THE HAPPINESS OF MAN WITH GOD; (continued 4)

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 nommé, 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 versâ. 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.

Hæc dixit Isaias, quando vidit gloriam ejus, et locutus est de eo.

—Judæi signa petunt, et Græci sapientiam quærunt.

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 quæ 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 quæ ego facio in nomine patris mei, hæc 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 prædicas?

Nemo potest facere signa quæ tu facis, nisi Deus fuerit cum illo.

2 Mach. xiv. 15. Deus qui signis evidentibus suam portionem protegit.

Volumus signum videre de cœlo tentantes eum. Luc. xi. 16.

Generatio prava signum quærit; sed non dabitur.

Et ingemiscens ait; Quid generatio ista signum quærit. 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 Satanæ. 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 prædixi 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 hæc 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.

Væ 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 prælium.

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 quæ 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.