

It is troublesome to be an exception to the rule. We ought strictly
to hold the rule and oppose the exception, yet as it is certain there
are exceptions to every rule, we ought with this strictness to be
just.


Is it not enough that miracles are done in one place, and that God's
providence is shown on one people?

Good breeding goes so far as to have no politeness, and true piety to
have politeness for others.

This is not well bred.


The incredulous are the most credulous. They believe the miracles of
Vespasian in order that they may not believe those of Moses.


_On the Miracle._--As God has made no family more happy, he should
also find none more grateful.




_JESUITS AND JANSENISTS._


The Church has always been assailed by contrary errors, but perhaps
never at the same time, as now; and if she suffer more because of the
multiplicity of errors, she receives this advantage from it, that
they destroy each other.

She complains of both, but much the most of the Calvinists, because
of the schism.

It is certain that many of the two opposite parties are deceived;
they must be disabused.

Faith embraces many truths which seem contradictory. _There is a time
to laugh, and a time to weep, etc._ _Responde, ne respondeas, etc._

The source of this is the union of the two natures in Jesus Christ.

And also the two worlds. The creation of a new heaven and a new
earth, a new life, a new death, all things double, and the same names
remaining.

And finally, the two natures which are in the righteous man, for they
are the two worlds, and a member and image of Jesus Christ. And thus
all the names suit them, righteous, sinners; dead though living,
living though dead, elect, reprobate, etc.

There are then a great number of truths in faith and in morals, which
seem contrary to each other, which yet all subsist together in a
wonderful order.

The source of all heresies is the exclusion of some of these truths.

And the source of all the objections made by heretics against us is
the ignorance of some of these truths.

And for the most part it happens that, unable to conceive the
relation of two opposite truths, and believing that admission of one
involves the exclusion of the other, they embrace the one and exclude
the other, thinking that we on the other hand.... Now exclusion is
the cause of their heresy, and ignorance that we hold the other truth
causes their objections.

1st example: Jesus Christ is God and man. The Arians, unable to
reconcile these things which they believe incompatible, say that he
is man, and so far they are Catholics. But they deny that he is God,
and so far they are heretics. They assert that we deny his humanity,
and so far they are ignorant

2nd example, on the subject of the Holy Sacrament. We believe that
the substance of bread being changed, and consubstantially that of
the body of our Lord Jesus Christ is therein really present. That is
one truth. Another is that this sacrament is also a figure of that of
the cross and of glory, and a commemoration of the two. That is the
Catholic faith, which comprehends these two truths which seem opposed.

The heresy of our day, not conceiving that this sacrament contains
at one and the same time both the presence of Jesus Christ and a
figure of his presence, that it is a sacrifice and a commemoration of
a sacrifice, believes that neither of these truths can be admitted
without, by this very reason, the exclusion of the other.

They adhere to this only point, that this sacrament is figurative,
and so far they are not heretics. They think that we exclude this
truth, hence it comes that they found so many objections on those
passages of the Fathers which assert it. Lastly they deny the
presence, and so far they are heretics.

3rd example. Indulgences.

Therefore the shortest way to hinder heresies is to teach all truths,
and the surest means of refuting them is to declare them all. For
what will the heretics say?

If the ancient Church was in error, the Church is fallen; if she is
so now it is not the same thing, for she has always the superior
maxim of tradition from the hand of the ancient Church; and thus this
submission and conformity to the ancient Church prevails and corrects
all. But the ancient Church did not postulate the future Church, and
did not regard her, as we postulate and regard the ancient.


All err the more dangerously because they follow each a truth, their
fault is not that they follow an error, but that they do not follow
another truth.


That which hinders us in comparing what formerly took place in the
Church with what we now see, is that we are wont to regard Saint
Athanasius or Saint Theresa and others as crowned with glory, and
acting in regard to us as gods. Now that time has cleared our vision
we see that they are so. But when this great saint was persecuted he
was a man called Athanasius, and Saint Theresa was a nun. "Elias was
a man like ourselves and subject to the same passions as ourselves,"
says Saint Peter, to disabuse Christians of that false notion that
we must reject the examples of the saints as disproportioned to our
state. They were saints, say we, they are not like us. What was the
case then? Saint Athanasius was a man called Athanasius, accused of
many crimes, condemned by such and such a council for such and such
a crime. All the bishops assented to it, and at last the pope. What
did they say to those who resisted his condemnation? That they were
disturbing the peace, that they were creating a schism, etc.

Four lands of persons: zeal without knowledge, knowledge without
zeal, neither knowledge nor zeal, zeal and knowledge. The first three
condemned him, the last absolved him, were excommunicated by the
Church and yet saved the Church.


The three notes of Religion: perpetuity, a good life, miracles.

They destroy perpetuity by probability, good life by their morality,
miracles in destroying either their truth or their consequence.

If we believe them, the Church has nothing to do with perpetuity, a
holy life, or miracles.

Heretics deny them or deny the consequences; they do the same. But
those must be devoid of sincerity who deny them or again have lost
their senses if they deny the consequences.


_Perpetuity._--Is your character founded on Escobar?

Perhaps you have reasons for not condemning them; it is enough that
you approve of those I address to you on the subject.

Would the pope be dishonoured by gaining his light from God and
tradition; and does it not dishonour him to separate him from this
sacred union and....

Tertullian: _Nunquam Ecclesia reformabitur._

Perpetuity.

Molina.

Novelty.

Heretics have always assailed these three notes which they have not.


Those wretches, who have obliged me to speak on the foundations of
Religion.

Sinners purified without penitence, just men sanctified without
charity, all Christians without the grace of Jesus Christ, God
without power over the will of men, a predestination without mystery,
a redemption without certainty.


Sinners without penitence, just men without charity, a God without
power over the wills of men, a predestination without mystery.


Those who love the Church complain that they see morals corrupted,
but laws at least exist. But these corrupt the laws. The model is
spoiled.


There is a contradiction; for on the one side they say tradition must
be followed, and would not dare disavow it, and on the other they
will say whatever pleases them. The former will always be believed
in, and indeed it would be going against them not to believe it.


_Politics._--We have found two obstacles to the design of comforting
men. The one the interior laws of the Gospel, the other the exterior
laws of the State and of Religion.

We are masters of the one set of laws, the others we have dealt with
in this wise: _Amplienda, restringenda, a majori ad minus._

_Junior._


_Generals._--It is not enough for them to introduce such morals into
our churches, _templis inducere mores_. Not only do they wish to be
tolerated in the Church, but as though they had become the stronger,
they would expel those who are not of them....

Mohatra. He who is astonished at this is no theologian.

Who would have told your generals that the time was so near when they
would give laws to the Church universal, and would call the refusal
of such disorders war, _tot et tanta mala pacem_.


They cannot have perpetuity, and they seek universality; therefore
they make the whole Church corrupt, that they may be saints.


You abuse the credence which the people has in the Church, and make
them believe untruth.


I suppose that men believe the miracles:

You corrupt Religion either in favour of your friends, or against
your enemies. You dispose of all at your will.


So that if it be true on the one hand that some lax religious, and
some corrupt casuists, who are not members of the hierarchy, are
steeped in these corruptions, it is on the other hand certain that
the true pastors of the Church, who are the true depositories of the
divine word, have preserved it unchangeably against the efforts of
those who have striven to ruin it.

And thus the faithful have no pretext to follow that laxity which is
only offered them by the stranger hands of these casuists, instead of
the sound doctrine which is presented to them by the fatherly hands
of their own pastors. And the wicked and heretics have no reason to
put forward these abuses as marks of the defective providence of
God over his Church, since the Church having her true existence in
the body of the hierarchy, it is so far from the present condition
of things being a proof that God has abandoned her to corruption,
that it has never so plainly appeared as at the present day that God
visibly defends her from corruption.

For if some of these men, who by an extraordinary vocation have
made profession of retirement from the world, and have adopted
the religious dress, that they might live in a more perfect state
than ordinary Christians, have fallen into disorders which horrify
ordinary Christians, and have become among us what the false prophets
were among the Jews; this is a private and personal matter, which we
must indeed deplore, but from which we can conclude nothing against
the care which God takes for his Church; since all these things
are so clearly foretold, and it has been long since announced that
temptations would arise on account of such persons, so that when we
are well instructed we see therein rather the notes of the guidance
of God than his forgetfulness in regard to us.


You are ignorant of the prophecies if you do not know that all this
must needs happen, princes, prophets, pope, and even the priests.
And yet the Church must abide. By the grace of God we are not so far
gone. Woe to these priests. But we hope that God will of his mercy
grant us that we be not among them.

2 Saint Peter ii. False prophets in the past the image of the future.


Is _Est and non est_ received in faith as well as in miracles, and is
it inseparable in the others?...

When Saint Xavier works miracles....

Saint Hilary.--These wretches who have obliged us to speak of
miracles.

_Vae qui conditis leges iniquas._

Unjust judges, make not your laws on the moment, judge by those which
are established, and by yourselves.

To weaken your adversaries you disarm the whole Church.

If they say that our safety depends on God, they are heretics.

If they say they are under obedience to the pope, that is hypocrisy.

If they are ready to assent to all the articles, that is not enough.

If they say that no man should be killed for an apple, they assail
the morality of Catholics.

If miracles are wrought among them, it is no mark of holiness, but
rather a suspicion of heresy.


The hardness of the Jesuits therefore surpasses that of the Jews,
since those refused to believe Jesus Christ innocent only because
they doubted if his miracles were of God. But on the contrary, though
the Jesuits cannot doubt that the Port Royal miracles were of God,
they still continue to doubt the innocency of that house.


Men never commit evil so fully and so gaily as when they do so for
conscience sake.


Experience shows us a vast difference between devoutness and goodness.


The two contrary reasons. We must begin with that; without that we
understand nothing and all is heretical; in the same way we must
even add at the close of each truth that the opposite truth is to be
remembered.


If there was ever a time in which it were necessary to make
profession of two contraries, it is when we are reproached for
omitting one. Therefore the Jesuits and the Jansenists are wrong in
concealing them, but the Jansenists most, for the Jesuits have better
made profession of the two.

M. de Condran. There is, he says, no comparison between the union
of the saints and that of the Holy Trinity. Jesus Christ says the
opposite.


That we have treated them as kindly as is possible while keeping
ourselves in the mean, between the love of truth and the duty of
charity.

That piety does not consist in never opposing our brethren, it would
be very easy, etc.

It is false piety to keep peace to the prejudice of the truth. It is
also false zeal to keep truth and wound charity.

Neither have they complained.

Their maxims have their time and place.

He will be condemned indeed who is so by Escobar.

Their vanity tends to grow out of their errors.

Conformed to the fathers by their faults, and to the martyrs by their
sufferings.

Moreover they do not disavow any of....

They had only to take the passage, and disavow it.

_Sanctificavi praelium._

M. Bourseys. At least they cannot disavow that they are opposed to
the condemnation.


I have re-read them since, for I had not known them....


The world must be blind indeed if it believe you.


If men knew themselves, God would heal and pardon. _Ne convertantur,
et sanem eos, et dimittantur eis peccata._ Isaiah. Matt. xiii.


Truth is so obscure in these days, and falsehood so established, that
unless we love the truth we shall be unable to know it.


As Jesus Christ remained unknown among men, so his truth remains
among ordinary opinions without external difference. Thus the
Eucharist among ordinary bread. All faith consists in Jesus Christ
and in Adam, and all morals in lust and in grace.


"I have reserved me seven thousand." I love the worshippers unknown
to the world and even to the prophets.


To trust in forms is superstition, but to refuse to submit to forms
is pride.


As peace in States has for its sole object the safe preservation
of the property of the people, so the peace of the Church has for
its sole object the safe preservation of truth, her property and
the treasure where her heart is. And as to allow the enemy to enter
into a State, and pillage without opposition, for fear of troubling
repose, would be to work against the good of peace, because peace,
being only just and useful for the security of property, it becomes
unjust and harmful when it suffers property to be destroyed, while
war in the defence of property becomes just and necessary. So in the
Church, when truth is assailed by the enemies of faith, when men
would tear it from the heart of the faithful, and cause error to
reign there, to remain in peace is rather to betray than to serve
the Church, to ruin rather than defend. And as it is plainly a crime
to trouble peace where truth reigns, so is it also a crime to rest
in peace when truth is destroyed. There is then a time when peace is
just, and another when it is unjust. And it is written that there
is a time for peace and a time for war, and it is the interest of
truth to discern them. But there is not a time for truth and a time
for error, and it is written, on the contrary, that the truth of God
abideth for ever; and this is why Jesus Christ, who said that he came
to bring peace, said also that he came to bring war. But he did not
say that he came to bring both truth and falsehood. Truth is then the
first rule and the ultimate end of things.


As the two principal interests of the Church are the preservation
of the piety of the faithful and the conversion of heretics, we are
overwhelmed with grief at the sight of factions now arising, to
introduce those errors which more than any others may close for ever
against heretics the entrance into our communion, and fatally corrupt
those pious and catholic persons who remain to us. This enterprise,
made at the present day so openly against those truths of Religion
most important for salvation, fills us not only with displeasure, but
also with fear and even terror, because, besides the feeling which
every Christian must have of these disorders, we have further an
obligation to remedy them, and to employ the authority which God has
given, to cause that the peoples which he has committed to us, etc.


We must let heretics know, who gain advantage from the doctrine of
the Jesuits, that it is not that of the Church ... the doctrine of
the Church, and that our divisions separate us not from the altar.

They hide themselves in the crowd, and call numbers to their aid.

Tumult.


In corrupting the bishops and the Sorbonne, if they have not had the
advantage of making their judgment just, they have had that of making
their judges unjust. And thus, when in future they are condemned,
they will say _ad hominem_ that they are unjust, and thus will refute
their judgment. But that does no good. For as they cannot conclude
that the Jansenists are rightly condemned because they are condemned,
so they cannot conclude then that they themselves will be wrongly
condemned because they will be so by corruptible judges. For their
condemnation will be just, not because it will be given by judges
always just, but by judges just in that particular, which will be
shown by other proofs.


These are the effects of the sins of the peoples and of the Jesuits,
great men have wished to be flattered, the Jesuits have wished to be
loved by the great. They have all been worthy to be given up to the
spirit of lying, the one party to deceive, the others to be deceived.
They have been greedy, ambitious, pleasure loving: _Coacervabunt tibi
magistros_.


_The Jesuits._

The Jesuits have wished to unite God and the world, and have gained
only the scorn of God and the world. For, on the side of conscience
this is plain, and on the side of the world they are not good
partisans. They have power, as I have often said, but that is in
regard to other religious. They will have interest enough to get a
chapel built, and to have a jubilee station, not to make appointments
to bishoprics and government offices. The position of a monk in
the world is a most foolish one, and that they hold by their own
declaration.--Father Brisacier, the Benedictines.--Yet ... you yield
to those more powerful than yourselves, and oppress with all your
little credit those who have less power for intrigue in the world
than you.


_Venice._--What advantage will you draw from it, except the princes'
need of it, and the horror the nations have had of it. If these had
asked you and, in order to obtain it, had implored the assistance of
all Christian princes, you might have boasted of this importunity.
But not that during fifty years all the princes have exerted
themselves for it in vain, and that it required such a pressing need
to obtain it


If by differing we condemned, you would be right. Uniformity without
diversity is useless to others, diversity without uniformity is
ruinous for us. The one injures us without; the other within.


We ought to hear both parties, and on this point I have been careful.

When we have heard only one party we are always on that side, but
the adverse party makes us change, whereas in this case the Jesuit
confirms us.

Not what they do, but what they say.

They cry out against me only. I am content I know whom to blame for
it.

Jesus Christ was a stone of stumbling.

Condemnable, condemned.


Jesus Christ never condemned without a bearing. To Judas: _Amice, ad
quid venisti_? To him who had not on the wedding garment, the same.


Unless they give up probability their good maxims are as little holy
as the bad. For they are founded on human authority, and thus if they
are more just they will be more reasonable, but not more holy, they
take after the wild stock on which they are graffed.

If what I say serves not to enlighten you, it will aid the
people.--If these hold their peace, the stones will cry out.

Silence is the greatest persecution; the saints never held their
peace. It is true that a vocation is needed, it is not from the
decrees of the Council that we must learn whether we are called, but
from the compulsion to speak. Now after Rome has spoken, and we
think that she has condemned the truth, and they have written it,
and the books which have said the contrary are censured; we must cry
so much the louder the more unjustly we are censured, and the more
violently they try to stifle speech, until there come a pope who
listens to both sides, and who consults antiquity to do justice.

So good popes will find the Church still in an uproar.

The Inquisition and the Society are the two scourges of the truth.

Why do you not accuse them of Arianism? For if they have said that
Jesus Christ is God, perhaps it is not with a natural meaning, but as
it is said: _Dii estis_.

If my Letters are condemned at Rome, what I condemn in them is
condemned in heaven.

_Ad tuum, Domine Jesu, tribunal appello._

You are yourselves corruptible.

I feared that I had written ill when I saw myself condemned, but the
example of so many pious writings makes me believe the contrary.
Good writing is no longer permitted, so corrupt or ignorant is the
Inquisition.

It is better to obey God than men.

I have neither fear nor hope. Not so the bishops. Port Royal fears,
and it is a bad policy to dissolve the community, for they will fear
no longer and will inspire greater fear.

I fear not even your censures, ... if they be not founded on those of
tradition.

Do you censure all? What, even my respect?--No.--Say then, what it
is, or you will do nothing, since you do not point out the evil, and
why it is evil. And this is what they will have some trouble to do.


Unjust persecutors of those whom God visibly protects.

If they reproach you with your excesses they speak as do the heretics.

If they say that the grace of Jesus Christ separates us, they are
heretics.

If miracles are wrought, it is the mark of their heresy.

Ezekiel,

They say, these are the people of God who thus speak.

Hezekiah,

My reverend father, all this was done in figures. Other religions
perish, this one perishes not.

Miracles are more important than you think, they have served for the
foundation, and will serve for the continuance of the Church till the
coming of Antichrist, till the end.

The two witnesses.

In the Old Testament and the New, miracles are wrought in connection
with types. Salvation or an useless thing, if not to show that we
must submit to the creature.--Figure of the sacraments.

The synagogue was a figure and so it perished not, and it was only
the figure and so it has perished. It was a figure which contained
the truth, and so it subsisted till it contained the truth no longer.


The exaggerated notion which you have of the importance of your
society has made you establish these horrible ways. It is very plain
that it has made you follow the way of slander, since you blame in
me as horrible the same impostures which you excuse in yourselves,
because you regard me as a private person, and yourselves as _imago_.

It plainly appears that your praises are follies, by those which are
crazy, as the privilege of the uncondemned.

Is this giving courage to your children to condemn them when they
serve the Church?

It is an artifice of the devil to turn in another direction the arms
with which these people used to combat heresies.

You are bad politicians.

The history of the man born blind.

What says Saint Paul? Does he constantly speak of the bearing of
prophecies? No, but of his miracles.

What says Jesus Christ? Does he expound the bearing of the
prophecies? No, his death had not fulfilled them; but he says, si non
fecissem: believe the works.

_Si non fecissem quae alius non fecit._

These wretches who have obliged us to speak of miracles!

Abraham and Gideon confirmed faith by miracles.

There are two supernatural foundations of our wholly supernatural
Religion, the one visible, the other invisible.

Miracles with grace, miracles without grace.

The synagogue, which has been treated with love as a figure of the
Church, and with hatred because it was only the figure, has been
restored, being about to fall when it was well with God, and thus a
figure.

The miracles prove the power which God has over hearts by that which
he exercises over the body.

The Church has never approved a miracle among heretics.

Miracles are a support of religion. They have been the test of Jews,
of Christians, of saints, of innocents, and of true believers.


A miracle among schismatics is not much to be feared, for schism
which is more evident than miracle, evidently marks their error; but
when there is no schism, and error is in question, miracle is the
test.

Judith. God speaks at length in their extreme oppression.

If because charity has grown cold the Church is left almost without
true worshippers, miracles will raise them up.

This is one of the last effects of grace.

If only a miracle were wrought among the Jesuits!

When a miracle deceives the expectation of those in whose presence
it occurs, and when there is a disproportion between the state of
their faith and the instrument of the miracle it must lead them to
change; but with you it is the opposite. There would be as much
reason in saying that if the Eucharist raised a dead man one ought
to turn Calvinist rather than remain a Catholic. But when he crowns
the expectation, and those who have hoped that God would bless the
remedies see themselves cured without remedies....

_The wicked._--No sign was ever given on the part of the devil
without a stronger sign on the part of God, at least unless it were
foretold that this would be so.


These nuns, amazed at what is said, that they are in the way of
perdition, that their confessors are leading them to Geneva, and
teach them Jesus Christ is not in the Eucharist, nor on the right
hand of the Father, know all this to be false, and offer then
themselves to God in that state. _Vide si via iniquitatis in me est._
What happens thereupon? The place, which is said to be the temple of
the devil, God makes his own temple. It is said that the children
must be taken away, God heals them there. It is said to be hell's
arsenal, God makes of it the sanctuary of his graces. Lastly, they
are threatened with all the furies and all the vengeance of heaven,
and God loads them with favours. Those must have lost their senses,
who therefore believe them in the way of perdition.--_We have,
without doubt, the same tokens as Saint Athanasius._--

The five propositions were equivocal; they are so no longer.


With so many other signs of piety they have that of persecution also,
which is the best mark of piety.


By showing the truth we gain belief for it, but by showing the
injustice of ministers, we do not correct it. Conscience is made
secure by a demonstration of falsehood; our purse is not made secure
by the demonstration of injustice.

Miracles and truth are both needful, as we have to convince the whole
man, body and soul alike.


It is good that their deeds should be unjust, for fear it should not
appear that the Molinists have acted justly. Thus there is no need to
spare them, they are worthy to commit them.


_The Church, the Pope._--Unity, plurality. Considering the Church as
unity, the pope its head, is as the whole; considered as plurality,
the pope is only a part of it. The Fathers have considered the Church
now in this way, now in that, and thus they have spoken in divers
ways of the pope.

Saint Cyprian, _sacerdos Dei_.

But in establishing one of these two truths, they have not excluded
the other.

Plurality which cannot be reduced to unity is confusion. Unity which
depends not on plurality is tyranny.

There is scarce any where left but France in which it is allowable to
say that a council is below the pope.

We may not judge of what the pope is by some words of the Fathers--as
the Greeks said in a council, important rules--but by the acts of the
Church and the Fathers, and by the canons.

Unity and plurality: _Duo aut tres in unum_. It is an error to
exclude one of the two, as the papists do who exclude plurality, or
the Huguenots who exclude unity.


The pope is chief, who else is known of all, who else is recognised
by all? Having power to insinuate himself into all the body, because
he holds the leading shoot, which extends itself everywhere.

How easy to cause this to degenerate into tyranny. This is why Jesus
Christ has laid down for them this precept: _Vos autem non sic_.


God works not miracles in the ordinary conduct of his Church. It
would be a strange miracle, did infallibility reside in one, but that
it should dwell in a multitude appears so natural that the ways of
God are concealed under nature, as all his other works.


Men desire certainty, they like the pope to be infallible in faith,
grave doctors to be infallible in morals, in order to have certainty.


The pope hates and fears men of science, who are not at once
submissive to him.


Kings are masters of their own power, not so the popes.


Whenever the Jesuits take the pope unawares, they will make all
Christendom perjured.

It is very easy to take the pope unawares, because of his
occupations, and the trust which he has in the Jesuits, and the
Jesuits are very capable of taking him unawares by means of calumny.


The five propositions condemned, yet no miracle, for truth was not
attacked, but the Sorbonne and the bull.

It is impossible that those who love God with all their heart, should
misunderstand the Church, which is so evident.

It is impossible that those who love not God should be convinced of
the Church.


Let us look to the discourses on the 2nd, 4th, and 5th of the
Jansenist. They are lofty and grave.

We would not make a friend of either.

The ear only is consulted because the heart is wanting.

Beauty of omission, of judgment.

The rule is that of honourable conduct.

Poet and not honourable man.


These men want heart.

We would not make a friend of him.

For this name of honourable man.


_Canonical._--The heretical books in the early age of the Church
serve to prove the canonical.


_Heretics._--Ezekiel. All the heathens spake evil of Israel, and the
Prophet did the same, yet the Israelites were so far from having a
right to say to him, "You speak as the heathen," that he made it his
strongest point that the heathens said the same as he.


Those are feeble souls who know the truth, and uphold it only so far
as their interest is concerned, but beyond that abandon it.


Annat. He makes the disciple without ignorance, and the master
without presumption.


There is such great disproportion between the merit which he thinks
he has and his stupidity, that it is hard to believe he mistakes
himself so completely.


And will this one scorn the other?

Who should scorn? Yet he scorns not the other, but pities him.


Port Royal is surely as good as Voltigerod.

So far as your proceeding is just according to this bias, so far is
it unjust on the side of Christian piety.


_Montalte._--Lax opinions are so pleasing to men, that it is strange
that theirs displease. It is because they have exceeded all bounds;
and more, there are many persons who see the truth, yet cannot attain
to it; but there are few who do not know that the purity of religion
is contrary to our corruptions. It is absurd to say that eternal
reward is offered to the morals of Escobar.


But is it _probable_ that _probability_ gives certainty?--Difference
between rest and security of conscience. Nothing but truth gives
certainty. Nothing gives rest but a sincere search after truth.


_Probability._ They have oddly explained certainty, for after having
established that all their ways are sure, they no longer call that
sure which leads to heaven without danger of not arriving thereby,
but that which leads there without danger of going out of the road.


Now probability is necessary for the other maxims, as for that of the
friend and the slanderer.

_A fructibus eorum_, judge of their faith by their morals.

Probability is little without corrupt means, and means are nothing
without probability.

There is pleasure in being able to do good, and in knowing how to do
good, _scire et posse_. Grace and probability give this pleasure, for
we can render our account to God in reliance upon their authors.


_Probability._

Everyone can impose it, none can take it away.


_Probable._--If as bad reasons as these are probable, all would be so.

1. Reason. _Dominus actuum conjugalium._ Molina.

2. Reason. _Non potest compensari._ Lessius.

To oppose not with holy, but with abominable maxims.

They reason as those who prove that it is night at midday.

Bauny, the burner of barns.

... The Council of Trent for priests in mortal sin: _quam primum_....


_Probable._--Let us see if we seek God sincerely, by the comparison
of things we love.

It is probable that this meat will not poison me.

It is probable that I shall not lose my law suit if I do not bring it.

If it were true that grave authors and reasons would suffice, I say
that they are neither grave nor reasonable. What! a husband may
make profit of his wife according to Molina. Is the reason he gives
reasonable, and the contrary one of Lessius reasonable also?

Would you dare thus to trifle with the edicts of the King, as by
saying that to go for a walk in a field and wait for a man is not to
fight a duel;

That the Church has indeed forbidden duelling, but not taking a walk?

And usury too, but not....

And simony, but not....

And vengeance, but not....

And unnatural crime, but not....

And _quam primum_, but not....


Take away _probability_, and you can no longer please the world, give
_probability_, and you can no longer displease it.


_Universal._--Morals and language are special but universal sciences.

_Probability._--The zeal of the saints to seek the truth, was useless
if the probable is certain.

The fear of the saints who have always followed the surest way.

Saint Theresa having always followed her confessor.


_Probability._--They have some true principles, but they abuse them.
Now the abuse of truth should be as much punished as the introduction
of falsehood.

As if there were two hells, one for sins against charity, the other
for sins against justice.


Men who do not keep their word, without faith, without honour,
without truth, double hearted, double tongued, like the reproach once
flung at that amphibious creature in the fable, who kept itself in a
doubtful position between the fish and the birds.

It is of importance to kings and princes to be supposed pious, and
therefore they must take you for their confessors.


_State super vias et interrogate de semitis antiquis, et ambulate
in eis. Et dixerunt: Non ambulabimus, sed post cogitationem nostram
ibimus._ They have said to the nations: Come to us, we will follow
the opinions of the new authors, reason shall be our guide, we
will be as the other nations who follow each their natural light.
Philosophers have....

All religions and sects in the world have had natural reason for a
guide. Christians alone have been obliged to take their rules from
without themselves, and to acquaint themselves with those which Jesus
Christ left to men of old time to be transmitted to the faithful.
This constraint is wearisome to these good fathers. They desire like
the rest of the world to have liberty to follow their imaginations.
In vain we cry to them, as the prophets to the Jews of old: "Enter
into the Church, enquire of the ways which men of old have left to
her, and follow those paths." They have answered, as did the Jews,
"We will not walk in them, but we will follow the thoughts of our
hearts;" and they have said, "We will be as the nations round about
us."


Can it be any thing but the desire to please the world which makes
you find things probable? Will you make us believe that it is truth,
and that if duelling were not the fashion, you would find it probable
they might fight, looking at the matter in itself?


The whole society of their casuists cannot give assurance to a
conscience in error, and therefore it is important to choose safe
guides.

Thus they will be doubly guilty, both in having followed ways which
they should not follow, and in having hearkened to teachers to whom
they should not hearken.


Casuists submit the decision to corrupt reason, and the choice of
decisions to corrupt will, so that all that is corrupt in the nature
of man may help to rule his conduct.


They allow lust free play, and restrict scruples, whereas they should
do the exact contrary.


Must we slay in order that the wicked may cease to be? This is
to make two wicked instead of one. _Vince in bono malum._ Saint
Augustine.


The servant does not know what the master does, for the master tells
him only the act and not the purpose; this is why he is so often
slavishly obedient and often sins against the purpose. But Jesus
Christ tells us the purpose.

And you destroy this purpose.


Art thou less a slave because thy master loves and caresses thee?
Thou art indeed well off, slave. Thy master caresses thee, he will
presently beat thee.


Those who wrote thus in Latin speak in French.

The evil having been done of patting these things in French, we ought
to do the good of condemning them.

There is one only heresy, which is differently explained in the
schools and in the world.


_On confessions and absolutions without signs of regret._ God looks
at the heart alone, the Church looks at outward actions; God absolves
as soon as he sees penitence in the heart, the Church when she
sees it in works. God will make a Church pure within, which puts
to confusion by its interior and perfect spiritual holiness the
interior impiety of proud philosophers and Pharisees, and the Church
will make an assembly of men whose external morals are so pure that
they put to confusion heathen morals. If some are hypocrites, but so
well disguised that she does not recognise their venom, she bears
with them, for though they are not accepted of God, whom they cannot
deceive, they are of men, whom they deceive. And thus she is not
dishonoured by their conduct which appears holy. But you will have it
that the Church should judge neither of the heart, for that belongs
to God alone, nor of works, because God looks at the heart alone; and
so taking away from her all choice of men, you retain in the Church
the most debauched and those who so greatly dishonour her, that the
synagogues of the Jews and the sects of the philosophers would have
cast them out as unworthy, and have abhorred them as impious.


God has not willed to absolve without the Church. As she has part
in the offence he wills that she should have part in the pardon. He
associates her with this power as kings their parliaments; but if she
binds or looses without God, she is no more the Church, as in the
case of parliament. For even if the king have pardoned a man, it is
necessary that it should be ratified; but if the parliament ratifies
without the king, or refuses to ratify on the order of the king, it
is no more the parliament of the king, but a revolutionary body.


The Church teaches and God inspires, both infallibly. The operation
of the Church serves only to prepare for grace or for condemnation.
What it does suffices for condemnation, not for inspiration.

The Church has in vain established these words, anathema, heresies.
They are used against herself.


It is not absolution only which remits sins by the Sacrament of
Penance, but contrition, which is not a true contrition if it does
not frequent the sacrament.

Thus, again, it is not the nuptial benediction which hinders sin in
generation, but the desire of begetting children for God, which is no
true desire except in marriage.

And as a contrite man without the sacrament is more disposed for
absolution than an impenitent man with the sacrament, so the
daughters of Lot, for instance, who had only the desire for children,
were more pure without marriage than married persons without desire
for children.


_Casuists._--Much almsgiving, reasonable penance; even when we cannot
assign what is just, we see plainly what is not. It is strange that
casuists believe they can interpret this as they do.

People who accustom themselves to speak ill and to think ill.

Their great number, far from marking their perfection, marks the
contrary.

The humility of one makes the pride of many.


They make a rule of the exception. If the ancient fathers gave
absolution before penance; do this only as an exception. But of the
exception you make a rule without exception, so that you will not
even have it that the rule is exceptional.


Priest still who will, as under Jeroboam.

It is a horrible thing that they submit to us the discipline of the
Church in our days as so excellent that it is made a crime to wish to
change it Formerly it was infallibly good, and it was found it might
be changed without sin, and now, such as it is, we ought not to wish
it changed!

It has indeed been allowed to change the custom of not making priests
save with such great circumspection, that there were scarcely any
who were worthy, yet we are not allowed to complain of the custom
which makes so many who are unworthy.


Two sorts of people place things on the same level, as feasts and
working days, Christians and priests, all sins among themselves, etc.
Therefore the one set conclude that what is bad for priests is so
for Christians, and the other that what is not bad for Christians is
permissible for priests.


The Jansenists are like the heretics in the reformation of their
morals, but you are like them in evil.


Superstition to believe propositions, etc.

Faith, etc.


If Saint Augustine came at this day, and was as little authorised as
his defenders, he would do nothing. God governs his Church well, in
that he sent him before with authority.


Grace is needed to make a man into a saint, and if any man doubt this
he knows not what is a saint, nor what is a man.


The motions of grace, hardness of heart, external circumstances.


Grace will ever be in the world, and nature also, so that grace is
in some sort natural. Thus there will be always Pelagians, always
Catholics, always strife.

Because the first birth constitutes the one, and the grace of
regeneration the other.


It will be one of the confusions of the damned to see themselves
condemned by their own reason, by which they have thought to condemn
the Christian religion.


When it is said that Jesus Christ died not for all, you take
advantage of a defect inherent in men who immediately apply this
exception to themselves, which is to favour despair instead of
turning men from it to favour hope. For so we accustom ourselves to
interior virtues by exterior customs.


There is heresy in always explaining omnes by 'all,' and heresy in
not explaining it sometimes by 'all.' _Bibite ex hoc omnes_, the
Huguenots are heretics in explaining it by 'all.' _In quo omnes
peccaverunt_, the Huguenots are heretics in excepting the children of
the faithful. We must then follow the Fathers and tradition to know
when to do so, since there is heresy to be feared on one side or the
other.


_A point of form._--When Saint Peter and the apostles consulted about
the abolition of circumcision, when it was a question of acting in
contradiction to the law of God, they did not consult the prophets,
but considered simply the reception of the Holy Spirit in the persons
uncircumcised. They judged it more certain that God approved those
whom he filled with his spirit, than it was that the law must be
observed.

They knew that the end of the Law was none other than the Holy
Spirit, and thus as men certainly had this without circumcision,
circumcision was not needful.


But to preserve pre-eminence to himself he gives prayer to whom he
pleases.

Why God has established prayer.

1. To communicate to his creatures the dignity of causality.

2. To teach us from whom our virtue comes.

3. To make us deserve other virtues by work.

_Objection._ But we believe that prayer comes from ourselves.

This is absurd, for since before we have faith, we cannot have
virtues, how should we have faith? Is there a greater distance
between infidelity and faith than between faith and virtue?

_Merit._ This word is ambiguous.

_Meruit habere Redemptorem._

_Meruit tam sacra membra tangere._

_Digna tam sacra membra tangere._

_Non sum dignus, qui manducat indignus._

_Dignus est accipere._

_Dignare me._

God is only bound according to his promises.

He has promised to do justice to prayer, he has never promised prayer
only to the children of promise.


_Si_ does not mark indifference. Malachi, Isaiah.

Isaiah. _Si volumus_, etc.

_In quacumque die._


_Ne timeas, pusillus grex. Timore et tretmore.--Quid ergo? Ne timeas,
modo timeas._

Fear not, provided you fear, but if you fear not, then fear.

_Qui me recipit, non me recipit, sed eum qui me misit._

_Nemo scit neque Filius._

_Nubes lucida obumbravit._

Saint John was to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and
Jesus Christ was to sow division. In this there is no contradiction.


The effects _in communi_ and _in particulari_. The semi-Pelagians err
in saying of _in communi_ what is true only _in particulari_, and the
Calvinists in saying _in particulari_ what is true _in communi_. So
it seems to me.


Saint Augustine has said expressly that power would be taken away
from the righteous. But it is by chance that he said it, for it
might have been that the chance of saying it did not occur. But
his principles make us see that when the occasion for it presented
itself, it was impossible he should not say so, or that he should say
anything to the contrary. It is then rather that he was forced to
say it, when the occasion offered itself, than that he said it, the
occasion having offered itself, the one being of necessity, the other
of chance. But the two are all that we could ask.


_The end_. Are we certain? Is this principle certain? Let us examine.


The testimony of a man's self is naught Saint Thomas.


The image alone of all these mysteries has been openly showed to the
Jews and by Saint John the forerunner, and then the other mysteries,
to mark that in each man as in the world at large this order must be
observed.


It is, in technical language, _wholly_ the body of Jesus Christ, but
it cannot be said to be the _whole_ body of Jesus Christ.

The union of two things without change cannot enable us to say that
one becomes the other.

Thus the soul is united to the body, the fire to the fuel, without
change.

But change is necessary to make the form of the one become the form
of the other.

Thus the union of the Word to man.

Because my body without my soul would not make the body of a man,
then my soul united to any matter whatsoever would make my body.

It distinguishes for me the necessary condition with a sufficient
condition, the union is necessary, but not sufficient.

The left arm is not the right.

Impenetrability is a property of matter.

Identity of number in regard to the same time requires the identity
of matter.

Thus if God united my soul to a body in China, the same body, _idem
numero_ would be in China.

The same river which runs there is _idem numero_ as that which runs
at the same time in China.




_THOUGHTS ON STYLE._


Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a manner, 1, that those
to whom we speak can hear them without pain, and with pleasure; 2,
that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them
more willingly to reflect upon what is said. It consists therefore
in a correspondence which we endeavour to establish between the mind
and the heart of those to whom we speak on the one hand, and, on the
other, the thoughts and the expressions employed; this supposes that
we have thoroughly studied the heart of man so as to know all its
springs, and to find at last the true proportions of the discourse we
wish to suit to it. We should put ourselves in the place of those who
are to listen to us, and make experiment on our own heart of the turn
we give to our discourse, to see whether one is made for the other,
and whether we can be sure that our auditor will be as it were forced
to yield. So far as possible we must confine ourselves to what is
natural and simple, not aggrandise that which is little, or belittle
that which is great. It is not enough that a phrase be beautiful, it
must be fitted to the subject, and not have in it excess or defect.


Eloquence is painted thought, and thus those who, after having
painted it, add somewhat more, make a picture, not a portrait.


_Eloquence._--We need both what is pleasing and what is real, but
that which pleases must itself be drawn from the true.


Eloquence, which persuades by gentleness, not by empire, as a tyrant,
not as a king.


There is a certain pattern of charm and beauty which consists in a
certain relation between our nature, such as it is, whether weak or
strong, and the thing which pleases us.

Whatever is formed on this pattern delights us, whether house, song,
discourse, verse, prose, woman, birds, rivers, trees, rooms, dresses,
etc.

Whatever is not made on this pattern displeases those who have good
taste.

And as there is a perfect relation between a song and a house which
are made on a good pattern, because they are like this unique
pattern, though each after its kind, there is also a perfect relation
between things made on a bad pattern. Not that the bad is unique, for
there are many; but every bad sonnet, for instance, on whatever false
pattern it is constructed, is exactly like a woman dressed on that
pattern.

Nothing makes us understand better the absurdity of a false sonnet
than to consider nature and the pattern, and then to imagine a woman
or a house constructed on that pattern.


When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, we feel in
our mind the truth of what we read, which was there before, though we
did not know it, and we are inclined to love him who makes us feel
it. For he has not made a display of his own riches, but of ours, and
thus this benefit renders him pleasant to us, besides that such a
community of intellect necessarily inclines the heart to love.


All the false beauties which we blame in Cicero have their admirers
and in great number.


The last thing we decide on in writing a book is what shall be the
first we put in it.


_Language._--We ought not to turn the mind from one thing to another
save for relaxation, at suitable times, and no other, for he that
diverts out of season wearies, and he who wearies us out of season
repels us, and we simply turn away. So much it pleases our wayward
lust to do the exact contrary of what those seek to obtain from us
who give us no pleasure, the coin for which we will do whatever we
are asked.


When we meet with a natural style, we are charmed and astonished, for
we looked for an author, and we found a man. But those who have good
taste, and who seeing a book expect to find a man, are altogether
surprised to find an author: _plus poetice quam humane locatus es_.
Those pay great honour to nature, who show her that she is able to
discourse on all things, even on theology.


Languages are ciphers, where letters are not changed into letters,
but words into words, so that an unknown language can be deciphered.


When in a discourse we find words repeated, and in trying to
correct them find we cannot change them for others without manifest
disadvantage, we must let them stand, for this is the true test;
our criticism came of envy which is blind, and does not see that
repetition is not in this place a fault, for there is no general rule.


_Miscellaneous. Language._--Those who force words for the sake of
antitheses are like those who make false windows for symmetry.

Their rule is not to speak accurately, but in accurate form.


To put a mask on nature and disguise her. No more King, pope, bishop,
but _sacred majesty_, no more Paris, but _the capital of the Kingdom_.

There are places in which we should call Paris, Paris, and others in
which we ought to call it the capital of the Kingdom.


There are those who speak well and write ill. Because the place and
the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than would
have been produced without that warmth.


_Miscellaneous._--A figure of speech, "I should have wished to apply
myself to that."


The _aperitive_ virtue of a key, the _attractive_ virtue of a crook.


To guess. _The part that I take in your sorrow._ The Cardinal did not
choose to be guessed.

_My mind is disquieted within me._ I am disquieted is better.


_To extinguish the torch of sedition_, too luxuriant.

_The restlessness of his genius._ Two striking words too much.


A coach _upset_ or _overturned_, according to the meaning.

_Spread abroad_, or _upset_, according to the meaning.

The argument by force of M. le M. over the friar.


Symmetry.

Is what we see at one glance.

Founded on the fact that there is no reason for any difference.

And founded also on the face of man.

Whence it comes that symmetry is only wanted in breadth, not in
height or depth.


Sceptic, for obstinate.

Descartes useless and uncertain.

No one calls another a courtier but he who is not one himself, a
pedant save a pedant, a provincial but a provincial, and I would
wager it was the printer who put it on the title of _Letters to a
Provincial_.


The chief talent, that which rules all others.


If the lightning were to strike low-lying places, etc., poets, and
those whose only reasonings are on things of that nature would lack
proofs.


_Poetical beauty._--As we talk of poetical beauty, so ought we to
talk of mathematical beauty and medical beauty; yet we do not use
those terms, because we know perfectly the object of mathematics,
that it consists in proofs, and the object of medicine, that it
consists in healing, but we do not understand wherein consists charm
which is the object of poetry. We do not know what is the natural
model to be imitated, and for want of that knowledge we invent a set
of extravagant terms, "_the golden age_, _the wonder of our times_,
_fatal_," etc., and fall this jargon poetic beauty.

But if we imagine a woman on that pattern, which consists in saying
little things in great words, we shall see a pretty girl bedecked
with mirrors and chains absurd to our taste, because we know better
wherein consists the charm of woman than the charm of verse. But
those who do not know, would admire her in such trimmings, and in
many villages she would be taken for the queen, wherefore sonnets
made on such a pattern have been called _The Village Queens_.


Those who judge of a work without rule are in regard to others as
those who possess a watch are in regard to others. One says, "it was
two hours ago," another, "it is only three-quarters of an hour." I
look at my watch and say to the one, "you are weary of us," and to
the other, "time flies fast with you, for it is only an hour and
a half." And I laugh at those who say that time goes slowly with
me, and that I judge by fancy. They do not know that I judge by my
watch.




_VARIOUS THOUGHTS._


_Mathematics, Tact._--True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true
morality makes light of morality, that is to say, the morality of the
judgment makes light of the morality of the intellect, which has no
rules.

For perception belongs to judgment, as science belongs to the
intellect. Tact is the part of judgment, mathematics of the intellect.

To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

The nourishment of the body is little by little, too much nourishment
gives little substance.


There is an universal and essential difference between the actions of
the will and all others.

The will is one of the principal organs of belief, not that it forms
belief, but because things are true or false according to the side
from which we regard them. The will, pleased with one rather than the
other, turns the mind from the consideration of that which has the
qualities it cares not to see, and thus the intellect, moving with
the will, stays to regard the side it loves, and thus judges by what
it sees.


The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not, as we feel in a
thousand instances. I say that the heart loves the universal Being
naturally, and itself naturally, according as it gives itself to
each, and it hardens itself against one or the other at its own will.
You have rejected one and kept the other, does reason cause your love?

It is the heart which is conscious of God, not the reason. This then
is faith; God sensible to the heart, not to the reason.


Reason acts slowly and with so many views, on so many principles,
which it ought always to keep before it, that it constantly slumbers
and goes astray, from not having its principles at hand. The heart
does not act thus, it acts in a moment, and is always ready to act.
We must then place our faith in the heart, or it will be always
vacillating.


Men often mistake their imagination for their heart, and they believe
they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.


Those who are accustomed to judge by the heart do not understand
the process of reasoning, for they wish to understand at a glance,
and are not accustomed to seek for principles. And others on the
contrary, who are accustomed to reason by principles, do not at all
understand the things of the heart, seeking principles and not being
able to see at a glance.


If we wished to prove those examples by which we prove other things,
we should have to take those other things to be examples. For as we
always believe the difficulty is in the matter we wish to prove, we
find the examples clearer and aids to demonstration.

Thus when we wish to demonstrate a general proposition, we must
give the rule special to a case, but if we wish to demonstrate a
particular case, we must begin with the particular rule. For we
always find the thing obscure which we wish to prove, and that clear
which we employ as proof; for when a matter is proposed for proof
we first fill ourselves with the imagination that it is therefore
obscure, and on the contrary that what is to prove it is clear, and
so we understand with ease.


Far from believing a thing because you have heard it, you ought to
believe nothing without having put yourself in the same position as
if you had never heard it.

What should make you believe is your own assent to yourself, and the
constant voice of your reason, not that of others.

Belief is so important!

A hundred contradictions might be true.

If antiquity were the rule of faith then the men of old time had no
rule. If general consent, if men had perished....

False humility is pride.

Lift the curtain.

You may try as you please. You must either believe, or deny, or doubt.

Have we then no rule?

We judge that animals do well what they do. Is there no rule whereby
to judge men?

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well are to a man what paces are to
a horse.


Memory is necessary for every operation of the reason.


Memory and joy are feelings, and even mathematical propositions
become so, for reason makes what is felt natural, and natural
feelings are effaced by reason.


All our reasoning is reduced to yielding to feeling.

But fancy is like yet contrary to feeling, so that we cannot
distinguish between these contraries. One man says that my feeling is
fancy, another that his fancy is feeling. We must have a rule. Reason
offers herself, but she is pliable in all directions, and so there is
no rule.


Reason commands us much more imperiously than a master, for in
disobeying the one we are unhappy, and in disobeying the other we are
fools.


When we are accustomed to use bad reasons for proving natural
effects, we do not wish to receive good reasons even when they are
discovered. An example may be taken from the circulation of the
blood, to give a reason why the vein swells below the ligature.


We are usually better persuaded by reasons which we have ourselves
discovered, than by those which have come into the mind of others.


M. de Roannez said: "Reasons come afterwards, but at first a thing
pleases or shocks me, without my knowing the reason, and yet it
displeased me for the reason which I only discover later." But I
believe, not that he was displeased for those reasons which he
afterwards discovered, but that those reasons were only discovered
because the thing was displeasing.


_The difference between the mathematical mind and the practical
mind._--In the one the premisses are palpable, but removed from
ordinary use, so that from want of habit it is difficult to look in
that direction, but if we take the trouble to look, the premisses are
fully visible, and we must have a totally incorrect mind if we draw
wrong inferences from premisses so plain that it is scarce possible
they should escape our notice.

But in the practical mind the premisses are taken from use and wont,
and are before the eyes of every body. We have only to look that way,
there is no difficulty in seeing them; it is only a question of good
eyesight, but it must be good, for the premisses are so numerous and
so subtle, that it is scarce possible but that some escape us. Now
the omission of one premiss leads to error, thus we must have very
clear sight to see all the premisses, and then an accurate mind not
to draw false conclusions from known premisses.

All mathematicians would then be practical if they were
clear-sighted, for they do not reason incorrectly on premisses known
to them. And practical men would be mathematicians if they could
turn their eyes to the premisses of mathematics to which they are
unaccustomed.

The reason therefore that some practical men are not mathematical
is that they cannot at all turn their attention to mathematical
premisses. But the reason that mathematicians are not practical is
that they do not see what is before them, and that, accustomed to
the precise and distinct statements of mathematics and not reasoning
till they have well examined and arranged their premisses, they are
lost in practical life wherein the premisses do not admit of such
arrangement, being scarcely seen, indeed they are felt rather than
seen, and there is great difficulty in causing them to be felt by
those who do not of themselves perceive them. They are so nice and
so numerous, that a very delicate and very clear sense is needed
to apprehend them, and to judge rightly and justly when they are
apprehended, without as a rule being able to demonstrate them in an
orderly way as in mathematics; because the premisses are not before
us in the same way, and because it would be an infinite matter to
undertake. We must see them at once, at one glance, and not by
process of reasoning, at least up to a certain degree. And thus it
is rare that mathematicians are practical, or that practical men
are mathematicians, because mathematicians wish to treat practical
life mathematically; and they make themselves ridiculous, wishing to
begin by definitions and premisses, a proceeding which this way of
reasoning will not bear. The mind does indeed the same thing, but
tacitly, naturally and without art, in a way which none can express,
and only a few can feel.

Practical minds on the contrary, being thus accustomed to judge at a
glance, are amazed when propositions are presented to them of which
they understand nothing and the way to which is through sterile
definitions and premisses, which they are not accustomed to see thus
in detail, and therefore are repelled and disheartened.

But inaccurate minds are never either practical or mathematical.
Mathematicians who are only mathematicians have exact minds, provided
all things are clearly set before them in definitions and premisses,
otherwise they are inaccurate and intolerable, for they are only
accurate when the premisses are perfectly clear.

And practical men, who are only practical, cannot have the patience
to condescend to first principles of things speculative and abstract,
which they have never seen in the world, and to which they are wholly
unaccustomed.


There are various kinds of good sense, there are some who judge
correctly in a certain order of things, and are lost in others.

Some are able to draw conclusions well from a few premisses, and this
shows a penetrative intellect.

Others draw conclusions well where there are many premisses.

For instance, the first easily understand the laws of hydrostatics,
where the premisses are few, but the conclusions so nice, that only
the greatest penetration can reach them. And these persons would
perhaps not necessarily be great mathematicians, because mathematics
embrace a great number of premisses, and perhaps a mind may be so
formed that it searches with ease a few premisses to the bottom,
yet cannot at all comprehend those matters in which there are many
premisses.

There are then two kinds of mind, the one able to penetrate
vigorously and deeply into the conclusions of certain premisses,
and these are minds true and just. The other able to comprehend a
great number of premisses without confusion, and these are the minds
for mathematics. The one kind has force and exactness, the other
capacity. Now the one quality can exist without the other, a mind may
be vigorous and narrow, or it may have great range and no strength.


When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is not amiss that there
should be a common error to fix the mind of men, as for instance the
moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress
of diseases, etc. For the principal malady of man is that restless
curiosity about matters which he can not understand, and it is not so
bad for him to be mistaken, as to be so idly curious.

The way in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote,
is the most usual, the most insinuating, the most easily remembered,
and the most often quoted; because it is wholly composed of thoughts
which arise out of the ordinary conversations of life. As when a man
speaks of the vulgar error that the moon is the cause of all, we
never fail to say that Salomon de Tultie says, that when we know not
the truth of a matter, it is well there should be a common error,
etc; which is the thought above.


To write against those who plunged too deep into science. Descartes.


Descartes.

We must say in general: "This is made by figure and motion for it is
true." But to say what these are, and to compose the machine, is
ridiculous, for it is useless, uncertain, and painful. And if it were
true we do not think that all philosophy is worth one hour of pain.


I cannot forgive Descartes.


If an animal did by mind what it does by instinct, and if it spoke
by mind what it speaks by instinct, in hunting, and warning its
companions that the quarry is found or lost, it would certainly also
speak in regard to those things which affect it more strongly, as
for instance, "Gnaw me this cord which hurts me, and which I cannot
reach."


The story of the pike and frog of Liancourt. They do it always and
never otherwise, nor any other thing of mind.


The calculating machine works results which approach nearer to
thought than any thing done by animals, but it does nothing which
enables us to say it has any will, as animals have.


When it is said that heat is only the motion of certain molecules,
and light the _conatus recedendi_ which we feel, we are surprised.
And shall we think that pleasure is but the buoyancy of our spirits?
We have conceived so different an idea of it, and these sensations
seem so removed from those others which we say are the same as those
with which we compare them. The feeling of fire, the warmth which
affects us in a manner wholly different from touch, the reception of
sound and light, all this seems to us mysterious, and yet it is as
material as the blow of a stone. It is true that the minuteness of
the spirits which enter into the pores touch different nerves, yet
nerves are always touched.


What is more absurd than to say that inanimate bodies have passion,
fear, horror, that insensible bodies, without life, and even
incapable of life, have passions, which presuppose at least a
sensitive soul to feel them, nay more, that the object of their
terror is a vacuum? What is there in a vacuum which should make them
afraid? What can be more base and more ridiculous? Nor is this all;
it is said they have in themselves a principle of motion to avoid a
vacuum. Have they arms, legs, muscles, nerves?


How foolish is painting, which draws admiration by the resemblance of
things of which we do not admire the originals.


In the same way that we injure the understanding we injure the
feelings also.

The feelings and the understanding are formed by society, and are
perverted by society. Thus good or bad society forms or perverts
them. It is then of the first importance to know how to choose in
order to form and not to pervert them, and we cannot make this choice
if they be not already formed and not perverted. Thus a circle is
formed, and happy are those who escape it.


Have you never seen persons, who, in order to complain of the little
you make of them, bring before you the example of people in high
position who esteem them? To such I answer, "Show me the merit by
which you have charmed these persons, and I will esteem you too."


The world is full of good maxims. All that is needed is their right
application. For instance, no one doubts that we ought to risk our
lives for the common weal, and many do so. But for Religion, none.


Nature diversifies and imitates, art imitates and diversifies.


The more intellect we have ourselves, the more originality do we
discover in others. Ordinary people find no difference between men.


Since we cannot be universal, and know all that is to be known of
everything, we should know a little of everything. For it is far
better to know something of all than to know the whole of one thing,
this universality is the best. If we can have both, still better,
but if we must choose, let us choose the first. The world feels and
acts on this, and the world is often a good judge.


Certain authors speaking of their works, say: "My book, my
commentary, my history, etc." They are like the middle-class people
who have a small house of their own, and have "my house" always on
the tongue. They would do better to say: "Our book, our commentary,
our history, etc."; because there is in them generally more of other
people's than their own.


A true friend is so great an advantage, even for the greatest lords,
in order that he may speak well of them, and uphold them in their
absence, that they ought to do all that is possible to have one. But
they should choose well, for spite of all they may do for fools,
whatever good these say of them would be useless, and they would not
even speak well of them if they found themselves in the minority, for
they are without authority. And thus they would abuse them in company.


"You are ungraceful, excuse me, I beg." Without that excuse I had not
known there was aught amiss. "With reverence be it spoke...." The
only evil is the excuse.


I always dislike such compliments as these: _I have given you a great
deal of trouble._ _I fear I am tiring you._ _I fear this is too
long._ For we either have our audience with us, or we provoke them.


Rivers are roads which move and carry us whither we wish to go.


In every action we must look beyond the action at our past, present
and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the
relations of all these things. And then we shall be very careful.


In every dialogue and discourse we ought to be able to say to those
who are offended, "Of what do you complain?"


There are many people who listen to the sermon as they listen to
vespers.


When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace.




_NOTES._




_NOTES._


P. 2. _Pascal's Profession of Faith._ A few days after Pascal's
death, a servant discovered this profession sewed into a fold of his
master's waistcoat, _pourpoint_. It was written on parchment, with a
copy on paper. His family believed that he had carefully placed this
in each new garment, desiring to have always about him the memorial
of the great spiritual crisis.

P. 3, l. 32. _Dereliquerunt me._ Jer. li. 13.

P. 3. _General Introduction._ In this are apparently two drafts of
the same preface, the second beginning with the paragraph "Before
entering," p. 9, l. 6. M. Faugere was the first to recognize the true
character of this sketch, which has borne various titles. The Port
Royal edition called it: "Against the Indifference of Atheists;"
Condorcet headed it: "On the Need of Concern for the Proofs of a
Future Life;" Bossut: "On the Need of a Study of Religion." See note
on p. 61.

P. 3, l. 8. _Deus absconditus._ Is. xlv. 15. _Vere tu es Deus
absconditus, Deus Israel salvator._

P. 11. _Notes for the General Introduction._ The fragments following
are thus arranged by Molinier as having been in his judgment intended
for and many of them expanded in the preceding Preface.

P. 12, l. 23. _Miton_ was a man of fashion at Paris, a friend of
Pascal's friend, the Chevalier de Mere.

P. 17. _Preface to the First Part._ This is Pascal's own title to the
section.

P. 17, l. 2. _Charron_, Pierre, was born at Paris in 1541. He was a
friend of Montaigne, whose philosophy he adopted. His _Traite de la
Sagesse_, Bordeaux, 1601, is the work of whose elaborate divisions
Pascal complains.

P. 17, l. 12. _Montaigne's defects._ Mademoiselle de Gournay,
Montaigne's adopted daughter, defends the Essayist in regard to this
matter, in the preface to her edition of the Essays, Paris, 1595.

P. 17, l. 14. _people without eyes._ Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch.
xii.

P. 17, l. 15. _squaring the circle_. _Ib._, l. ii. ch. xiv.

P. 17, l. 15. _a greater world._ Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.

P. 17, l. 16. _on suicide and on death._ _Ib._, l. i. ch. iii.

P. 17, l. 17. _without fear and without repentance._ _Ib._, l. iii.
ch. ii.

P. 19. _Man's Disproportion._ Pascal's own title.

P. 19, l. 34. _the centre of which is every where, the circumference
no where._ Voltaire attributed this famous saying to the
pseudo-Timaeus of Locris, an abridgement of Plato's _Timaeus_, but in
neither work is the whole sentence to be found. The saying, however,
is not originally Pascal's. It is probably borrowed from Mlle. de
Gournay's preface to her edition of Montaigne, Paris, 1635, and was
taken by her from Rabelais, bk. iii. ch. 13, where it is attributed
to Hermes Trismegistus. M. Havet, who gives these, and many more
details, finally traces it, on the authority of Vincent de Beauvais,
1200-1264, to Empedocles.

P. 21, l. 36. _I will discourse of the all._ This saying of
Democritus is taken by Pascal from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch.
xii.

P. 22, l. 4. _De omni scibili._ The title given to nine hundred
propositions, put forth at Rome by Pico della Mirandola, then aged
twenty-three, in 1486.

P. 22, l. 8. _The Principles of Philosophy._ Descartes wrote a work
with this title, _Principia Philosophiae_.

P. 22, l. 38. _Beneficia eo usque lata sunt._ Tacitus, _Ann._ lib.
iv. c. xviii. Taken by Pascal from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii. ch.
viii.

P. 24, l. 27. _And what completes our inability._ Compare for the
whole of the passage on matter and spirit, Descartes, _Discours de la
Methode_.

P. 25, l. 34. _Modus quo corporibus adhaeret spiritus._ S. Aug. _De
Civitate Dei_, xxi. 10. Taken by Pascal from Montaigne, _Essais_, l.
ii. ch. xii.

P. 26, l. 31. _Lustravit lampade terras._ The full couplet is

    _Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse
    Jupiter auctiferas lustravit lampade terras_.

S. Aug. _De Civitate Dei_, v. 8, a translation by Cicero of two
lines in the _Odyssey_, xviii. 136. The quotation is borrowed from
Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.

P. 27, l. 20. _a fly is buzzing._ Borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_,
l. iii. ch. xiii.

P. 27, l. 26. _flies which win battles._ Montaigne relates that the
Portuguese besieging the town of Tamly were obliged to raise the
siege on account of the clouds of flies. _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.

P. 28, l. 12. _Memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis._ Lib. Sap.
v. 14.

P. 30, l. 4. _Plerumque gratae_, altered from Hor. _Carm._ iii. 29, v.
13. _plerumque gratae_ divitibus _vices_.

P. 30, l. 13. _Epaminondas._ The example is taken from Montaigne,
_Essais_, l. ii. ch. xxxvi.

P. 31, l. 22. _Sneezing absorbs all the faculties._ A paraphrase of a
passage in Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii. ch. v.

P. 31, l. 28. _Scaramouch_. One of the traditional parts in Italian
Comedy, at that time played by the well-known actor Tiberio Fiorelli,
whom Pascal had probably seen.

P. 31, l. 29. _The doctor_, also a common character in Italian
forces. Moliere has borrowed from the Italian stage his doctor,
so often a pedant and a fool, of whom le docteur Pancrace, in _Le
Marriage Force_, is perhaps the most notable example, though that
comedy was produced after the death of Pascal.

P. 32, l. 11. _the Condrieu, the Desargues._ Gerard Desargues was
a mathematician at Condrieu on the Rhone, who had been Pascal's
teacher. Among the Muscat grapes grown at Condrieu, Pascal
distinguishes a special variety of Desargues, and among these a
particular vine.

P. 32, l. 28. _the Passion of Cleobuline._ In _Artamene, on le
Grand Cyrus_, the celebrated romance of Mademoiselle de Scudery,
Cleobuline, princess, afterwards queen of Corinth, is one of the
principal characters. She is represented as in love with Myrinthe,
one of her subjects, but "she loved him without thinking of love; and
remained so long in her error, that when she became aware of it, her
affection was no longer in a condition to be overcome."

P. 33. _Diversion._ Under this heading Pascal comprises not only
trivial occupations, and the distractions of idle society, but all
which, save truth alone, can form the study or the research of man.
The main idea of the chapter is borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l.
iii. chap. x.

P. 35. l. 17. _The counsel given to Pyrrhus._ _Ib._, l. i. ch. xliii.

P. 36, l. 11. _as children are frightened at a face._ Borrowed from
Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. iii., and Montaigne in his turn
borrowed it from Seneca, _Ep._ 24.

P. 36, l. 28. _superintendent._ Of finances. The last who held this
office was Fouquet, still in office when this was written. He was
dismissed in disgrace in 1661.

P. 36, l. 29. _first president._ Of the Parliament of Paris.

P. 36, l. 32. _dismissed to their country houses._ At that date, and
for a long time afterwards, a Minister of State rarely fell from
Office without receiving a _Lettre de cachet_ which banished him to
the seclusion of his country estate.

P. 39, l. 17. _In omnibus requiem quaesivi._ Eccles. xxiv. 7.

P. 40, l. 9. _will arise weariness._ Compare Montaigne, _Essais_, l.
iii.

P. 41, l. 7. _Caesar was too old._ See Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch.
xxxiv.

P. 43. _The Greatness and Littleness of Man._ The title suggested by
Pascal, in many passages of the autograph MS.

P. 43, l. 11. _for Port Royal._ The letters A. P. R. occur in several
places in Pascal's MS. It is generally thought that they mean _a
Port-Royal_, and are intended to indicate subjects to be developed
later in _conferences_ or lectures at that house.

P. 45, l. 1. _Man is neither angel nor brute._ This is closely
borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. iii. ch. xiii.

P. 46, l. 15. _Corrumpunt mores bonos colloquia prava._ 1 ad Cor. xv.
33, but the Vulgate reading has _mala_.

P. 47, l. 18. _Paulus Emilius._ The example is taken from Montaigne,
_Essais_, l. i. ch. xix. See also Cic. _Tuscul._ v. 40.

P. 47, l. 31. _Ego vir videns_, Lament, iii. 1. _Ego vir videns
paupertatem meam in virga indignationis ejus._

P. 51. _Of the deceptive powers_, etc. This is Pascal's own title for
this section.

P. 51, l. 14. _Imagination._ Pascal uses this word in an extended
sense already given to it by Montaigne, and means that faculty by
which we attribute a value to those things which in fact have none.

P. 53, l. 11. _furred cats._ Rabelais, bk. v. ch. 11.

P. 54, l. 2. _Della Opinione._ No work is known under this name.
Pascal possibly means a work of Carlo Flosi, _L'Opinione tiranna,
moralmente considerata ne gli affari del mondo_, Mondovi, 1690. But
it is not certain that this edition is the reprint of a work extant
before Pascal wrote.

P. 54, l. 27. _Diseases are another source of error._ Taken from
Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii.

P. 56, l. 20. _in Switzerland that of the burgesses._ This may be
compared with p. 66, l. 6. In the majority of Swiss towns every
candidate for municipal office must needs possess the freedom of the
town, but the intention was not to set aside those of noble birth, as
Pascal supposes, but foreigners, and those of other towns, each of
which was considered as a separate state.

P. 57, l. 27. _would care nothing for Provence._ Compare Montaigne,
_Essais_, l. i. ch. xxii. "_C'est par l'entremise de la coustume que
chascun est contant du lieu ou nature l'a plante: et les sauvages
d'Escosse n'ont que faire de la Touraine, ny les Scythes de la
Thessalie._"

P. 57, l. 28. _Ferox gens._ Livy, l. xxxiv. c. 17.

P. 58. l. 20. _Brave deeds._ Borrowed from Montaigne, _Essais_, l. i.
ch. xl.

P. 61. _Of Justice_, etc. These fragments, now among the best known
of Pascal's Thoughts, but for the most part brought to notice in the
Edition of Bossut, 1779, have their present arrangement and title
from Molinier.

P. 61, l. 30. _Nihil amplius._ These sentences, borrowed from
Montaigne, are quoted, the first of them wrongly, from Cicero, _De
Finibus_, v. 21; the second from Seneca, _Ad Lucilium_, _Ep._ 95;
the third from Tacitus, _Annales_, iii. 25. Compare with the whole
passage Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii. and l. iii. ch. xiii.

P. 62, l. 29. _Quum veritatem._ S. Aug., _De Civit. Dei_, iv. 31.
From Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. iii.

P. 62, l. 27. _the wisest of law givers._ Socrates, in the _Republic_
of Plato.

P. 63, l. 9. _Archesilas._ Born at Pitane in AEolis of a Scythian
father, about 300 B.C. He was founder of the School known as the
Second Academy. See Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. iii.

P. 64, l. 19. For all that is here said on Custom, see Montaigne,
_Essais_, l. i. ch. xxii.

P. 65, l. 7. _Pasce oves meas._ Joh. xxi. 17. The words are those
taken as the foundation of papal authority. You owe me pasturage,
_i.e._ you owe me justice.

P. 65, l. 30. _the soldiers of Mahomet, thieves, heretics._ Pascal
boldly joins heretics and thieves, for those who did not hold his
creed appeared to him as men _sans foi ni loi_, faithless and
lawless. In his eyes a Turk was scarce a man. See the _Provincial
Letters_, let. xiv. "_Sont-ce des religieux et des pretres qui
parlent de cette sorte? Sont-ce des Chretiens? Sont-ce des Tures?
Sont-ce des demons?_" And _Thoughts_, p. 211, l. 30. "Do we not see
beasts live and die like men, and Turks like Christians."

P. 66, l. 6. _The Swiss._ See note on p. 56, l. 20.

P. 66, l. 10. _condemning so many Spaniards to death._ Possibly an
allusion to the battle of the Dunes, 1659, which led to the Peace
of the Pyrenees, so long desired by all but Spain, then obliged to
consent.

P. 67, l. 13. _Summum jus, summa injuria._ Charron, _Traite de la
Sagesse_, etc. ch. xxvii. art. 8.

P. 67, l. 26. _The end of the Twelfth Provincial._ The following is
the passage to which Pascal alludes. "_C'est une etrange et longue
guerre que celle ou la violence essaye d'opprimer la verite. Tons
les efforts de la violence ne peuvent affaiblir la verite, et ne
servent qu'a la relever davantage. Toutes les lumieres de la verite
ne peuvent rien pour arreter la violence et ne font que l'irriter
encore plus ... la violence et la verite ne peuvent rien l'une sur
l'autre._"

P. 67, l. 27. _The Fronde._ This was the name given to the party
which rose against Mazarin and the Court during the minority of Louis
XIV., and plunged France into civil war.

P. 69, l. 10. _give me the strap._ This is no exaggeration, since
fifty years after Pascal wrote, Voltaire was beaten by the servants
of the Duc de Rohan.

P. 69, l. 12. _It is odd that Montaigne._ _Essais_, l. i. ch. xlii.

P. 69, l. 16. _When power attacks craft._ _Satyre Menippee_, Harangue
du Sire de Rieux: "_il n'y a ny bonnet quarre, ny bourlet, que je ne
face voler_."

P. 69, l. 30. _figmentum malum._ Ps. ciii. 13. _Quomodo miseretur
pater filiorum, misertus est Dominus timentibus se: Quoniam ipse
cognovit figmentum nostrum._

P. 70, l. 14. _Savages laugh at an infant king._ Pascal is alluding
to the story in Montaigne, _Essais_, l. i. ch. xxx., of the savages
presented to Charles IX. at Rouen, who were astonished to see bearded
men obey a child.

P. 72, l. 16. _Epictetus._ See p. 45, l. 30, in order to understand
this somewhat enigmatic fragment. In the next paragraph is an
allusion to the passage in which Epictetus says, l. iv. ch. 7, that
the philosopher may well be constant and detached from life by
wisdom, as were the Galilaeans by their fanaticism.

P. 73. _Weakness, unrest, and defects of man._ The arrangements of
these fragments under this title is Molinier's.

P. 73, l. 1. _We anticipate the future._ Compare Montaigne, _Essais_,
l. i. ch. iii.

P. 74, l. 28. _Alexander's chastity._ To attribute this virtue to
Alexander is strange, but no doubt the circumstance in Pascal's
thought was his generous conduct to the family of Darius, after the
battle of Issus.

P. 75, l. 12. _the King of England._ Probably Charles II., then
living in exile, rather than Charles I. The King of Poland was Jean
Casimir, driven from his throne by Charles X. of Sweden, after the
battle of Warsaw in 1656. The Queen of Sweden was Christina, daughter
of Gustavus Adolphus, who abdicated in favour of her cousin, Charles
X., in 1654.

P. 75, l. 29. _we shall die alone_, "on mourra seul." It is a curious
instance of the fact how little Pascal is known in England, that
Keble having quoted this sentence wrongly, probably from memory, in
the first edition of the _Christian Year_, as "Je mourrai seul," it
has remained uncorrected and apparently unnoticed to this day.

P. 76, l. 12. _Cromwell._ As Charles II. was restored in 1660, this
fragment was written about that date, two years before Pascal's
death. Cromwell's death did not arise from the cause stated in the
text.

P. 77, l. 8. _the automaton._ The expression of Descartes and his
school for the animal body.

P. 77, l. 25. _Inclina cor meum, Deus._ Ps. cxix. 36. "_Inclina cor
meum in testimonia tua, et non in avaritiam._"

P. 77, l. 30. _Eritis sicut dii._ Gen. iii. 5.

P. 79, l. 30. _men laugh and weep at the same thing._ The thought is
from Charron, _Traite de la Sagesse_, l. i. ch. xxxviii.

P. 80, l. 35. _the grand Sultan._ None of Pascal's editors have
discovered whence he drew this purely fictitious description of the
Sultan.

P. 81, l. 9. _That epigram about the two one-eyed people._ This is
not Martial's. It is found in _Epigrammatum Delectus_, published by
Port Royal in 1659.

    _Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,
      Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos.
    Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede parenti;
      Si tu caecus Amor, sic erit illa Venus._

P. 81, l. 12. _Ambitiosa recidet ornamenta._ Horace, _De Arte
Poetica_, v. 447.

P. 83, l. 22. _Spongia solis._ The spots on the sun. Du Cange
explains _spongia_ by _macula_. Pascal seems to mean that the spots
on the sun prepare us for its total extinction; that the sun will
eventually expire, so that, contrary as it seems to the course of
nature, there will come a day when there will be no sun.

P. 89. The title given to this second part is furnished by Pascal. In
the first part he has wished to prove the fallen state of man, and
his weakness; he now maintains that man may be restored by faith in
Jesus Christ, and the practice of religion.

P. 91, l. 26. _Nemo novit._ Matt. xi. 27. _Et nemo novit Filium nisi
Pater: neque Patrem quis novit, nisi Filius, et cui voluerit Filius
revelare._

P. 92, l. 3. _Vere tu es._ Is. xlv. 15, see p. 3, l. 8.

P. 92, l. 10. _Quod curiositate cognoverint._ Probably cited from
recollection of Saint Augustine, but the passage is not verbally to
be found.

P. 96, l. 6. _neither the stars._

    _Porrum et caepe nefas violare et frangere morsu
    O sanctas gentes, quibus haec nascuntur in hortis
    Numina!_     Juvenal, _Sat._ xv. 9.

See also Montaigne, _Essais_, l. i. ch. xlii.

P. 97, l. 28. _stultitiam._ 1 Cor. i. 19.

P. 101, l. 12. _the opinion of Copernicus._ Pascal no doubt refers
to a passage in Montaigne, _Essais_, l. ii. ch. xii., in which he
abstains from deciding between the rival systems of astronomy.
Pascal, however, had no doubt on the matter himself, as is plain from
the passage on Galileo in the Eighteenth _Provincial_.

P. 101, l. 16. _Fascinatio nugacitatis._ Lib. Sap. iv. 12.
_Fascinatio enim nugacitatis obscurat bona._ See note on p. 165.

P. 102, l. 12. _So our people often act._ Fenelon, _Lettre a l'Eveque
d'Arras_, says, "_Toutes les difficultes s'evanouissent sans peine
des qu'on a l'esprit gueri de la presomption. Alors suivant le regle
de Saint Augustin_, Epist. ad Hier., _on passe sur tout ce que l'on
n'entend pas, et on s'edifie de tout ce qu'on entend_."

See also _De Imitatione Christi_, l. i. ch. v.

P. 104, l. 4. _Harum sententiarum. Harum sententiarum quae vera sit
Deus aliquis viderit._ Cic. _Tuscul._ i. 11.

P. 104, l. 14. _The Preacher shows._ The precise thought as Pascal
has it here is not easy to find in Ecclesiastes. It is probably a
reminiscence of Eccles. viii. 17.

P. 105. _The Philosophers._ The title of this chapter is that
given by Molinier to the collection of fragments contained in it.
A few expressions and thoughts are from Montaigne, many more from
Descartes, _Discours de la Methode_.

P. 108, l. 16. _Deliciae meae._ Prov. viii. 31.

P. 108, l. 17. _Effundam spiritum._ Joel ii. 28.

P. 108, l. 17. _Dii estis_, Ps. lxxxii. 6.

P. 108, l. 18. _Omnis caro foenum._ Is. xl. 6.

P. 108, l. 18. _Homo assimilatus est._ Ps. xlix. 20.

P. 108, l. 20. _Dixi in corde meo._ Eccl. iii. 18.

P. 110, l. 28. _Ex senatus consultis._ Seneca, _Ep._ xcv., sec. 30.

P. 110, l. 29. _Nihil tam absurde._ Cic. _De Divia._ ii. 58.

P. 110, l. 32. _Ut omnium rerum._ Seneca, _Ep._ cvi. But the real
reading is _Quemadmodum--omnium rerum_.

P. 110, l. 34. _Id maxime._ Cic. _De Off._ i. 31.

P. 110, l. 35. _Hos natura modos._ Virg. _Georg._ ii. 20.

P. 111, l. 4. _Mihi sic usus est._ Ter. _Hea._ i. 1, 28.

P. 111, l. 6. _falsity of their dilemma in Montaigne._ _Essais_, l.
ii. ch. xii. "_Si l'ame est mortelle, il est absurde de craindre la
mort, si elle est immortelle elle ne peut aller qu'en s'ameliorant._"

P. 112, l. 11. _Felix qui potuit._ Virg. _Georg._ ii. l. 489.

P. 112, l. 13. _nihil mirari._ Hor. _Epist._ 1, vi. l. 1. The whole
passage is,

    _Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici,
    Solaque, quae possit facere et servare beatum_.

P. 113, l. 15. _two sects._ Epicureans and Stoics.

P. 113, l. 17. _Des Barreaux._ Jacques Desbarreaux was an Epicurean
poet born at Paris in 1602, died in 1673, who in his poems paraded
his unbelief. Curiously enough, his only extant verses were written
when he lay ill, and are addressed to God.

P. 113, l. 28. _Epictetus concludes._ _Encheiridion_, iv. 7.

P. 113, l. 30. _three sects._ Pascal no doubt refers the _libido
sentiendi_ to the Epicureans, the _libido dominandi_ to the Stoics,
and the _libido sciendi_ to the dogmatic schools of Plato and
Aristotle, of which Cicero always speaks as though they taught one
and the same philosophy.

P. 114, l. 3. _two inches under water_, are equally drowned with
those who are at the bottom.

P. 115. The fragments collected in this chapter are here placed by
Molinier according to the plan which Pascal had traced out for his
work, in which after he had laid the various philosophical systems
before his supposed unbeliever, he brought forward for examination
the other religions.

P. 115, l. 20. _forbade men to read it._ It is not known whence
Pascal obtained this statement, which is a complete mistake.

P. 116, l. 15. _Jesus Christ wills that his testimony to himself
should be of no avail._ John v. 31. "If I bear witness of myself, my
witness is not true."

P. 116, l. 30. _The Koran says that Saint Matthew._ The Koran does
not name Saint Matthew, but says in general terms that Mahomet
regarded the apostles of Jesus as holy.

P. 117, l. 27. _whose witnesses let themselves be slaughtered._
After this Pascal had written, but erased the words "which of the
two is most to be blamed, Moses or China?" and these aid us in the
explanation of this enigmatic passage. The Jesuits had established
themselves in China at the end of the sixteenth century, and when
Pascal wrote their missions were in a flourishing state. They
had studied the language, history, and literature of China. But
the difficulty presented itself of reconciling the cosmogony and
chronology of the Bible with those of the Chinese sages. It is
probable that this passage was inspired by a private conversation
with some one who had read letters from a missionary, for no book on
the subject appears to have existed in Pascal's day.

P. 118, l. 4. _The five suns_, etc. Montaigne, from whom this is
taken, _Essais_, l. iii. ch. iv., probably borrowed it from some
Spanish book now forgotten.

P. 119. _Of the Jewish People._ This position in his intended
treatise, before the sections on the Sacred Books and on Prophecy, is
that which Pascal himself designed for his remarks on the Jews.

P. 123, l. 5. _The Masorah._ The unwritten tradition of the Jews.

P. 126, l. 9. _Quis mihi det._ Num. xi. 29. The true reading is,
_Quis tribuat ut omnis populus prophetet_.

P. 126, l. 17. _If the story in Esdras is credible._ In the 14th
Chapter of the Second Book of Esdras God appears to Esdras in a bush,
and orders him to assemble the people and deliver the message. Esdras
replies, "I will go as thou hast commanded me, and reprove the people
which are present, but they that shall be born afterward who shall
admonish them?... _For thy law is burnt_, therefore no man knoweth
the things that are done of thee, or the works that shall begin.
But if I have found grace before thee, send the Holy Ghost into me,
and I shall write all that hath been done in the world since the
beginning." ... Then God ordered him to take five scribes, to whom
for forty days he dictated the ancient law.

The authenticity of this story, coming into conflict as it does with
many passages of the prophets, and specially with Jeremiah, appeared
open to such grave doubts, that at the Council of Trent the last book
of Esdras, called in the Catholic Church, Esdras IV., by Protestants
Esdras II., was then rejected from the Canon.

P. 126, l. 27. _Jeremiah gave them the law._ See 2 Maccabees, ch. xi.

P. 128, l. 31. _Qui justus est justificetur adhuc._ Apocal. xvii. 4.

P. 129, l. 18. _a thousand and twenty-two._ This was the number of
stars comprised in the Catalogue of Ptolemy, according to the system
of Hipparchus.

P. 132, l. 9. _Non habemus regem nisi Caesarem._ Job. xx. 15.

P. 134, l. 12. _Eris palpans in meridie._ Incorrectly quoted from
Deut. xxviii. 29.

P. 134, l. 13. _Dabitur liber._ Incorrectly quoted from Is. xxix. 12.

P. 135, l. 6. _Effundam spiritum meum._ Is. xliv. 2.

P. 135, l. 21. _populum non credentem._ Is. lxv. 2.

P. 136, l. 2. _ex omnibus iniquitatibus._ Probably a remembrance of
Is. xliv. 22. _Delevi ut nubem iniquitates tuas._

P. 136, l. 13. _The little stone._ Dan. ii. 34.

P. 136, l. 33. _Omnis Judaea regio._ Incorrectly quoted from Matt.
iii. 5.

P. 137, l. 3. _These stones can become._ Matt. iii. 9.

P. 140, l. 15. _Grotius._ The allusion is no doubt to his work, _De
Veritate Religionis Christianae_, which appeared in 1662.

P. 143, l. 6. _the king of the Medes and Persians_ is Darius
Codomanus; the King of the Greeks, Alexander. The four kings are,
Seleucus, King of Syria; Ptolemy, King of Egypt; Lysimachus, King of
Thrace, and Cassander, King of Macedonia, after the battle of Ipsus,
301 B.C.

P. 143, l. 12. This paragraph refers to Antiochus Epiphanes, King of
Syria, who died 164 B.C. See the account of his death, 1 Macc. c. 6.

P. 145, l. 1. _And in the end of years._ The marriage of Antiochus
Theos with Berenice took place about 247 B.C. Berenice was
assassinated by Seleucus Ceraunos soon afterwards, and the war
between Ptolemy Euergetes and the King of Syria lasted during almost
all the reign of the latter. Syria regained the ascendancy only after
the death of Ptolemy Euergetes in 222 B.C.

P. 145, l. 26. _Raphia._ The Battle of Raphia was gained by Ptolemy
Philopator over Antiochus the Great, 217 B.C.

P. 145, l. 36. _Euergetes_, a mistake for Epiphanes.

P. 147, l. 2. _The leader taken from the thigh._ A literal
translation of Gen. xlix. 10. _Non auferetur sceptrum de Juda, et dux
de femore ejus._

P. 152, l. 26. _Pugio Fidei._ The work so called, which Pascal first
specifies in this place, is one of which he made great use in all his
speculations on the fulfilment of Prophecy, and on the meaning of
the Hebrew letters, etc. The book, of which the full title is _Pugio
Fidei adversus Mauros et Judaeos_, was written in 1278 by Raymond
Martin, a Catalonian monk. It remained almost unknown for four
hundred years, and was first printed in 1651. It was, therefore, as
it were, a new book when Pascal became acquainted with it. Under the
name Mauri the author assails not the Koran nor Mahomet, but Arabic
philosophy.

P. 161, l. 2. _Ut sciatis quod filius hominis._ Marc. ii. 10-11. The
words of Jesus to the paralytic.

P. 164, l. 16. _Signa legem in electis meis._ Is. viii. 16, where the
Vulgate has _discipulis_.

P. 165, l. 15. _Fascination._ _i.e._, _Fascinatio nugacitatis_,
see p. 101, l. 16. The blindness produced by the love of temporal
possessions, or as the A. V. translates it, "the bewitching of
naughtiness."

P. 165, l. 15. _Somnum suum._ Ps. lxxvi. 5. _Turbati sunt omnes
insipientes corde. Dormierunt somnum suum: et nihil invenerunt omnes
viri divitiarum in manibus suis._

P. 165, l. 15. _Figura hujus mundi._ 1 ad Cor. vii. 31. _Et qui
utuntur hoc mundo, tanquam non utantur: praeterit enim figura hujus
mundi._

P. 165, l. 16. _Comedes panem tuum._ Deut viii. 9. _Panem nostrum._
Luc. xi. 3.

P. 165, l. 17. _Inimici Dei terram lingent._ Ps. lxxii 8. The Psalm
is of Solomon, _Inimici ejus terram lingent_.

P. 165, l. 22. _cum amaritudinibus._ Ex. xii. 8, where the Vulgate
has _cum lactucis agrestibus_.

P. 165, l. 24. _Singularis sum ego._ Ps. cxli. 10, where the true
reading is "_singulariter_."

P. 165, l. 34. _We have no right._ The following is the explanation
of this and the next two paragraphs: In Is. ix. 6, a prophecy which
the Rabbis apply to Messiah, and Christian interpreters to Jesus, are
the words: _Parvulus enim natus est nobis ... multiplicabatur ejus
imperium._ In the Hebrew words representing this latter clause, the
_closed mem_, a letter ordinarily employed only at the end of a word,
occurs where an _open mem_ should be used. From this orthographic
mistake the Rabbis have concluded that Messiah would be born of a
virgin, _ex virgine clausa_. Moreover, as the _closed mem_ in Hebrew
writing means six hundred, the Rabbis supposed that Messiah was to
come six hundred years after Isaiah. The _final tsade_ has the same
value as the _closed mem_.

P. 166, l. 8. _the way of the philosopher's stone_, no doubt the way
of _finding_ the philosopher's stone. The dreams of the alchemists
on this subject were early mingled with those of the Rabbis on the
Messiah. Nor had the Cabbala lost all credit in Pascal's days. In
1629 Robert Fludd, in Latin De Fluctibus, an Englishman, educated
at Oxford, and a Fellow of the College of Physicians, published at
Frankfort his _Medicina Catholica_. In this, sect 1. pt. ii. b. 1.
ch. i. he speaks of sicknesses and healing as both sent from God by
angelic intermediaries, and that all angelic natures are summed up
in the great angel Mittatron, whom the Scriptures call Wisdom. In a
further passage he says that in him whom the Cabalists call Mittatron
others recognise Messiah, and quotes the passage of Isaiah in which
occurs the _closed mem_.

In Reuchlin's book _De Arte Cabalistica_ the _open mem_ is said to
represent the sphere of Jupiter, and the _closed mem_ the sphere of
Mars.

P. 166, l. 12. _Apocalyptics._ Interpreters of the Apocalypse.

P. 166, l. 13. _Preadamites._ Those who hold that Adam was the
progenitor of the Jews only, and not of the whole human race.

P. 166, l. 13. _Millenarians._ The believers in the reign of Christ
on earth for a thousand years.

P. 166, l. 19. The allusion is probably to 2 Paralip. i. 14. _Et
fecit eos esse in urbibus quadrigarum, et cum rege in Jerusalem._

P. 166, l. 31. _Exortum est lumen._ Ps. cxii. 4. But the word _corde_
does not appear in the Vulgate.

P. 168, l. 30. _Agnus occisus est._ Apoc. xiii. 8.

P. 170, l. 23. _the breasts of the Spouse._ Song of Songs, iv. 5.

P. 171, l. 32. _Nisi fecissem._ A partial citation of Joh. xv. 24.

P. 174, l. 32. _Adam forma futuri_, ad Rom. v. 14.

P. 175, l. 7. _the six mornings._ This passage is taken from S.
Aug. _De Genesi contra Manichaeos_, i. 23. Pascal probably intending
to write _les six orients_, dawns or mornings, his amanuensis has
written _les six arians_, a source of much misunderstanding. The six
mornings are, the creation; the deliverance from the Ark; the call of
Abraham; the carrying away into Babylon; the preaching of Jesus.

P. 175, l. 29. _Fac secundum exemplar._ Exod. xxv. 40, but the
Vulgate has _monstratum_.

P. 176, l. 9. _Saint Paul says._ 1 Cor. vii.; 1 Tim. iv. 3.

P. 176, l. 14. _On which Saint Paul says._ Heb. viii. 5.

P. 176, l. 16. _Veri adoratores._ Joh. iv. 23. _Ecce agnus Dei._ Joh.
i. 29.

P. 187, l. 11. _ne evacuata sit crux._ 1 ad Cor. i. 17. _ut non
evacuetur crux Christi._

P. 187, l. 12. _says that he came neither with wisdom nor with
signs._ See however 2 Cor. xii. 12. "Truly the signs of an apostle
were wrought among you in all patience, _in signs_ and wonders and
mighty deeds."

P. 191, l. 7. _Deliciae meae._ Prov. viii. 31. _Effundam._ Joel, ii.
28. _Dii estis._ Ps. lxxxii. 6. _Omnis caro foenum._ Is. xl. 6. _Homo
comparatus est._ Ps. xlix. 20. _Dixi in corde._ Eccles. iii. 18.

P. 192, l. 3. _Marton._ Probably a mistake of the amanuensis for
Miton. See p. 12, l. 22.

P. 192, l. 10. _Sapientius est hominibus._ 1 ad Cor. i. 25.

P. 194, l. 5. _Nemo ante obitum beatus est._ Ovid, _Met._ iii. 136.
The passage runs:--

                      _Dicique beatus
    Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet._

P. 194, l. 19. The citations from the Rabbis are taken from the
_Pugio Fidei_.

P. 195, l. 36. _Chronology of Rabbinism._ The chronology here given
is in many points at variance with modern scholarship.

P. 197, l. 19. _Salutare tuum expectabo._ Gen. xlix. 18.

P. 200, l. 12. _Miserere._ The first word of Ps. li., "_Miserere mei
Deus_." _Expectavi._ The first word of Ps. xl., "_Expectans expectavi
Dominum_."

P. 200, l. 29. _Dixit Dominus._ The first words of Ps. cx.

P. 209, l. 11. _Excaeca._ Is. vi. 10.

P. 210, l. 13. _nisi efficiamini._ Matt, xviii. 3.

P. 213, l. 21. _Quis mihi det ut._ Job, xix. 23-25.

P. 215, l. 5. _Quare fremuerunt gentes._ Ps. ii. 1, 2.

P. 215, l. 30. _Ingrediens mundum._ Probably a recollection of the
meaning, but not the words, of Heb. i. 6.

P. 215, l. 31. _Stone upon stone._ Mark, xiii. 2.

P. 216, l. 23. _in sanctificationem et in scandalum_, a partial
quotation of Isaiah, viii. 14.

P. 217, l. 3. _AEnigmatis._ The word nowhere appears, but the allusion
is no doubt to 1 ad Cor. xiii. 12. _Videmus nunc per speculum in
aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem._

P. 219, l. 3. _gladium tuum._ Ps. xlv. 3. _Accingere gladio tuo super
femur tuum, potentissime._

P. 220, l. 21. _He hath blinded them._ Is. vi. 10.

P. 221, l. 22. _Great Pan is dead._ Plutarch _De Oraculis_.

P. 221, l. 26. _Barcoseba_, or Barcochebas, a Jewish impostor who
claimed to be the Messiah, A.D. 135.

P. 222, l. 3. _Curse of the Greeks_, no doubt against those Heretics
who tried to discover the exact date of the end of the world.

P. 225, l. 19. _Quia non cognovit._ The quotation is modified from
1 ad Cor. i. 21, and with the important omission of the final word
"_credentes_."

P. 226, l. 24. _Quod ergo ignorantes quaeritis._ Adapted from Act. Ap.
xvii. 23. _Quod ergo ignorantes colitis ego annuncio vobis._

P. 226, l. 28. _via, veritas._ Joh. xiv. 6.

P. 227, l. 12. _Jaddus to Alexander._ Jaddus was the Jewish High
Priest, who on Alexander's invasion of Syria refused to aid him.
Thereupon Alexander marched on Jerusalem. Jaddus came out to meet him
in processional pomp, when the conqueror prostrated himself at his
feet, saying he had seen such a man in a dream, who had promised him
the Empire of Asia.

P. 228, l. 14. _Archimedes, though of princely birth._ Plutarch says
that Archimedes was of a family allied to that of Hiero, King of
Syracuse.

P. 229, l. 11. _I will bless those that bless thee._ Gen. xii. 3.
_Benedicam benedicentibus tibi._

P. 229, l. 13. _Parum est ut._ Is. xlix. 6. _Parum est ut sis mihi
servus ad suscitandas tribus Jacob et faeces Israel convertendas.
Ecce dedi te in lucem gentium._

P. 229, l. 15. _Non fecit taliter._ Ps. cxlvii. 20.

P. 230, l. 8. _Jesus Christ the Redeemer of all._ "_Jesu Redemptor
omnium_" is the first verse of the Christmas Vesper Hymn.

P. 230, l. 21. _Lord, when saw we thee an hungered?_ Matt. xxv. 34.

P. 231. _The Mystery of Jesus._ This fragment has only been included
by more recent editors. But it exists in the autograph MS., and
unquestionably forms a part of the intended work.

P. 231, l. 3. _turbare semetipsum._ Joh. xi. 33. In the text
_turbavit seipsum_.

P. 232, l. 9. _Eamus. Processit._ A recollection of Joh. xviii. 4,
but the word _eamus_ does not occur in the verse, being borrowed from
the account in Matt. xxvi. 46.

P. 233, l. 25. _ut immundus pro luto._ Possibly a reminiscence and
misquotation of 2 Pet. ii. 22. _Sus lota in volutabro luti._

P. 234, l. 33. _Noli me tangere._ Joh. xx. 17.

P. 235, l. 21. _Et tu conversus._ Luc. xxii. 32. _Conversus Jesus._
_ib._ 61. _before_ should be "after."

P. 238, l. 16. _Qui adhaeret Deo._ 1 ad Cor. v. 17. _Qui autem adhaeret
Domino unus spiritus est._

P. 238, l. 28. _because it has perhaps merited ours._ See Bossuet's
Catechism. _Qu'entendez vous par la Communion des Saints? J'entends
principalement la participation qu'ont tous les fideles au fruit des
bonnes oeuvres les uns des autres._

P. 240, l. 28. _Book of Wisdom._ Ch. ii. 6. But the sense only, and
not the words, is given.

P. 241, l. 16. _et non intres in judicium._ Ps. cxliii. 2.

P. 241, l. 19. _The goodness of God._ Rom. ii. 4.

P. 241, l. 20. _Let us do penance._ Jonah, iii. 9. But the sense
only, not the words, is quoted.

P. 243, l. 2. _qui gloriatur, in Domino glorietur._ 1 ad Cor. i. 31.

P. 243, l. 4. _libido sentiendi._ From Jansenius, _De statu naturae
lapsae_, ii. 8.

P. 243, l. 5. _Woe to the accursed land._ This and the following
paragraphs are taken from Saint Augustine's commentary on Ps.
cxxxvii., _Super flumina Babylonis_.

P. 244, l. 1. _Abraham took nothing for himself._ Gen. xiv. 24.

P. 244, l. 5. _Sub te erit appetitus tuus._ Gen. iv. 7.

P. 244, l. 29. _Multi crediderunt._ Joh. viii. 30-33.

P. 245, l. 17. _Comminutum cor._ No doubt a misquotation of Ps. li.
_cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies_.

P. 245, l. 18. _Albe vous a nomme._ Corneille, _Horace_, act ii. sc.
3.

P. 248, l. 1. _Omnis creatura subjecta est vanitati._ Eccles. iii.
19, but the true reading is "_cuncta subjacent vanitati_."

P. 249, l. 33. _Inclina cor meum._ Ps. cxix. 36.

P. 251, l. 13. _Ne evacuetur crux Christi._ 1 ad Cor. i. 17.

P. 253. _The Arrangement._ Scattered here and there in Pascal's MS.
were a number of notes concerning the plan, form, and matter of his
intended treatise, many of them marked with the word "_Ordre_." These
are gathered together by recent editors, and some others which seem
to cohere with them added, but Molinier's arrangement, as well as
that of Faugere, is necessarily somewhat arbitrary.

P. 254, l. 6. _Justus ex fide vivit._ Habac. ii. 4. Ad Rom. i. 17.

P. 254, l. 8. _fides ex auditu._ Ad Rom. x. 17.

P. 254, l. 14. _divide my moral qualities into four._ The classical
division of ancient philosophy was into four: prudence, temperance,
justice, magnanimity.

P. 254, l. 16. _Abstine et sustine._ The Stoic formula.

P. 257. _The Miracle of the Holy Thorn._ Marguerite Perier, Pascal's
niece, aged ten, was cured of lachrymal fistula on March 24, 1656,
after touching the diseased part with a reliquary containing a thorn
from the Saviour's crown. This was at the time that Port Royal was
suffering deeply from persecution, and was considered by many a
signal mark of the favour of heaven. The Jesuits did not deny the
miracle, but the conclusions drawn from it.

P. 257, l. 20. _those who heal by invocation of the devil._ Pascal,
when a child, was supposed both to have been made ill and restored to
health by a witch. He desires to show that this was no miracle.

P. 258, l. 9. _Believe the Church._ Matt. xviii. 17.

P. 258, l. 13. _Montaigne._ Cf. _Essais_, i. 26.

P. 258, l. 23. _Judaei signa petunt._ 1 ad Cor. i. 22.

P. 258, l. 25. _Sed plenum signis._ This and the following one are
not to be found. Pascal is probably citing Saint Paul from memory.

P. 258, l. 29. _Sed vos non creditis._ Joh. x. 26.

P. 261, l. 5. _Saint Augustine._ Pascal does not appear to refer to
any single passage, but to the general teaching of Saint Augustine.
But see especially _De Civit. Dei_, xxii. 9.

P. 262, l. 19. _Scimus quia venisti a Deo._ Joh. iii. 2.

P. 263, l. 3. _We have Moses._ John ix. 21.

P. 263, l. 30. _Quid debui._ Is. v. 4. _Quid est quod debui facere
vineae meae et non feci ei._

P. 264, l. 16. _Barjesus was blinded._ Acts xiii. 6-11.

P. 264, l. 22. _Si angelus._ A reference to ad Gal. i. 8.

P. 264, l. 28. _my good father._ Probably Father Annat. See p. 289,
l. 28.

P. 265, l. 21. _1 P. ix. 113, a. 10, ad. 2._ These signs refer to
the Summa of Saint Thomas Aquinas here quoted, and mean _Parte 1,
quaestione 113, articulo 10, ad objectionem 2_.

P. 265, l. 22. _Si tu es Christus._ Luc. xxii. 66.

P. 265, l. 23. _Opera quae ego facio._ Joh. v. 36.

P. 265, l. 25. _Sed non vos creditis._ Joh. x. 26.

P. 265, l. 29. _Nemo potest facere signa._ Joh. iii. 2.

P. 265, l. 34. _Generatio prava._ Matt. xii. 39.

P. 266, l. 5. _Nisi videritis signa non creditis._ Joh. iv. 48.

P. 266, l. 9. _Secundum operationem Satanae._ 2 ad Thess. ii. 9.

P. 266, l. 12. _Tentat enim vos Deus._ Deut. xiii. 3.

P. 266, l. 14. _Ecce praedixi vobis._ Matt. xxiv. 25.

P. 267, l. 26. _Father Lingende._ Claude de Lingendes, 1591-1660, was
a Jesuit preacher. His sermons were published in 1666.

P. 268, l. 11. _Ubi est Deus tuus._ Ps. xlii. 3.

P. 268, l. 22. _do not believe that the five propositions are in
Jansenius._ To explain this fully would need a far longer note than
can here be given. It may be said shortly that the allusion is to
the "Augustinus" of Cornelius Jansen, Bishop of Ypres. Two questions
arose: first, whether the propositions condemned were heretical, and
second, whether if heretical they were in Jansen's book. The second
assertion was that which the nuns of Port Royal refused to make. They
had not read the book, and could not affirm that of which they were
ignorant. The five propositions were on the Doctrines of Grace and
Free Will.

P. 268, l. 27. _Tu quid dicis._ These are partial quotations from
Joh. iv. 19, etc.

P. 269, l. 9. _Nemo facit virtutem._ Marc. ix. 38, but incorrectly.
The true reading is _Nemo est enim qui faciat_.

P. 269, l. 25. _Omne regnum divisum._ Matt. xii. 25.

P. 269, l. 28. _Si in digito Dei._ Luc. xi. 20.

P. 269, l. 35. _Vatable_, who died in 1517, was professor of Hebrew
at the College Royal established by Francis I. In 1539 Robert Etienne
published an edition of the Latin Bible of Leo of Modena--Rabbi
Jehuda--to which he added under Vatable's name, notes which were
not really Vatable's, but borrowed from various writers of the
Reformation. These notes were condemned by the Sorbonne. The Bible
known as that of Vatable contains the Hebrew, the Vulgate Version,
and that of Rabbi Jehuda.

P. 271, l. 23. _miracles of Vespasian._ Tacitus, _Hist._ iv. 81.

P. 273. _Jesuits and Jansenists._ A collection of fragments on these
subjects, which perhaps might be considered rather as an appendix to,
or notes for the _Provincial Letters_, than a part of the _Thoughts_,
properly so called. But they form part of the autograph MS.

P. 273, l. 9. _There is a time to laugh._ Eccles. iii. 4. _Responde,
ne respondeas._ Prov. xxvi. 4.

P. 275, l. 9. _Elias was a man like ourselves._ Quoted by memory as
from Saint Peter, but really from Saint James, v. 17.

P. 275, l. 14. _accused of many crimes._ Athanasius was accused of
rape, of murder, and of sacrilege. He was condemned by the Councils
of Tyre, A.D. 335, of Arles, A.D. 353, and of Milan A.D. 355. Pope
Liberius, after having long refused to ratify the condemnation, was
said to have finally done so A.D. 357. But this is disputed by recent
authorities. For Athanasius we are of course here to read Jansenius
and Arnauld; for Saint Theresa, la mere Angelique or la mere Agnes;
for Liberius, Clement IX.

P. 275, l. 33. _Antonio Escobar y Mendoza._ The Spanish Jesuit whose
system of morals was so severely handled by Pascal in the _Provincial
Letters_. He is among those whose names have given rise to a word:
"_escobarderie_" is a synonym for equivocation.

P. 276, l. 6. _Molina_, Louis, a Spanish Jesuit, born 1535, died
1601. The Jansenists accused his Commentary on the Summa of Saint
Thomas Aquinas of favouring a lax morality.

P. 277, l. 4. _Mohatra._ "The contract Mohatra, by which a man buys
cloth at a dear rate and on credit, to re-sell it at once to the same
person cheaply for ready money." Eighth _Provincial_.

P. 278, l. 21. _Est and non est._

P. 278, l. 26. _Vae qui conditis leges iniquas._ Is. x. 1. But the
Vulgate reads _Vae qui condunt_.

P. 279, l. 22. _M. de Condran._ No doubt Charles de Condren,
1588-1641, doctor of the Sorbonne, and second General of the French
Oratory, a society of priests founded by Cardinal de Berulle at Paris
in 1611.

P. 280, l. 7. _Sanctificavi praelium._ Mic. iii. 5.

P. 280, l. 12. _Ne convertantur._ Is. vi. 10.

P. 282, l. 21. _Coacervabunt tibi magistras._ 2 ad Tim. iv. 3, where
the Vulgate has "_sibi_."

P. 282, l. 28. _not to make appointments to bishoprics._ But a few
years after this Fathers La Chaise and Le Tellier, as Confessors to
the King, had this power in their hands.

P. 282, l. 31. _Father Brisacier_, born 1603, a Jesuit, and a warm
opponent of Jansenism. He wrote _Le Jansenisme confondu_, and several
minor works. He is constantly quoted in the _Provincial Letters_.

P. 283, l. 1. _Venice._ The Jesuits had just returned to Venice in
1657, having been expelled thence in 1606.

P. 283, l. 22. _Amice, ad quid venisti._ Matt. xxvi. 50.

P. 283, l. 24. _probability_, or, technically, probabilism.
Probabilism teaches that it is permissible to act on an opinion which
is less probable than the opinion opposed to it so long as there is
a solid ground for regarding it as probable _in itself_. Thus, if
out of three moral theologians of recognised authority, two give it
as their opinion that a certain course of conduct is unlawful, while
the third asserts it to be lawful, probabilism permits the adoption
in practice of the third opinion in opposition to the other two. A
confessor would therefore have no right to forbid it under pain of
sin.

P. 284, l. 12. _Dii estis._ Ps. lxxxii. 6.

P. 284, l. 13. _If my Letters are condemned at Rome._ The _Provincial
Letters_ were condemned at Rome, Sept. 6, 1657.

P. 285, l. 22. _imago._ An allusion to the famous panegyric on the
Jesuits called, "_Imago primi saeculi_." See Fifth _Provincial_.

P. 285, l. 36. _Si non fecissem quae alius non fecit._ Jon. xv. 24.

P. 286, l. 31. _These nuns._ The nuns of Port Royal were called upon
to sign the Formula which declared that the Five Propositions were
_in Jansenius_.

P. 287, l. 4. _Vide si via iniquitatis in me est._ Ps. cxxxix. 24.

P. 287, l. 15. _they are so no longer_, i.e. since the miracle.

P. 288, l. 18. _Vos autem non sic._ Luc. xxii. 26.

P. 289, l. 28. _Annat_, 1590-1670, a Jesuit priest, Provincial of
the Order, and Confessor to Louis XIV., 1654-1670. He wrote the
well-known book, _Le Rabat-joie des Jansenistes_, 1666, and to him
were addressed Pascal's Seventeenth and Eighteenth _Provincials_.

P. 290, l. 9. _Montalte._ Louis de Montalte was the pseudonym adopted
by Pascal as the writer of the _Provincial Letters_.

P. 290, l. 26. _A fructibus eorum._ Matt. vii. 16.

P. 291, l. 6. _Lessius_, Leonard, a Jesuit born at Brecht, near
Antwerp, 1554, died 1623, a pupil of Suarez. He was censured by the
Faculty of Louvain in 1584. He wrote, among others, a treatise, _De
licito usu aequivocationum et mentalium restrictionum_.

P. 291, l. 9. _Bauny._ Pascal in his Eighth _Provincial_ quotes an
opinion of Father Bauny on the question of restitution to be made by
one who has caused the burning of his neighbour's barn.

P. 291, l. 10. _quam primum._ A reference to the rule that if a
priest personally disqualified from saying Mass on account of any
mortal sin is yet obliged to do so for the sake of his parishioners,
it is sufficient that he make an act of contrition, and as soon as
possible "_quam primum_" seek the Sacrament of Penance.

P. 292, l. 18. _State super vias._ A partial quotation from Jer. vi.
16.

P. 293, l. 20. _Vince in bono malum._ Ad Rom. xii. 21.

P. 297, l. 5. _Bibite ex hoc omnes._ Matt xvii. 27.

P. 297, l. 7. _In quo omnes peccaverunt._ Ad Rom. v. 12.

P. 298, l. 10. _Ne timeas, pusillus grex._ Luc. xii. 32.

P. 298, l. 13. _Qui me recipit._ Matt. x. 40.

P. 298, l. 14. _Nemo scit neque Filius._ Luc. x. 22.

P. 298, l. 15. _Nemo lucida obumbravit._ Matt. xvii. v.

P. 303, l. 6. _plus poetice quam humane locutus es._ Petronius, c.
90, where the words have not the turn that Pascal here gives them.

P. 304, l. 2. _The part that I take in your sorrow._ The Chevalier
de Mere, in his _Discours de la Conversation_, says, that he had
been witness to a bet, that on opening a letter of condolence the
set phrase condemned above would occur, and that the lady to whom
the letter was addressed could not help laughing in spite of her
distress. Pascal's note is against writing mere formal phrases which
can thus be easily guessed. The Cardinal is Mazarin.

P. 304, l. 9. _M. le M._ Le Maistre, Antoine, 1608-1658. The allusion
is to _Les Plaidoyers et Harangues_ de M. le Maistre, Paris, 1657. On
the first page of Plaidoyer VI., _Pour un fils mis en religion par
force_, we find "_Dieu qui repand des aveuglements et des tenebres
sur les passions illegitimes_," and Pascal probably refers to this
passage as one in which the word _repandre_ could not be replaced by
_verser_.

P. 305, l. 23. _I judge by my watch._ Mlle. Perier says, that Pascal
always wore a watch attached to his left wrist-band.

P. 309, l. 27. _An example may be taken from the circulation of the
blood._ Apparently taken from Descartes, _Discours de la Methode_,
pt. v., in which Descartes speaks of Harvey's discovery.

P. 309, l. 33. _M. de Roannez._ Gouffier, Duc de Roannez, was a
friend of Pascal, some seven or eight years younger than he. He was a
devoted adherent of Port Royal, and died unmarried.

P. 312, l. 23. _Salomon de Tultie._ An anagram for Louis de Montalte,
see p. 290, l. 9.

P. 313, l. 11. _The story of the pike and frog._ This story has
hitherto escaped research.

P. 313, l. 17. _conatus recedendi._ Centrifugal force.

P. 316, l. 3. _When a strong man armed._ Luke xi. 21.




_INDEX._




_INDEX._


  Abel and Cain, 267

  Abraham, 197

  ---- stones can become the children of, 137

  ---- promises made to, 169

  ---- foretold the coming of the Messiah, 213

  ---- above revelation, 261

  Absolutions without signs of regret, 294, 295

  Academicians, 110, 184

  Action, we must look beyond the, at our past, 315

  Actions, virtuous, all crimes have found place among, 61

  Acuteness, loss of, 100

  Adam, 126

  ---- witness of the Messiah, 169, 174

  ---- his glorious state, 193

  ---- tradition from, 201

  ---- the first and the second, 231

  Admiration spoils everything, 58

  Advent of Jesus Christ, 133

  Advents, the two, characters of each of them, 132

  Agamemnon, 173

  Age, its influence on judgment, 27

  Agitation, in seeking repose we are only seeking, 34

  Agony of Jesus Christ, 231

  ---- ---- lasts even to the end of the world, 231

  Alexander, compared to Caesar, 41

  ---- his chastity, 74

  ---- and his successors, foretold by Daniel, 144

  ---- working unconsciously for the Gospel, 147

  ---- Jaddus and, 227

  Amos, translation of a passage in, 155

  Ananias, 271

  Animals, mind and instinct of, 313

  Annat, Father, 289

  Antichrist, his miracles foretold by Jesus Christ, 259

  ---- he will speak openly against God, 263

  ---- conclusions we may draw from his miracles, 267

  Apocalyptics, the, 166

  Apostles, their miracles, 119

  ---- foresaw heresies, 128

  ---- gave us the key to interpretation of the Old Testament, 159

  ---- hypotheses that they were deceived or deceivers, 223

  ---- and Exorcists, 267

  Apple, the golden, 173

  Archesilas, the sceptic, 63

  Archimedes, his greatness, 228

  Arians, their doctrine, 274

  Aristotle, 78

  Arius, the miracles of his time, 267

  Artisan, an, who dreams, 109

  Astrology, folly of, 75

  Atheism, often produced by a false knowledge of the world's judgment, 7

  ---- mark of force of mind only to a certain degree, 111

  Atheists, carelessness of, monstrous, 4

  ---- two kinds of, 4

  ---- their reasoning, 5

  ---- are despicable, 8

  ---- feelings they should inspire in true Christians, 8, 12

  ---- ought to say things perfectly clear, 111

  ---- their objections against the Resurrection, 223

  ---- to pity and revile, 253

  Athens, 120

  Atom, man is but an, 5

  Augustin, Saint, quoted, 80, 160

  ---- what he says of miracles, 261

  ---- authority of his opinion, 296

  Augustus compared to Julius Caesar, 41

  ---- what he said on hearing of the Massacre of the Innocents, 221

  Authors, their vanity misplaced, 315

  ---- how to understand the meaning of, 167


  Babylon, carrying away into, 122

  ---- the rivers of, 243

  Babylonians, the, 127

  Barcoseba, 221

  Barjesus, 264

  Barreaux, Des, 113

  Bauny, Father, quoted, 291

  Beatitude, the eighth, 252

  Beauty, to love on account of, is not love, 80

  ---- certain kind of, which suits our nature, 301

  ---- poetical, what is meant by this, 304

  Belief, three means of, 251

  ---- labour to come to, 99

  ---- what should be the rule of, 308

  Benedictines, the, 282

  Bible, the most ancient book, 120

  Birth an advantage, 71

  Blame and praise, 58

  Blood, circulation of the, taken as an example, 309

  Bodily functions, 31

  Body, relation of, to its members, 237

  Bourseys, M., 280

  Brave deeds, which are the most estimable, 58

  Brisacier, Father, 282

  Brutes, no admiration for each other, 58


  Cabala, proofs of Jesus Christ by the, 157

  Caesar, Julius, 147

  ---- compared to Augustus and Alexander, 41

  Calvin, 266

  Calvinists, their errors, 298

  Canonical books, proved by the heretical, 289

  Carnal, those who are, 242

  Carthusian compared to a soldier, 74

  Casuists, the faithful cannot reasonably follow their maxims, 277

  ---- cannot assure an erring conscience, 293

  ---- with reference to the reason and the will, 293

  ---- allow free action to lust, 293

  ---- their doctrines, 295

  Catholics and heretics, 267

  Celsus, 116, 214

  Champaign, taken as a comparison, 32

  Chancellor, taken as an example, 55

  Chances, doctrine of, 80, 98

  Characters, Christian and human, 245

  Charity and lust, 128

  ---- sole aim of the Scripture, 170

  ---- is not a figurative precept, 170

  ---- supernatural distance of mind from, 227

  ---- its superiority to minds and bodies, 228

  ---- truth without, is but the image of God, 250

  Charron, estimate of his work, 17

  Children frightened at the face they have daubed, 57

  China, 299

  ---- thoughts on, 115

  ---- history of, 117

  ---- religion of, 119

  Chinese, their histories, 173

  Choice, that we must make a, between belief and unbelief, reasons for
        each alternative, 98

  Christ, contradictory predictions concerning, 136

  ---- promised and awaited from the beginning of the world, 197

  ---- came in the fulness of time, 197

  Christianity, in what it consists, 250

  ---- changes wrought at its coming, 134

  ---- elevates and abases man, 187

  Christians astonish philosophers, 43

  ---- true, 71

  ---- are the free children of God, 122

  ---- should look on themselves as members of a body, 237

  ---- how the example of the martyrs touches a true, 238

  ---- two kinds of, 242

  ---- there are few true, 243

  ---- their hopes are mingled with enjoyment and fear, 246

  ---- happiness and virtues of true, 247

  ---- should unite themselves to Jesus Christ in order not to be hateful
        to God, 247

  ---- true, submit to folly, 247

  ---- why they believe without having read the Gospels, 248

  ---- who believe without proofs cannot persuade an infidel, though
        persuaded themselves, 249

  Church, true justice found in the, 67

  ---- prefigured by the Synagogue, 176

  ---- dangers it has run, 198

  ---- the, when persecuted is like a vessel beaten about by a storm, 211

  ---- that is a good state of the, in which it is upheld by God alone,
        241

  ---- her miracles against her enemies, 266

  ---- ancient and modern, influence of tradition, 274

  ---- comparison of what took place in ancient, and now, 275

  ---- defended by God against corruption, 277

  ---- unity and plurality of the, power of the Pope, 287

  ---- judges of men by outward actions, 294

  ---- power of the, in confession, compared to that of parliament, 294

  ---- teaches, but God inspires, 294

  ---- discipline of the, needs reform, 295

  Cicero, false beauties we admire in, 302

  ---- quoted, 110

  Circumcision only a sign, 175

  Clearness, why religion does not possess it, 3

  Cleobuline, a character in a romance, 32

  Cleopatra, the nose of, 60

  Communing, secret, of man with himself, 46

  Compliments, dislike of, 315

  Composition of a work, 302

  Concupiscence, source of all our movements, 81

  Condition, our desires paint for us a happy, 74

  Condran, M. de, his opinions, 279

  Condrieu, the grapes of, 32

  Confession, auricular, defence of, 85

  ---- joy and confidence felt after, 252

  Confessors of the great, 29

  Conscience, evil done sometimes by, 279

  Contradiction in man, 44, 60, 181

  ---- does not prove that a thing is false, 210

  ---- apparent, in Scripture, examples, 168

  ---- between different passages of Scripture, 220

  Contrition is necessary in penitence, absolution not enough, 295

  Conversion, in what it consists, 245

  Copernicus, 101

  Corneille, quoted, 245

  Corruption of nature, one of the establishments of the Christian
        religion, 6

  ---- of man, proved by the wicked and the Jews, 191

  ---- those in, should know it, 255

  Covenant, foretold by Daniel, 144

  ---- announced by Scripture, 168

  Craft, when power attacks it, 69

  Creatures, we should not attach ourselves to them, 240

  Cripples do not irritate us, 45

  Cromwell, reflections on his death, 76

  Cross, by it alone can we be saved, 187

  Curiosity is mere frivolity, 60

  Custom, a power, 69

  ---- belief arising from, 77

  ---- how established, may be upset, 62

  ---- the creator of, 62

  ---- a second nature which destroys the former, 64

  ---- must be followed, 64

  ---- is our nature, 65

  ---- sways the automaton, which draws the intellect after, 77

  ---- how useful to accustom us to truth, 77

  ---- leads to a choice of occupation, 78

  Cypher, types are a, with a double sense, 158

  ---- of the Scripture as given us by Saint Paul, 176

  Cyrus, 128, 147, 151


  Damned, the, condemned by their own reason, 296

  Dancing, why pursued, 35

  Daniel, the seventy weeks of, their calculation, 133, 143

  ---- the little stone of, 136

  ---- explanation of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar in, 141

  ---- vision of the ram and he-goat in, 142

  ---- his prophecy, 171

  Darius, King of the Persians, 144

  David, a single phrase of, 122

  ---- the kingdom of his race foretold by all the prophets, 132

  ---- witness of Christ, 140

  ---- foretold the Messiah, 170

  Death, to be dreaded by those who are careless of religion, 5

  ---- Montaigne's opinions on, 17

  ---- fear of, 29

  ---- the thought of, is harder to bear than death itself, 38

  ---- feared Death, 232

  Degrees, why there are different, among men, 56

  Deism, almost as far removed from Christianity as atheism, 204

  Deluge is a miracle, 169

  Democritus, quoted, 21

  Demonstration, not the only means of persuasion, 79

  Demonstrations, not certain that there are true, 110

  _De omni scibili_, title of a thesis of Pico della Mirandola, 22

  Desargues, the grapes of, 32

  Descartes useless and uncertain, 304

  ---- criticism of his opinions on the machine, 312

  Despair, knowledge of our wretchedness without that of God creates, 93

  Devoutness, different to goodness, 279

  Devil, the, troubled the zeal of the Jews, 122

  ---- what is done by invocation of, no miracle, 257

  ---- Jesus Christ destroyed the empire of the, over the heart, 269

  Dialogues, the arrangement by, 253

  Disciples and true disciples, difference between, 244

  Discourse, natural, inclined to love him who makes a, 302

  Discourses on humility, 76

  Disease, source of error in man, 54

  Disesteem, the fear we have of, of others, 44

  Disproportion of man, 19

  Disputes, ended by miracles, 267

  Diversion, 33

  ---- is all that men can do for happiness, 34

  ---- why men seek it, 34

  ---- is the greatest of our miseries, 38

  ---- the search for, proves that men are not happy, 38

  ---- what is meant by, 255

  Diversity, root of, 67

  ---- and uniformity, 283

  Divinity, proof of, by works of nature, 91

  Docility, too much, is a vice as natural as unbelief, 243

  Doctor, the, a character in the drama, 31

  Doctrine, a test of miracles, 257

  ---- a false, cannot be proved by miracles, 264

  Doctrines, a multitude of, 138

  Dogmatists, their opinion on natural principles, 106

  Donatists, have no miracles, 261

  Doubt in religion is a great evil, 5

  Drama, life treated as a, 75

  Dream, life compared to a, 109

  Duties, divers, owed to divers merits, 68


  Eclipses, why it is said they presage misfortune, 75

  Egyptians, their religion, 119

  ---- mean iniquities in the Bible, 171

  ---- their histories, 173

  ---- their conversion foretold by Isaiah, 175

  Elect, all things work together for good to the, 129

  Elijah and the false prophets, 267

  Eloquence, continuous, wearies, 39

  ---- definition of, to be eloquent we must study the heart of man, 301

  ---- is painted thought, 301

  ---- there are those who speak well and write ill, 303

  Enemies, what must be understood by this word in the prophecies,
        164, 170

  England, King of, 75

  Enquirers and the wise, 242

  Epaminondas as an example of valour and humanity, 30

  Epictetus, 72, 226

  ---- his method of writing, 312

  Epicureans, 92

  Epigrams, a maker of, 81

  Equality of goods is just, 67

  Error, common, sometimes useful to calm the curiosity of man, 312

  Escobar, 275, 280

  Esdras, the story in, 126

  ---- discussion on the book of, 126

  Establishment, greatness of, 79

  Eucharist, the, 165

  ---- a type of glory, 170

  ---- folly of not believing in the, reason, 224

  ---- wholly the body of Jesus Christ, 299

  Eusebius, quoted on Esdras, 127

  Evangelists painted in Jesus Christ an heroic soul, 222

  Evidence for God, not in nature, 92

  Evil is easy, 59

  Examples, those which are taken as proof are often more difficult than
        what they are meant to prove, 308

  Exception, troublesome to be an, to the rule, 271

  Excuses sometimes bad, 315

  Exorcists, Jewish, beaten by devils, 264

  Experience, 26

  Expressions, false and tyrannical, examples of, 68

  Ezekiel, spoke evil of Israel, like the heathens, 289


  Faith, habit of, 65

  ---- man without, cannot know the true good or justice, 95

  ---- that we must give up pleasure in order to gain, 100

  ---- wherein it consists, 193, 280

  ---- is not in our power, 249

  ---- is a gift of God, 250

  ---- above the senses, but not contrary to them, 250

  ---- received at baptism source of the whole life of the Christian, 250

  ---- embraces contradictory truths, why, 273

  ---- Pascal's profession of, 235

  Falsehood, man is only, duplicity, and contradiction, 76

  Fancy, called feeling by some, 309

  Fascination, 101, 165

  Faults, we should recognise them, 85

  Fear, to, and not to fear, 298

  ---- a true, is born of faith, 252

  ---- false, comes from doubt, 252

  Feeble souls, 289

  Figurative, that the Jewish law was, 167

  Finite, the, annihilated in presence of the infinite, 96

  Flattery, consequent on our desire not to know the truth, 86

  Fly, enough to render man incapable of sound judgment, 27

  Fool, a man believes he is a, by dint of telling him so, 46

  Forms, their value, 280

  Foundation, supernatural of our, 286

  ---- of our faith, 115

  France, 56

  Francis Xavier, Saint, 278

  Frenchman, the, 80

  Friend, important to have a true, and to choose him well, 315

  Friendship only exists by concealment of truth, 86

  Frivolity of the world, little known, 41

  Fronde, injustice of the, 67

  Fundamentals, chapter on, 255

  Future, our thoughts occupied with the, 73


  Galilee, the word, pronounced by chance, caused the accomplishment of
        a mystery, 218

  Genealogies, the two, of Jesus Christ, 125

  Genealogy of Jesus Christ in Old Testament designedly mixed with
        others, 220

  Gentiles, their conversion foretold by Jesus Christ, 136, 214

  ---- prophecy of Isaiah on conversion of, 147, 148

  ---- conversion of the, reserved for the grace of the Messiah, 218

  Gentlemen, we never teach men to be, 78

  ---- universal quality to be, 79

  Germans, the, 61

  Glory, the search after, is a mark of the vileness and excellence of
        man, 44

  ---- sweetness of, 59

  God, a, who hideth himself, 3

  ---- the greatest sensible mark of the power of, 19

  ---- unites in himself two infinites, 22

  ---- in, alone is our happiness, 39

  ---- the, of the Christians, who he is, 92

  ---- dangers which those run who seek, apart from Jesus Christ, 93

  ---- of Christians the only good, the only rest of the soul is in him,
        93

  ---- we may well know, without knowing what he is, 97

  ---- that there is less risk in wagering that there is a, than that
        there is not, 98

  ---- man without, is in ignorance and misery, 104

  ---- of the philosophers, 111

  ---- man of himself cannot come to, 114

  ---- alone is master of the Jews, 122

  ---- foresaw heresies, 128

  ---- sometimes spoke by figures, 160

  ---- the power of, shown by his conduct to Jewish people, 161

  ---- idea of, that the true religion, should present, 179

  ---- the Christian religion commands that we should love and follow,
        182

  ---- that in spite of our vileness it is not incredible that, should
        unite himself to us, 185

  ---- reveals himself to, and hides himself from man, 193

  ---- infinite, without parts, 205

  ---- if, is the end he is the beginning, 206

  ---- why, was hidden in his first advent, 207

  ---- that, willed to hide himself, and that the religion which says so
        is true, 208

  ---- chooses rather to sway the will than the intellect, 208

  ---- why, has permitted many religions to exist, 212

  ---- impossible and useless to know, without Jesus Christ, 226

  ---- speaks rightly of God, 227

  ---- we must love, only, 238

  ---- we should spend our life either in pleasing or in seeking, 240

  ---- exercises at once his mercy and his judgment to the world, 241

  ---- has come to bring war among men, 246

  ---- what is pleasing to, is usually displeasing to man, 246

  ---- forbids some things implicitly, and not explicitly, 247

  ---- can alone give faith to Christians, 249

  ---- knowledge and love of, 252

  ---- cannot lead men into error by miracles, 263

  ---- cannot favour a doctrine which destroys the Church, 269

  ---- foretold the disorders which the Church would undergo, 278

  ---- heals those who know him, 280

  ---- no sign ever given by Devil without a stronger sign on the part
        of, 286

  ---- the heart is conscious of, not the reason, 307

  Good, almost unique, 59

  ---- philosophers do not know what is the true, 181

  ---- and evil, meaning of the words, 192

  Good birth, its advantages, 68

  Good breeding, 271

  Good sense, argument against scepticism, 110

  Gospel, prophecies cited in the, their use, 133

  ---- the kings of old worked unconsciously for the glory of the, 147

  ---- figures of the, their application, 160

  ---- all the, has reference to Jesus Christ, 226

  Grace, its action on man, 108

  ---- the figure of glory, 161

  ---- law, and nature, 250

  ---- needed to make a man a saint, 296

  ---- opposed to nature, 296

  Grandeur to be felt must be abandoned, 40

  Great men and little have the same accidents, 75

  ---- are allied to the people, 74

  Greatness, infinity of, most obvious to the senses, 21

  ---- and littleness of man, 43

  ---- of man consists in knowing he is miserable, 47

  ---- of man even in sensuality, 69

  ---- of the human soul consists in knowing how to keep the mean, 76

  ---- has no lustre for those who seek understanding, 227

  Greece, 120

  Greek legislators, 121

  Greeks, 197, 222

  Grotius, 140


  Haggai, his prophecy, 156

  Happiness of man, in what it consists, 49

  ---- all men seek, 95

  ---- there was once in man a true, 95

  ---- of man with God, 89

  ---- common aim of ordinary men and of saints, but their ideals are
        different, 244

  Happy, why man cannot be, 74

  Hatred of self necessary, 238

  ---- ---- the true and only virtue, 240

  Heart and reason, comparison between actions of, 307

  ---- those who judge by the, do not understand the process of
        reasoning, 308

  ---- the, we know truth by, as well as by reason, 102

  ---- believes for its own reasons, 307

  Heat, what it is, 313

  Hebrews, the, their manner of counting, 144

  Heel of a slipper, 58

  Hell, fear of, 100

  Heresies, the source of all, 273

  ---- the way to hinder, 274

  ---- various, 297

  ---- foreseen by God, 128

  Heresy, exclusion of a truth a source of, 274

  Heretics, the Jesuits hinder their conversion, 281

  Herod, 147, 218, 221

  Hesiod, the book of, 121

  Hilary, Saint, 127, 278

  History, all that is not contemporaneous is open to suspicion, 174

  Holy Sacrament, Catholic and heretical doctrines on, 274

  Holy Thorn, the miracle of the, 257

  ---- conclusion to be drawn from the miracle of the, 269

  Homer, quoted, 120

  Homer's writings, romances, 173

  Huguenots, their errors concerning the Pope, 288

  Hunting, sought for the diversion, 34

  ---- is a royal sport, 35


  "I," the, consists in my thought, 76

  ---- where does it reside, 80

  ---- each, the enemy of all others, 84

  Identity of number and matter, 299

  Ignorance, natural, is the best wisdom of man, 83

  ---- of man, 104

  Iliad, the, 173

  Illusion, all men under an, 71

  Imaginary life, the, 58

  Imagination, deceptive powers of the, 51

  ---- faculty of, 51

  ---- described, 51

  ---- great complacency of the active, 52

  ---- enlarges little objects and belittles the great, 56

  ---- cords of, 56

  Immortality of the soul, importance to be sure of this, 101

  Impiety, ill-bred people only incapable of, 8

  Impressions, old, man deceived by, 54

  Inability of man to attain good, 95

  Incapacity to prove truth, 109

  Incarnation, the, shows man the greatness of his misery, 188

  Incomprehensible, things which appear such, 205

  Inconstancy of man, 26

  ---- its causes, 31

  ---- examples of, 79

  Indifference, unfairness of men who live in, as to the truth, 9

  Indifferent, the, in religion not to be despised, 8

  Indulgences, 274

  Inequality is necessary among men, but opens the door to tyranny, 68

  Infallibility would be a strange miracle, 288

  Infinite, nothing, 96

  ---- ignorant of the nature of the, and why, 96

  Injustice of self-love, 239

  ---- that others should attach themselves to us, 240

  ---- letter on, 254

  Innocents, Massacre of the, 221

  Inquisition, the, and the Society, 284

  Insensibility of man, 12

  Instability, 101

  Instinct and experience, 26

  ---- we have an, which raises us, 44

  ---- and reason, marks of two natures, 44

  Intellect, the, believes naturally, 77

  Intelligence, place of human, in the order of intelligible things, 22

  Interest, our own, is a source of error, 54

  Irenaeus, Saint, 127

  Isaac, 197

  Isaiah, translation of a passage of, 147

  ---- translation of several prophecies of, 150

  ---- foretold the Messiah, 154

  ---- foretold that miracles would not be believed, 258

  Italy, 120, 148


  Jacob, 126

  ---- his death-bed prophecy, 140

  ---- foretold the coming of Jesus Christ, 197

  Jaddus, 227

  Jansenists, and the ancient saints, 275

  ---- heretics, and Jesuits, 296

  Jansenius, 268

  Jeremiah, his prophecy concerning the reprobation of the Temple and
        the sacrifices, 149

  ---- and Hananiah, 267

  ---- explanation of a word in, 270

  Jesuits and Jansenists, 273

  ---- destroy the three notes of religion, 275

  ---- are like heretics, 275

  ---- corrupt the laws of the Church, 276

  ---- corrupt religion, 277

  ---- compared to false prophets, 278

  ---- their injustice and hypocrisy, 278

  ---- their hardness greater than that of the Jews, 279

  ---- vanity of the, 280

  ---- in corrupting their judges they make them unjust, 282

  ---- given up to the spirit of lying, 282

  ---- exaggerated notion they have of their importance, 285

  ---- it is good that their deeds should be unjust, 287

  ---- their lax opinions displeasing because they have exceeded all
        bounds, 290

  ---- duplicity of the, 292

  ---- have abandoned the old rules and follow reason, compared to the
        unbelieving Jews, 292

  Jesus Christ, redemption by, one of the fundamentals of religion, 6

  ---- apart from, man has no communion with God, 91

  ---- the goal of all, and the centre to which all tends, 92

  ---- knowledge of, 93

  ---- difference between, and Mahomet, 116

  ---- no man can do what, did, 116

  ---- foretold by the Jewish people, 122

  ---- used the order of charity, not of the intellect, 128

  ---- foretold and announced by prophecies, 131

  ---- small in his beginnings, 136

  ---- betrayed, 140

  ---- foretold as to the time and the state of the world, 147

  ---- has given us the interpretation of the Old Testament cipher, 159

  ---- prefigured by Joseph, 164

  ---- in, all dissonances of Scripture are brought to harmony, 167

  ---- according to carnal Christians, 172

  ---- announced by Adam, 174

  ---- proofs of the divinity of, 213

  ---- came with all the circumstances foretold, 213

  ---- no man has had so great renown, none enjoyed it less, 214

  ---- all the glory of, for our sakes, to enable us to recognise him, 214

  ---- the office of, 314

  ---- foretold and foreteller, 215

  ---- why, did not come in a visible manner, why in figures, 216

  ---- has come to sanctify and to blind, 216

  ---- we can have nothing but veneration for, 216

  ---- special prophecies regarding, 217

  ---- is the more to be loved in not having done as the rabbis said, 219

  ---- not known by contemporary writers, 221

  ---- clearness and simplicity of the language of, 222

  ---- why, was weak in his agony, 222

  ---- centre of the two Testaments, 226

  ---- has made known to men their misery, and given the remedy, 226

  ---- greatness and lowliness of, 228

  ---- for all, 229

  ---- compared to Moses, 229

  ---- the redeemer of all, 230

  ---- would not have the testimony of devils, 230

  ---- why he would be put to death with the forms of justice, 230

  ---- leaves the wicked in their blindness, 230

  ---- alone in his agony, 231

  ---- only once complained, 231

  ---- considered in all persons and in ourselves, 234

  ---- how, gives himself in communion, 234

  ---- words of, to man, 235

  ---- has adopted our sins, and admitted us into covenant with him, 247

  ---- worked miracles as witnesses of the prophecies, 261

  ---- has verified by his miracles that he was the Messiah, 262

  ---- without the miracles not blameworthy not to believe in, 270

  ---- the two natures of, source of contradictions, 273

  ---- all faith consists in, and in Adam, 280

  ---- came to bring war, 281

  ---- a stone of stumbling, 283

  ---- never condemned without a hearing, 283

  ---- appeal to his tribunal from that of the Pope, 284

  ---- did not die for all, heresy of, 296

  Jews, their situation in the midst of the world, 119

  ---- their expectation of a Redeemer, 120

  ---- the most ancient nation known to men, 120

  ---- sprung from one man only, 120

  ---- declared that all the world is in error, 121

  ---- were slaves of sin, 122

  ---- their dispersion, bore the prophecies into all regions of the
        world, 131

  ---- were a carnal people, 162

  ---- their religion the true, 162

  ---- the prophecies interpreted by the, according to their carnal
        instincts, 163

  ---- their refusal of Christ has given an additional mark of him, 164

  ---- their explanation of Scripture defective, 167

  ---- type of the chosen people, 169

  ---- loved the shadow and misunderstood the substance, 170

  ---- hold a midway place between Christians and pagans, 172

  ---- two kinds of, 172

  ---- antiquity of the, 173

  ---- sincerity of the, proved by the care with which they preserved
        the Bible, 173

  ---- formed to serve as witnesses of the Messiah, 174

  ---- prove Christianity by their present condition, 191

  ---- the religion of the true, is the same as that of Christians, 198

  ---- in slaying Messiah afforded a final proof of him, 218

  ---- their perpetuity and miserable state prove Jesus Christ, 219

  ---- their second destruction will never end, 220

  ---- bound to believe the miracles of Jesus Christ, 263

  ---- the hardness of the Jesuits surpasses that of the, 279

  Job knew the misery of man, 45

  ---- the book of, regards Jesus Christ as centre and object, 213

  John Baptist, Saint, 140, 230

  ---- and Jesus Christ, 201

  Jonah, a sign of the resurrection, 266

  Joseph, son of Jacob, ordered that he should not be buried in Egypt, 141

  Josephus on the Jewish law, 120

  Joshua, the first of God's people who had this name, 213

  Judas, Jesus did not regard in, his enmity, 232

  Judge, authority of the, 65

  Judgment, instability of the, 27

  ---- confusion of the judgment of man, 32

  ---- and the intellect, 307

  Justice, what is the essence of, 62

  ---- what is, 67

  ---- of God, 96

  ---- influenced by imagination and the passions, 53

  ---- and truth, man cannot attain them, 54

  ---- man is ignorant of, 61

  ---- changes with the climate, 61

  ---- human is not the true justice, 62

  ---- is what is established, 64

  ---- the false, of Pilate, 234

  ---- of God, which abases the pride of man, 241

  Just man, takes for himself nothing of the world, 244

  ---- compared to Abraham, 244

  ---- acts by faith in the smallest things, 244

  ---- takes part only in unpleasant things, 244


  King without diversion is full of miseries, 40

  ---- man a discrowned, 47

  ---- whence comes the respect paid a, 55

  ---- on what the power of a, is based, 55

  ---- and tyrant, 72

  ---- what is the happiness of a, 34

  Kingships, duchies, and magistracies real and necessary, 76

  Knowledge of God our only good, 96

  ---- intuitive, where it leads us, 19

  ---- we should have of ourselves, 101

  Koran, foundation of the Mahomedan religion, 115

  ---- and St. Matthew, 116


  Lacedaemon, 120

  Lacedaemonians, 238

  Lamech, 126, 197

  Language, examples of too careful, 304

  Latins, 197

  Latitude, three degrees of, 61

  Law, instance in which the, was justly violated, 297

  ---- of the Jews, served as model for the best laws of antiquity, 121

  ---- ---- severe and rigorous as to religious worship, 121

  ---- ---- is figurative, 167

  ---- Christian, foretold by the prophets, 135

  ---- and grace, 250

  ---- and nature, 250

  Laws, natural, there is not a single universal, 61

  ---- why we follow ancient, 67

  Lessius, 291

  Letters, arrangement by, 253

  Liancourt, the frog and the pike of, 313

  Liars, some are, simply for lying's sake, 77

  Life, the frailest thing in the world, 12

  ---- its short duration, 28

  ---- the last act of, 75

  ---- a perpetual illusion, 86

  ---- compared to a dream, 105

  ---- religious, both easy and difficult, 248

  Lingende, Father, 267

  Littleness of man, what we call nature in animals is, 47

  Logicians, 65

  Love, why it changes its object, 32

  ---- shows the frivolity of man, 60

  ---- representation of, at the theatre, 248

  ---- source of faith, 289

  Lust, threefold division of, 243

  ---- the three kinds of, have made three sects, 113

  Lusts, compared to three rivers, 243

  Lute, to be skilled in playing the, 72


  Machine, letter which shows the use of proofs by the, 254

  ---- of Descartes; defects of this hypothesis, 312

  ---- the calculating, compared to animals, 313

  Macrobius, 221

  Mad, men are of necessity, 78

  Magistrate, taken as an example of influence of imagination, 52

  ---- the pomp with which they are surrounded, 53

  Mahomet, the soldiers of, 65

  ---- thoughts on, 115

  ---- foundation of his religion, 115

  ---- difference between Jesus Christ and, 116

  ---- forbade reading, 116

  ---- renders testimony to himself, 116

  ---- his doctrine is ridiculous, 117

  ---- religion of, 119

  Maimonides, Moses, 157

  Malchus, 235

  Man, his ignorance, 5

  ---- his destiny, 6

  ---- unfairness of, in living indifferent to Religion, 9

  ---- blindness of, 12

  ---- worthlessness of, 13

  ---- comparison between, and nature, 19

  ---- presumption of, in wishing to know nature, 21

  ---- thinks he is able to comprehend the infinitely little, 22

  ---- must not look for certainty or stability, 23

  ---- in order to know himself should know all that is in relation to
        him, 24

  ---- the two natures of, bodily and spiritual, excludes us from the
        knowledge of nature, 24

  ---- stamps with his complex being all simple things, 25

  ---- twofold manner of considering the nature of, 26

  ---- nature has placed, in the centre of things, 26

  ---- all is fatal to, even those things made to serve him, 31

  ---- whence comes his happiness, 33

  ---- is surrounded with all that may divert him, 37

  ---- cannot think of two things at once, 38

  ---- seeks diversion as a remedy for his evils, 39

  ---- knows not in what rank to place himself, 43

  ---- cannot bear to be despised, 42

  ---- vileness of, in that he submits himself to the brutes, 44

  ---- neither angel nor brute, 45

  ---- should know his greatness and his vileness, but not one without
        the other yet is contrary to God, 45

  ---- is only a reed, but a reed which thinks, 46

  ---- has fallen from a better nature, 47

  ---- whole dignity of, lies in thought, 48

  ---- what he should desire, 48

  ---- is ignorant of true justice, 61

  ---- is incapable of truth and of goodness, 66

  ---- is full of wants, and cares only for those who can satisfy them,
        75

  ---- the honourable, 75

  ---- is not a necessary being, 76

  ---- automatic as well as intellectual, 77

  ---- only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, 87

  ---- his defects and his incapacity, 106

  ---- that he has fallen from his former state, 108

  ---- is full of matters which take him out of self, 113

  ---- ordinary life of, like that of the saints, 161

  ---- can be happy only in loving God and in union with him, 179

  ---- moral diseases of, 181

  ---- isolation, blindness, and misery of, 183

  ---- double nature of, 185

  ---- should know his defects, and esteem that religion which promises
        precious remedies, 185

  ---- should conform his sentiments to religion, 186

  ---- his two states of grace and corruption proved from Scripture, 191

  ---- his dignity while innocent and now, 194

  ---- without Jesus Christ is in vice and misery, 226

  ---- before Jesus Christ knew nothing of himself, 226

  ---- is not worthy of God, but not incapable of being rendered worthy,
        227

  ---- often mistakes his imagination for his heart, 308

  ---- cannot understand certain effects of nature,313

  Martial, 81

  Marton, 192

  Martyrs, why the example of their deaths touches us, 238

  Masorah, the, 123

  Mathematics and the practical mind, 310

  Matter cannot know itself, 24

  Mediator, God cannot be known without a, 92

  ---- without a, there can be no communion between God and man, 245

  Mediocrity, nothing good but, 76

  Mem, discussion on the subject, 166

  Members, relation of the, to the body, 237

  ---- the body formed of thinking, 237

  ---- must have the same will as the body, 239

  Memory is necessary for every operation of the reason, 309

  Men, naturally hate each other, 70

  ---- epigram upon one-eyed, 81

  Mercy of God, its greatness, 208

  ---- calls to repentance, 241

  ---- why we implore, 241

  Merit, man's judgment of, 192

  ---- an ambiguous word, 297

  Messiah, that the, should mould a new people by his spirit, 122

  ---- effect and tokens of the coming of the, 135

  ---- that the, would convert the Gentiles and cast down all idols, 136

  ---- what the rabbis expected of him, 157

  ---- that, would deliver his people from their enemies, what this
        means, 170

  ---- the carnal Jews' understanding as to the, 172

  ---- actual state of the Jews proves Jesus Christ the true, 191

  Mexico, the historians of, 118

  Millenarians, their extravagances, 166

  Mind and body, union of, a mystery to man, 25

  Mind, infinite distance between body and, 227

  Mine, thine, 68

  Miracles, in general, 257

  ---- all belief rests on, 171

  ---- strengthen faith, 210

  ---- not needed to prove that we must love God, 241

  ---- the importance of, rules to recognise them, 257

  ---- are the test of doctrine, 257

  ---- unbelief in, foretold, 258

  ---- that the existence of false, proves that there are true, 259

  ---- Jesus Christ verified that he was the Messiah by his, 262

  ---- of Jesus Christ and the apostles prove that the prophecies are
        accomplished, 262

  ---- never wrought in favour of error, 263

  ---- when we are justified in excluding certain, 265

  ---- are the test in doubtful matters, 266

  ---- against miracle, 266

  ---- of Port Royal prove the innocency of that house, 279

  ---- not much to be feared among schismatics, 286

  Misery of man without God, 15

  ---- man is only happy in not thinking of his, 38

  ---- diversion is our greatest, 38

  Mites, taken as an example, 20

  Miton, 12, 84

  Molina, 276, 291

  Monks, their position in the world foolish, 282

  Monster, man is an incomprehensible, 46

  Montaigne, his defects and qualities, 17

  ---- his opinion on custom, 64

  ---- for and against miracles, 258

  Morality, in what it consists, 193

  ---- of the judgment and of the intellect, 307

  Morals, science of, 82

  ---- Jesuits judge of their faith by their, 290

  ---- a special but universal science, 292

  Moses commanded every one to read his books, 115

  ---- a man of genius, 125

  ---- the proof of the truth of, 125

  ---- foretold the calling of the Gentiles and the reprobation of the
        Jews, 140

  ---- his teaching, 140

  ---- his declarations against the Jews, 173

  ---- his mystical sense of the Creation, 174

  ---- compared with Jesus Christ, 229

  ---- his rules for judging miracles, 257

  Motion, our nature exists by, 73


  Natural principles are but principles of custom, 64

  Nature offers nothing but matter for doubt and disquiet, 104

  ---- comparison between Scriptures and, 128

  ---- is an image of grace, 161

  ---- perfections and defects of, 192

  ---- canonical writers have never employed, to prove God, 205

  ---- law, and grace, 250

  ---- use of bad reasons for proving effects of, 309

  ---- the feelings and language of atheists contrary to, 6

  ---- man should consider, seriously and at leisure, 19

  ---- majesty and greatness of, 19

  ---- greatness in the infinitely little, 20

  ---- has her double infinity from author of, 21

  ---- immobility of, compared to us, 24

  ---- reasons why man cannot know, 25

  ---- of man a continual change, 63

  ---- is not always subject to her own rules, 83

  ---- imitates herself, 83

  Nebuchadnezzar, dream of, 141

  Nicodemus recognised Jesus Christ by his miracles, 262

  ---- the answer of, to the Pharisees, 270

  Ninevites, repentance of, 241

  Noah, witness of the Messiah, 169


  Office of Jesus Christ, 214

  Offices, why men seek them, 33, 34

  Old Testament, a cipher, 117

  Opinion, queen of the world, 54

  Opinions of the people sound, 70

  Organs, men compared to, 26

  Order, against the objection that the Scripture has no, 128

  ---- of charity and the intellect, 128

  Outward marks, men distinguished by them, 70


  Pain, not shameful to man to yield to, 30

  Painting, foolishness of, 314

  Parrot, as an example, 31

  Parties, we should hear both, 283

  Passions, their influence on man, 31

  ---- the pleasure of, in seeing the shock of two contraries, 39

  ---- of the soul trouble the senses, 51

  ---- internecine war between reason and the, 55

  ---- the enemies of man, 169

  ---- how they become vices, 224

  Pattern, good and bad, 302

  Paul, Saint, used the order of charity, not of the intellect, 128

  ---- taught that all things had happened in figures, 169

  ---- explanation of Old Testament types by, 176

  ---- his opinions on marriage, 176

  Paulus Emilius, an example, 47

  Peace, the sovereign good, result of coalescence of justice and power,
        67

  ---- should not be observed to the prejudice of truth, 279

  ---- in the Church, when pernicious and unjust, 281

  Pelagians and Catholics will always exist, 296

  Penances, exterior and interior, 134

  ---- exterior, dispose to interior, 134

  People, most, follow custom because they think it just, 64

  ---- dangerous to say to, that laws are not just, 65

  ---- have very sound opinions, 70

  Perpetuity of the worship of the Messiah, 213

  ---- of the Jewish law preserved by Jesus Christ, 213

  Perseus, King of Macedon, 47

  Persians, the, 61

  Persons, three kinds of, in religion, 101

  Pharaoh, magicians of, 267

  Philosophers, they speak of material things in spiritual phrase and
        _vice versa_, 25

  ---- do not know our nature when they blame the search after diversion,
        34

  ---- falsity of those, who do not discuss the immortality of the soul,
        111

  ---- against those, who believe in God without Jesus Christ, 111

  ---- their weakness, 179, 180

  ---- have consecrated vices, 189

  Philosophy, human, incapable of explaining man, 106

  Pictures, rules for perspective, 27

  Piety, differs from superstition, 251

  Plato, 254

  Play, why sought after, 33

  ---- remarks on, 35

  Pleasure, shameful to man to yield to, 30

  Poet, the trade of a, 79

  Poland, the king of, 75

  _Portentum_, meaning of the word, 270

  Pompey, 147

  Pope, whence he has his light, 276

  ---- his power in the Church to be considered in two ways, 288

  ---- may easily be taken unawares by the Jesuits, 288

  Porphyry, 116

  Port Royal, children of, 58

  ---- bad policy to dissolve the community of, 284

  Power, tyrant of the world, 55

  ---- creates opinion, 56

  ---- without justice is tyrannical, 66

  ---- why above justice, 67

  ---- result of, 69

  Practical and mathematical mind, difference between, 310

  Prayer, why God has established, 297

  Preacher, the, 104

  Preadamites, their extravagances, 166

  Present, we care nothing for the, 73

  President, first, 69

  Presumption of man, 59

  ---- joined to insignificance, 67

  Pride, a counterpoise to all miseries, 60

  ---- makes us wish to be esteemed, 60

  ---- knowledge of God without that of our wretchedness creates, 92

  ---- finds its proper place in wisdom, 242

  Primogeniture, 63

  ---- absurdity of, 254

  Principles, all, may pass for false impressions, 54

  ---- our natural, are but principles of custom, 64

  ---- first, are known by the heart, 102

  ---- arguments of the sceptics in truth of some, 105

  ---- all the, of sceptics, stoics, atheists, are true, but their
        conclusions are false, 111

  Prison, why so horrible a punishment, 34

  Probability of the Jesuits, influence of the doctrine of, 283

  ---- incapable of assuring the conscience, 290

  ---- corruptness of the doctrine, 290

  Progress, all that is brought to perfection by, perishes also by it, 57

  ---- nature works by, 84

  Promises of God in the Old Testament, each finds in them what he most
        desires, 162

  Proofs, metaphysical, of God, 92

  ---- of our religion not absolutely convincing, but reasonable enough
        for those who wish to believe, 208

  Prophecies, the strongest proof of Jesus Christ, 131

  ---- dispersed with the Jews throughout the world, 131

  ---- their preservation and agreement, 131

  ---- concerning Messiah, 132

  ---- unintelligible to the wicked, 133

  ---- understood only when the events occur, 133

  ---- accomplished, 140

  ---- a proof of divinity, 150

  ---- two senses of, 157

  ---- confirmed by miracles, 171

  ---- special, of Jesus Christ, 217

  Prophecy is not called miracle, 262

  Prophets, their part among the Jews, 123

  ---- their words had a double sense, 132

  ---- prophesied by figures, 158

  ---- their discourses were contradictory, 158

  ---- foretold the Christians, 201

  ---- what they say of Jesus Christ, 209

  ---- declared the advent of Messiah, 213

  ---- foretold, and were not foretold, 215

  Propositions, the five, 268

  Provence, 57

  Provincial Letters, censures of the, not founded on tradition, 284

  Pyrenees, 61

  Pyrrhus, 35


  Rabbinism, chronology of, cited from the _Pugio Fidei_, 195

  Rabbis, proofs given to the Scriptures as to Jesus Christ by the, 157

  ---- figures they employ, 170

  ---- their doctrines on original sin, 194

  ---- their objections against Jesus Christ, 219

  Reason, is the essence of man, 43

  ---- the senses deceive the, 51

  ---- yields to imagination, 53

  ---- internecine war between the passions and, 55

  ---- not a guide to first principles, 102

  ---- is weak, but would judge of all things, 103

  ---- civil war between passion and, 113

  ---- its corruption, 185

  ---- can truly know ourselves by submission of our, 210

  ---- acts slowly, 307

  ---- its power over us, 309

  Reasoning, all our, reduced to yielding to feeling, 309

  Redeemer, a, only for Christians, 242

  ---- Christian religion consists in the mystery of the, 204

  Redemption, proofs of the, drawn from the wicked and the Jews, 193

  ---- not right that all should see, 255

  Red Sea, an image of the Redemption, 161

  Reed, a thinking, 46

  Religion, the true, and its characteristics, 179

  ---- explains the contradictions in man, 179

  ---- must show knowledge of our nature, 182

  ---- the note of true, 182

  ---- false proves that there is a true, 260

  ---- need to learn the Christian, before assailing it, 3

  ---- makes us know deeply the greatness and the baseness of man, 43

  ---- what it is, 97

  ---- is not certain, 102

  ---- more enforced by feeling than by reason, 103

  ---- founded on the Jewish religion, 119

  ---- divine or ridiculous, 172

  ---- excellence of the Christian, 183

  ---- others but the Christian, false, 183

  ---- wise and foolish, 187

  ---- other than Christian, equal man sometimes to God and sometimes to
        the brutes, 188

  ---- perpetuity of the Christian, 197

  ---- which has always existed is that which is contrary to nature, 198

  ---- we should look to the details of, 312

  ---- two ways of urging the truth of our, 251

  ---- at once venerable and loveable, 254

  ---- miracle the foundation of, 258

  ---- the three notes of, 275

  ---- Jewish, to be differently regarded in tradition of its sacred
        books and in the tradition of the people, 115

  ---- is the figure of the Messiah, 176

  ---- Mahomedan, its foundation, 115

  ---- heathen, no foundation, 115

  Religions, pagan, have no marks of truth, 119

  Religions, that there are some lax, this proves nothing against
        religion, 277

  Repose, men think they seek, but only seek agitation, 34

  Reprobate, all things work for evil for the, 129

  Republic, Christian and Jewish, have only had God for master, 122

  ---- ---- its laws, 241

  Respect of men for each other, 55

  ---- what it is for, 72

  Rest, secret instinct which leads men to seek, 35

  ---- complete, is insupportable, why, 40

  Righteous man, the two natures in the, 273

  Rivers are moving roads, 315

  Roannez, M. de, 309

  Roman legislators, 121

  Romans, religion of the, 119

  Rome began to fear Cromwell, 76

  ---- chief church of Christ, 136

  ---- must not stifle speech, 284

  Royalty, without diversion, is unhappy, 33

  Rule, to judge a work we need a, 305

  ---- special and particular, 308

  ---- man must have a, of faith, 309

  Ruth, book of, 220


  Sabbath, only a sign, 175

  Sacrifices, exterior, not essential, 138

  ---- of the Jews and Gentiles, 140

  ---- uselessness of the, 75

  Saints, foretold, but not foretellers, 215

  ---- their greatness and their empire, 227

  ---- their union, 279

  Salomon de Tultie, pseudonym of Pascal, utility of his manner of
        writing, 312

  Salvation, Jesus Christ has wrought the, of the just, while they slept,
        232

  Savages, 70

  Scaramouch, as an example, 31

  Sceptic, never has been a perfect finished, 106

  Sceptical cabal, 111

  Scepticism, its reasonings, 108

  ---- aids religion, 113

  ---- remedy for vanity, 206

  ---- is true, for men before Jesus Christ knew nothing, 226

  Sceptics, indifference of the, 112

  ---- labour in vain, 103

  ---- principal arguments of the, drawn from the uncertainty of our
        natural principles, 105

  ---- lesser arguments of the, 106

  Schism, a mark of error, 268

  Science, infinite in its research and its premisses, 21

  ---- abstract, not fit for man, 82

  Scripture, knows God better than we, 91

  ---- compared to the Koran, difference between the books, 116

  ---- has provided passages for all conditions of life, 128

  ---- why contrary sentences are found in, 128

  ---- obscure and clear, 129

  ---- has two senses, 157

  ---- against those who misuse passages of, 166

  ---- manner of understanding that contradictory passages of, must
        agree, 167

  ---- superiority of, over the most ancient books of other peoples, 173

  ---- preserved by the Jews, and is a witness of their sincerity, 173

  ---- full of matters not dictated by the Holy Spirit, 206

  ---- without the, we know nothing of the nature of God nor our own
        nature, 226

  Self, hatred of, necessary, 238

  ---- is hateful, 84

  Self-love, its nature, 84

  ---- how it should be regulated, 237

  ---- source of all confusion, 239

  Seneca, quotations from, 110

  Sensation, no misery apart from, 47

  Sense of the prophecies always the same, 171

  ---- there are various kinds of good, 311

  Senses deceive the reason, 51

  Sensuality, men have drawn rules from, 69

  ---- manner in which it is used, 70

  Sepulchre of Jesus Christ, 234

  Sermon, how some people listen to the, 316

  Servant, relation to his master, 293

  Shem, 126, 169

  Ship, as an example, 63

  Sibyls, books of the, 174

  Sickness, resignation of man in time of, 74

  Silence is the greatest persecution, 283

  Simplicity of things compared to our double and complex nature, 25

  Sin, all is, that is repugnant to the will of God, 247

  ---- original, 192

  ---- mystery of the transmission of, 107

  ---- foolishness of original, to man, 192

  ---- tradition of original, according to the Jews, 194

  Sincerity, a necessary quality of every religion, 182

  Sinners, enemies of God, 165

  Sins, called enemies by David, 171

  ---- the two sources of, 241

  Six days and the six ages of the world, 174

  Sleep, life compared to, 105

  Sneezing absorbs all the faculties of the soul, 31

  Society, a beginning of, 56

  Socrates, 218

  Solitude, the pleasure of, incomprehensible, 34

  Sonnet, a bad, comparison of, 302

  Sorbonne, corrupted by the Jesuits, 282

  Soul, immortality of the, 4, 111

  ---- is immaterial, 111

  ---- how little she knows herself, 112

  Sovereign good, philosophers do not agree as to the, 112

  ---- ordinary men's idea of, 112

  Space, numbers imitate, 84

  Spaniards, 66

  Sphere, infinite, 19

  Spirit, of men easily disturbed, 27

  _Spongia solis_, 83

  State of man, his weakness and uncertainty; nothing so important to
        man as his condition, 5, 6

  Stoics, 49

  ---- what they propose is difficult and idle, 113

  Stream may decide justice or injustice, 66

  Strife alone pleases, not the victory, 39

  Study of man, why so few undertake it, 82

  Style, thoughts on, 301

  ---- effect a natural, produces, we find a man instead of an author, 303

  ---- examples of bad, 304

  Submission of the reason, only by this can we truly know ourselves,
        108, 250

  Suetonius, 221

  Suicide, advised by certain philosophers, 112

  Sun, course of the, 84

  Suns, the five, of Mexico, 118

  Superstition, piety compared with, 251

  Sweden, queen of, 75

  Sword, the right of the, 67

  Symmetry, definition of, 304

  Synagogues, a type of the Church, 176


  Tacitus, 221

  Talmud, its predictions of the Messiah, 152

  ---- date of composition of, 196

  Temple, its reprobation prophesied by Jeremiah, 149

  Tennis, 37

  Tertullian, 127

  Testaments, proof of the two, at once, 157

  ---- proof that the Old, is figurative, 158

  ---- Old and New, their relations, 165

  ---- sacrifices and ceremonies of Old, either figures or absurdities,
        174

  Thamar, story of, 220

  Theatre, dangers of the, for the Christian soul, 248

  Theology, taken as an example of diversity, 32

  Theresa, Saint, her double greatness, 246

  ---- what she was when alive and now, 275

  Thought, greatness of man consists in, 46

  ---- makes man's being, 47

  ---- the whole dignity of man lies in, 48

  ---- great in essence, vile in defects, 48

  Thoughts, spring up by chance, 29

  ---- escape us in writing, 29

  Tide of the sea, 84

  Time, our imagination enlarges the present, 56

  Towns through which we pass, 59

  Trades, choice of, 78

  Transmission of sin, without this mystery we could not know ourselves,
        107

  Trent, Council of, 291

  Truth, there is no, in man, 19

  ---- we hate, and those who tell it us, 85

  ---- necessity of seeking, 95

  ---- we know, by the heart as well as by reason, 102

  ---- is not within our reach, nor to our taste, 107

  ---- we have an idea of, which scepticism cannot overcome, 109

  ---- has visible signs, 208

  ---- makes us free, 245

  ---- opposite truth to be remembered with a, 279

  ---- unable to know, unless we love truth, 280

  ---- the first rule and ultimate end of things, 281

  Truths of religion, necessity of seeking, 3

  Turk, the Grand, 53

  Turks, their example alleged by the wicked, 211

  ---- miracles of the, 258

  ---- grand sultan of the, 80

  Twelve tables, law of the, 121

  Types in general, their lawfulness, 157

  ---- unintelligible to the Jews and bad Christians, 158

  ---- understood only in the fulness of time, 158

  ---- compared to a portrait, 159

  ---- the word of God false literally, true spiritually, 159

  ---- of Old Testament only figures, 162

  ---- the reason of, 162

  ---- of Christ, 165

  ---- different kinds of, some seem far-fetched, 165

  ---- reason for the use of, 170

  ---- of Old Testament either figures or absurdities, 174

  ---- made according to the truth, 176

  ---- particular, 176

  ---- the utility of, 216

  Tyranny, in what it consists, 68


  Unbelievers, we should pity them, 253

  ---- useful for the glory of religion, 203

  ---- revile that which they do not understand, 204

  Uncertainty, what we do for an, 102

  ---- of condition of man, 23

  Understanding, greatness of men of, invisible to the great, 227

  Unhappiness natural to man's condition, makes him seek diversion, 33

  ---- proof of man's, 73

  Union of mind and body a mystery to man, 28

  ---- of the Word to man, 299

  Universe, how inferior and superior to man, 46

  ---- the whole, teaches man, either of his corruptness or redemption,
        192

  Usurpation of the whole earth, beginning and image of, 68


  Vacuum, an example taken from our notion of, 54

  ---- absurdity of the saying that nature abhors a, 313

  Vanity of pleasure, 5

  Vatable, 269, 270

  Venice, the Jesuits and, 283

  Vespasian, persecution of, 127

  ---- miracles of, 271

  Vices, why we are indulgent to the, of the great, 74

  ---- certain, have hold on us only by means of others, 77

  Victory pleases less than strife, why, 39

  Virgin birth, weakness of the argument against the, 223

  Virtue may be excessive, 30

  ---- is the result of two opposite vices in counterpoise, 30

  Vocations, 59


  War, why men seek, 34

  ---- internecine, in man, between the reason and his passions, 55

  ---- civil, is the worst of evils, 63, 70

  ---- decided by an interested party, 66

  Weakness of man, 28, 66

  ---- ---- cause of so many esteemed beauties, 72

  ---- unrest, and defects of man, 73

  Weariness of Jesus, 232

  ---- inevitable in all conditions, 35

  ---- is man's most sensible evil and his greatest good, 39

  ---- arises from loss of occupation, 40

  Well dressed, not altogether foolish to be, 70

  Wicked, the, reasoning of, in the Book of Wisdom, 240

  ---- prove the corruption of human nature by their conduct, 191

  ---- who profess to follow reason, 211

  Will, difference between the actions of the, and other actions, 129

  ---- is depraved in wishing for the love of others, 239

  ---- self, we must renounce it in order to be happy, 240

  ---- of God, we should judge of what is good or bad according to the,
        244

  ---- one of the principal organs of belief, 307

  Wine, too much and too little, 29

  Wisdom, greatness of, invisible to the carnal, 227

  ---- God alone gives, 243

  Words, meaning changes according to the, 129

  World, vanity of the, 48

  ---- judges things rightly, 83

  ---- avoids thinking of what it does not choose to think about, 102

  ---- indicates the presence of a God who hides himself, 209

  ---- would not exist without Jesus Christ, 226

  ---- difference in living according to the, and to God, 248

  ---- is full of good maxims, we only need their right application, 314

  Worshippers, unknown, 280

  Worthlessness of man, 13


  Xerxes, 144


  Zeal of the Jewish people, 122




_CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE._




  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
  Four oe ligatures have been replaced by 'oe'.
  One superscript was converted to lowercase '23rd'.

  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
  the text and consultation of external sources.

  Except for those changes noted below, misspelling by the author,
  and inconsistent or archaic usage, has been retained. For example,
  infinites, infinities; premiss; any thing, anything; every body,
  everybody.

  p. v 'General Introduction 3' inserted in the ToC.
  p. 23 'flies us' replaced by 'flies from us'.
  p. 36 'face themselves' replaced by 'face they themselves'.
  p. 36 'superintendant' replaced by 'superintendent'.
  p. 39 'any thing thing else' replaced by 'any thing else'.
  p. 51 'outvieing' replaced by 'outvying'.
  p. 71 'people is' replaced by 'people are'.
  p. 112 'have gained' replaced by 'has gained'.
  p. 122 'people was' replaced by 'people were'.
  p. 127 'De Cultu faemin.' replaced by De Cultu femin.'
  p. 172 'though his son' replaced by 'through his son'.
  p. 227 'artizan' replaced by 'artisan'.
  p. 246 'if be alike' replaced by 'if it be alike'.
  p. 319 Note for 'P. 12' moved after note for 'P. 11'.
  p. 322 'Ecclus.' replaced by 'Eccles.'.
  p. 333 Note for 'P. 238'; 'principalment' replaced by 'principalement'.
  p. 338 Note for 'P. 304'; accents added to repand, tenebres and
           repandre.
  p. 338 Note for 'P. 309'; 'Discours sur la Methode' replaced by
           'Discours de la Methode'.

  INDEX:
  Two entries for 'Chances, doctrine of' combined into one.
  Entry for 'Heresies'; 'tha way' replaced by 'the way'.
  Entry for 'Laws'; 'isngle' replaced by 'single'.
  Entry for 'Man cannot bear'; 'depised' replaced by 'despised'.
  Entry for 'Thamar'; refers to 'Tamar' in the text.






End of Project Gutenberg's The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal, by Blaise Pascal

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THOUGHTS OF BLAISE PASCAL ***

***** This file should be named 46921.txt or 46921.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
        http://www.gutenberg.org/4/6/9/2/46921/

Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, John Campbell and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned
images of public domain material from the Google Print
project.)


Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.



*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
  www.gutenberg.org/license.


Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works

1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.  See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.

1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.

1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.

1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that

- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
     License.  You must require such a user to return or
     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
     Project Gutenberg-tm works.

- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
     of receipt of the work.

- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.

1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.


Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org


Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.

The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

For additional contact information:
     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
     Chief Executive and Director
     gbnewby@pglaf.org

Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate


Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:

     www.gutenberg.org

This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.