Av ¥ & 3? 4-s , mm LIBRARY OF THE Theological Seminary, PRINCETON, 1ST. J. _ _ 4 " k B 1901 . P43 T3 1838 Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662. Thoughts on religion and philosophy A MUMi' .WSI3M s . / <• I i ' 4 \ m' ' 4 ■ ;w > l SELECT CHRISTIAN AUTHORS, WITH INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS. N° £3. THOUGHTS RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY, BLAISE PASCAL. A NEW TRANSLATION, WITH AN ORIGINAL MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR, AND AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, BY ISAAC TAYLOR, ESQ. AUTHOR OP “NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM,’’ ETC. GLASGOW : WILLIAM COLLINS,' r7, S. FREDERICK STREET. EDINBURGH : OLIVER & BOYD; WILLIAM WHYTE & CO. WM. OLIPHANT & SON; AND JOHN JOHNSTONE. DUBLIN : WILLIAM CURRY, JUNIOR, & CO. LONDON: WHITTAKER & CO.; HAMILTON, A DAMS, & CO. AND SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. 1838. GLASGOW : PRINTED BY WILLIAM COLLINS & CO, INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. Those periodic agitations to which all social systems, whether civil or religious, are liable, carry with them a twofold and opposite influence; the one, and the most direct, tending to give rise to similar movements in neighbouring communities; and the other, operating with hardly less force, to preclude any such convulsions where else they probably would, or certainly must, have taken place. By the very same spectacle of public commotions, minds of a certain class are animated to action, and hurried into the midst of perils; while others are as effectively deterred from giving scope to their rising energies. In this way every revolution which history records may be reckoned at once to have caused, and to have prevented kindred changes. In no instance has this sort of double influ¬ ence made itself more apparent- than in that of the religious revolution which shook the European system in the sixteenth century; and after having watched the progress of the ecclesiastical renovation of northern Europe, as it spread from land to land, an inquiry, fraught with instruction, might be insti¬ tuted, concerning that reaction of jealousy, terror, and pious caution, which, affecting many of the VI eminent minds of southern Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, smothered those elements of faith and right reason, that, again and again, seemed to be indicating approaching and happy movements. In Italy, in Austria, in Spain, in France, it was not merely that the dread of reform incited the eccle¬ siastical and secular authorities to a renewed vigilance, and induced them to have recourse to severities, such as might crush, at the instant, every beginning of change; but much more it was the vague dread of heresy, it was the horror inspired by the mere names oF the Reformers, that broke the energy of the very men who, had they been left to the impulse of their own convictions, would, perhaps, themselves, have dared the vengeance of the church, and have led on a reformation. This, if true any where, is so of France, in which country the smoldering fire that had there been repressed, while it had burst forth in Germany and England, continued, through more than a century, to impart an unusual warmth and intensity to the style of the preachers and writers of the Gallican church. In following the course of these noted, and, many of them, great and good men, ranged as they sometimes were on different sides in polemics, one is prompted, at every turn, to exclaim — € what reformers would Nicole, St. Cyran, Fenelon, Pascal, have been, could it have happened to them never to have heard the names of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, and Knox?’ The intelligence and piety of these, and of others, their companions, or their opponents, were, if one might so speak, affrighted into submission to the Romish despostism, not so much by the flames Vll of the protestant martyr’s pile, as by the odium of his branded celebrity. The writings of Pascal, as well the Thoughts, as the Provincial Letters, indicate, on almost every page, this latent and indirect influence of the hor¬ ror of heresy, swaying his mind. The reader, as well in justice to the fame of this great man, as for his own satisfaction, needs to be reminded of the fact now adverted to: and if at any moment he be perplexed by the difficulty of reconciling Pascal’s abject and superstitious romanism with the vi¬ gour and clearness of his understanding, and with the simplicity of his piety, he may remembei that, beside other causes, not necessary here to specify, this eminent man was well aware that, to give the least indulgence to the impulses ol mere reason on certain points of his belief, would involve nothing less than his passing at a leap, or his being forced across the awful gulph that yawned between the para¬ dise of the church, and the gehenna of heresy. A mind like that of Pascal, although it might, in any particular direction, forbid itself to think at all, could never have stayed its own course, midway, had it once started.* And yet it was by submitting to * A solitary expression, pregnant with meaning, occuis among the Thoughts, which should be here pointed out, as indicating Pascal’s latent dissatisfaction with the system which he thought it necessary to uphold. So little does the sentiment contained in this passage accord with the general strain of the author s writings, that one is almost inclined to suppose it must have been, as in some other instances is clearly the case, a mere me¬ morandum of an opinion upon which he intended to animadvert.. II faut avoir une pensee de deriere, et juger du tout par-la : en parlant cependant comme le peuple. The full import of this sentence is suggested rather more clearly in the author’s own words than in the English; the translator having given the terms an Vlll these restraints that he exposed himself to the keen taunts of Voltaire and Condorcet ; and it is these bitter sarcasms, read by all the world, that have opeiated to destroy, almost entirely, the influence he must otherwise have exerted over the minds of his admiring countrymen. What might not have been the issue, for France, had Pascal and his friends held a higher course? But, stooping as they did, before the power that aided the Jesuit in trampling on the Jansenist, they left the field open to the Encyclopedists, who, in the next age, schooled the hiench people in those lessons of atheism that were to take effect amid the horrors of the revolution. Putting out of view so much superstition or asceticism as belonged to Pascal’s infirm bodily temperament, rather than to his principles as a romanist, and setting off also, here and there, a phrase in which he does homage to the Romish Church, he may fairly be accounted as one of our¬ selves — substantially, a protestant: and such in fact he was by his opposition to the spirit and corruptions of that church, as embodied in the society of Jesuits j as well as generally by the position he occupied in common with his friends, as obnoxious to the papacy. Protestants may very properly think of him rather as placed on the same radius with themselves, than as moving in another orbit. In most instances, when any language meets the reader which reminds him painfully of the writer’s enthralment to Rome, the incidental phrase, or the corollary in argument, instead of its standing insepa- admissible and softened rendering, more in accordance with. Pascal’s known simplicity and sincerity. Art. cix, p. 288. IX rably connected with the context, as it would have done, had the writer been himself a better papist, hangs loose, and might even be removed without leaving any perceptible hiatus \ — nay, such excisions (although not in fact justifiable on the part of an editor or translator)* would be like the absorption ot flaws from an otherwise spotless surface of marble. On this ground Pascal appears to much advantage when compared with Fenelon, who, although not his inferior in purity and elevation of spirit, had been carried much farther from the simplicity of the Christian system by the specious mysticism that has beguiled so many eminent men of the Romish com¬ munion. Pascal is no mystic : — his vigorous good sense, although it did not exempt him from some trivial superstitions in his personal conduct, held him back on the brink of that dim gulph wherein secluded speculatists, of every age, have so often been lost. It is thus sometimes that a strong man, who would instantly burst a rope wherewith any might attempt to confine him, yet quietly suffers himself to be held down by a thread. Pascal’s French editors, who jeer at his bodily mortifications, and his frivolous observances, had not sufficient acquaintance with the history of religion to be conscious of the proof he gave of a substantial force of mind in keeping him¬ self clear of the sophistical pietism by which, on all sides, he was surrounded. The Thoughts of Pascal should never be read without a knowledge of the circumstances that at- * It is proper here to state that the translation now offered to the public is not a garbled one. Pascal, in former instances, has been given to the English reader by those who have thought themselves at liberty to suppress many of the Thoughts — in fact A 2 X tended their production. To these the reader will, of course, advert, as they are stated in the memoir attached to the present edition. In how few in¬ stances would an author’s loose private notes, and the undigested materials out of which he had de¬ signed to construct what might be intelligible to others, present so much appearance of consistency and order, as, in fact, belong to this collection. Whatever abruptness there may seem in many of the transitions, nevertheless a real and ascertainable unity of purpose pervades the whole. This one purpose, manifestly governing the writer’s mind at all times, appears even in those of the Thoughts that relate immediately to the mathematics, or to other secular subjects; for it is evident that Pascal was constantly intent upon the great business of establishing sacred truths; and that, with this view, he laboured so to lay down the principles of reason- ing in geometry, or in the physical sciences, as should secure an advantage, more or less direct, for the evidences of Christianity. It should be said that the confusion in which Pascal’s papers were found after his death, and which belonged also to the earlier editions of the Thoughts, has been, in great measure, remedied by later editors ; and especially by Condorcet, who, little as he relished the principles or the argument of his distinguished countryman, applied to the best purpose, his own eminently perspicacious mind, in disentangling the disordered mass, and in reducing it to some logical consistency. Bossut, adopting, in whatever did not meet the translator’s theological taste. No such outrage is attempted in the present edition. XI the main, Condorcet’s classification, brought it to a higher perfection, and thus, by the labours of these two competent men, the modern reader forgoes, per¬ haps, but little of the benefit he might have derived from the author’s own cares in preparing his thoughts for the public eye.* Leaving the Thoughts in the order to which they have so well been reduced, we shall find a conveni¬ ence in assuming, for a while, a rather different principle of arrangement, as the ground of the remarks that are to occupy this introductory essay. With this view, then, we may consider the Thoughts as bearing upon — I. Abstract Philosophy, and the general prin¬ ciples of reasoning. II. Eth ics; and more especially, the Pathology of Human Nature. III. Devotional Sentiment. IV. Christian Theology. V. The argument in behalf of Religion against Atheists, and of Christianity against Infidels, to which are appended incidental apologies — for Ro¬ manism, and for Jansenism ; or for the Port Royal party. * In some instances, the contrarieties of opinion, between one paragraph and the next, was such, and so alternate, as to make it certain that the author had intended to throw his materials into the form of a dialogue, between a sceptic and himself ; and his editors have, in some cases, as in chap, vii of the present translation, actually completed what was clearly Pascal’s mean¬ ing. Unless understood as a dialogue, the whole would be con¬ tradictory and unintelligible. It is probable that, in some other places, where the indication is less manifest, a similar distribution of the Thoughts was in the author’s mind when he committed them to writing. xn In the first place, then, (nor need tne merely religious reader think this branch of the subject of no interest to him) something demands to be said of that portion of Pascal’s Thoughts which relates to Abstract Philosophy, and to the general principles of reasoning. It does not appear that Pascal had become ac¬ quainted with the writings of Lord Bacon, which, even so long as forty years after their first publica¬ tion, had not so commanded the attention of the philosophic world in England or abroad, as to ensure their having been read by all who themselves pre¬ tended to take rank among philosophers. His scientific writings, however, afford unquestionable indications of the fact that, along with the great minds of the age, he deeply resented the antiquated tyranny of the pseudo-science, and of the jargon logic, which so long had shackled the European intellect. “ The true philosophy, ” says he, “is to scout philosophy:” nor was this uttered with a cyni¬ cal feeling, or in affectation ; for in other places he deliberately declares his contempt, both of the Aris¬ totelian logic, and of the method cf prosecuting physical inquiries, then commonly practised.* But although he himself, as in the signal instance of the barometrical experiment, followed, as if by instinct, the methods of modern science, (or rather antici¬ pated those methods) and although, in the admirable article on “ authority in matters of philosophy, ” he convincingly shows the error of the antiquated sys¬ tem, and points out a better path, yet it does not appear that he had, like Bacon, so digested his no- * Page 381. Compare Novum Organum, lib. i, 9. Xlll tions as to be able to announce a new and hopeful physical logic. On the contrary, his tone in reference to natural philosophy is, altogether, des¬ ponding, and he seems so little to have foreseen the happy issue of the revolution which was then actually in its commencement, that he turns towards the mathematics as the only ground on which (the ground of pure faith excepted) any fixed principles, or absolute truth, could be met with. “ Every body asks for the means of avoiding error ; and the professors of logic pretend to show us the way: but, in fact, the geometrician (mathe¬ matician) is the only man who reaches it. Beyond the range of this science, and of what closely follows it, there are no real demonstrations. This is now true only in a very limited sense ; and had Pascal lived to witness, and to take the lead in (as he would had he lived) the conquests of modern science, he would have granted that there are conclusions, not mathematical, which it would he most absurd to speak of as at all less certain than this— that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. It can no longer be admitted, except in a loose and rhetorical style, that, “ The sciences touch, at their two extremes— the absolute ignorance of the vulgar, and the conscious ignorance of the greatest and most accomplished minds ; who, having learned all that man may know, have found that they know nothing; and who feel themselves to have come home just to that point of universal ignorance whence they started.”-)- This mode of speaking, which we still allow the moralist or preacher * Page 379. t Pa8e 78- XIV to use, who vaguely compares the circle of human science, with the infinite and absolute omniscience of the Eternal mind, has actually no meaning, if now applied to any one branch of philosophy, as compared with another. “ What does man know !” exclaims the pensive moralist j and we leave him to reply — <£ nothing.” But if the geometrician were to start up, among his fellows, in the fields of reason, and say “ I alone know any thing : — all your pretended sciences are no better than the illusive mists that torment the thirsty traveller on a sandy wilderness we then join issue with this exclusionist ; and are prepared to affirm, in behalf of a good portion of all the modern sciences, that they are not a whit less substantial, or less certain, than geometry itself. Pascal, could we now challenge him, would grant as much as this, and would therefore rescind some six or eight of his Thoughts. Mischief arises, in many instances, and especially some damage accrues to the argument in support of Christianity, from the error of confounding the ab¬ stract certainty or the directness of this or that method of proof, with the certainty of particular pro¬ positions, or facts. It would be well if all obscurity were removed from about this very necessary distinc¬ tion. — Let it be remembered then, that the demon¬ strations of geometry are, as every one knows, re¬ gular, definite, and infallible: while, on the other hand, the evidence of testimony is (to speak of it abstractedly) often circuitous, and liable to be falla¬ cious. Be it so ; and yet, in fact, there are ten thousand instances in which, not merely is it wise and safe to accept of testimony, as the best sort of XV proof, under the circumstances, which we can obtain ; but in which it would be nothing else but sheer folly to speak of facts, so established, as in any degree less certain than are the propositions of Euclid. It seven hundred or seven thousand inhabitants ot a town affirm that, last week, or last year, or ten years ago, their market house was burnt down, are we free, sagely to withhold our belief— to shrug the shoulders, and to say — <£ What you allege may be all very true ; but, pardon me, human testimony falls so very far short of mathematical demonstration, that I cannot admit the fact you speak of to be fully established. And what holds good in a comparison of testimony with mathematical proof, holds good also in regard to the physical sciences. The deductions of chemistry, foi example, many of them, and even where they involve no mathematical induction, claim to be spoken of as indubitably certain : and so in other departments of philosophy ; nor can it be esteemed any thing but a foolish and pedantic exaggeration to repeat now, what, in Pascal’s time, there yet seemed ground to say, namely that — 4 Out of geometry, man knows no¬ thing.’ There is indeed a class of persons who, for the sinister purpose of throwing a cloud over the evidence of Christianity, will consent to compiomise even the best portions of human knowledge ; the mathematics only excepted. Such persons, knowing well that men will continue to act upon the presump¬ tion that the physical sciences are certain, are quite content so long as the sceptical inference of their doctrine is left to attach alone to religion : Pascal himself would have drawn an opposite practical in¬ ference from his premises, and have said c Chris- XVI tianity demands your submission because its truth is as well established as that of the physical sciences, on the certainty of which you every day stake your in¬ terests, and venture your lives.’ But we, and espe¬ cially in the present state of philosophy, are free to deal in another, and a more strenuous manner with pedantic scepticism, and to say — Many things are certainly true, besides the propositions of geometry; and among such certainties, are all the principal points of history; — and amongtbese, preeminently, the facts of the gospel history. Assuming what we consider as probable, if not absolutely certain, that Pascal had not met with the ^ovum Organum, or the De Argurnentis, it is curi¬ ous to observe the similarity, or even identity of sentiment, and sometimes of language, which may be traced in those passages where the one and the othei speak of the then-existing and ancient philo¬ sophy. 1 he scientific reader may with advantage, compare the thoughts referred to in the margin* with the preface to the Novum Organum, and with the introductory axioms of the first book. A remarkable coincidence, both of principle and of expression, oc¬ curs in the passages in which these two great men state the relative claims of reason and of authority, or of antiquity, as bearing respectively upon the physical sciences, and upon theology :f nor can we doubt that, had Pascal lived longer, and directed the * ,rea(^er is referred to the entire chapter, (xxvi), on authority in matters of Philosophy; as well as to the next on Geometry, and to that on the Art of Convincing. ... ^ . Compare Pascal’s Thoughts on Authority, with cap, i, Jib. ix, of the De Argurnentis, where a remarkable coincidence of thought and expression presents itself. Also aph. 61 and 89. Nov. Organum. XVI 1 main force of his mind to philosophy, he would have accelerated its advance, in his own country at least ; and starting forward from the ground where Descartes moved only in a vortex, and where Leibnitz wandered over the wastes of metaphysics, would have opened the road of genuine science; — nay, not improbably he might have snatched from England the glory of a portion of Newton’s discoveries. By no means to be compared with Bacon for grasp of mind, or for richness, versatility, or bound¬ less faculty of invention, Pascal had more of that caution, justness of intellect, and mathematical sim¬ plicity, which belonged to Newton; nor did he want, intellectually at least, that high and true independence, and that strong good sense, which impelled the one and the other to break away from the intanglements of the old philosophy. Considering however his entire constitution, the animal and moral, as well as the intellectual, we may the less regret his having been so soon diverted from scientific pursuits. The reformer, whether in the civil, the ecclesiastical, or the scientific world, should not be merely one of lofty sta¬ ture in mind, but of a robust moral conformation. In every age, no doubt, there are minds (accomplishing their course in obscurity) that divine the changes which are to be effected in a future age; but in part the animal force, and in part the opportunity, are wanting to them which are requisite for effectively agitating the inert elements around them. The progress of man has been so slow, not so much be¬ cause nature generates so few great minds in each age, as because a rare combination of intellectual faculties, of moral qualities, of animal forces, and of XV11L external means, are required for enabling any indi¬ vidual to give effect to those improvements which, more than a few in every age, could theoretically have anticipated. No modern philosophical writer has better than Pas¬ cal, marked out the ground occupied by the sciences, and which lies as a middle region between, on the one hand, those elementary princples which are always to be taken for granted, and to be considered as certain, although not capable of being defined or proved; — and, on the other hand — the illimitable space, filled with what is unknown, and perhaps incrutable, but toward which, though never to pervade it^ the sciences are continually making incursions, and pushing out their boundaries. Nevertheless the principle of rea¬ soning which he lays down, as universally applicable and sufficient, and which he affirms to be fully carried out in geometry, namely, to define whatever admits of definition ; that is to say, every thing except our elementary notions ; and to prove every thing which may be questioned, and which is not self-evident, has in fact only a limited range.* This axiom of reasoning, or logical law, applicable as it may be to whatever is purely abstract, can subserve no practical purpose or only a very limited one, if brought to bear upon the physical sciences. Pascal cannot be thought to have furnished us with the elements of Physical Logic, which still remain to be fully acertained, and well digested. To take an example; — what progress could he himself have made in determining the question rela¬ tive to the alleged weight of the atmosphere, and which he so triumphantly brought to a conclusion, * Chapter xxviii. XIX by the mere aid of the rules he proposes for deciding between truth and error? We may boldly say, none at all. It is at this point, where heretofore philosophers had come to a stand, that Bacon steps in, and opens wide the path to genuine knowledge, by showing that the methods of abstract science , wherein all the entities to be spoken ol are cieatuies of the mind, and therefore fully comprehended and embraced by it — that these methods are totally inapplicable to the physical sciences , in relation to which “ man knows absolutely nothing beyond what he may actually have observed.’ Whether theic is in nature, or whether there may be, a perfect vacuum, is a question in deciding which, neither the logic of geometry, nor the logic of metaphysics, can af¬ ford us the least assistance: a question like this, involves a knowledge of the most occult properties of matter ; and in fact, it is a question concerning which, even modern science, is not yet in a position to pronounce with confidence. We well know indeed that it is possible, and that it is very easy to exclude, from a certain space, all ponderable or tangible bodies ; and we moreover know that the rise of fluids in an ex¬ hausted tube is caused by no such “ horror of a vacuum,” as had been attributed to nature; and that it is as simple a phenomenon as the rise of the scale out of which we have removed the weight that had held the beam in equilibrio. But the fact of a real and absolute vacuum is still a mystery. There are few portions of the 1 houghts, if any, that seem to have been more deliberately digested, or that are in fact better condensed, than the entire XX article on the Art of Persuasion,”* or what might be termed — the Elements of a true Logic. Pascal, having distinguished between, on the one hand, the methods, various as they may be, which are proper foi influencing the minds of men, with all their pre¬ dilections and personal inclinations, and for bringing them to some given point ; and on the other hand, the process of severe reasoning, irrespectively of the condition of the mind to which an argument is ad¬ dressed; and after professing his inability to offer system of rules available for the former pur¬ pose, proceeds to state the rudiments of the latter method, and which, as stated by him, are substantially those of geometrical demonstration. “ This art, which I call the art of persuasion, and which, properly, is nothing but the management of such proofs as are regular and perfect, consists of three essential parts namely — 1. To expound the terms which we intend to employ, by clear definitions; 2. To propound principles or axioms, such as are in themselves evident, for the purpose of establishing the points in question: — 3. and then, always to sub¬ stitute mentally, in the demonstrations, the defini¬ tions, in the place of the things defined.”f “ adhering to this method,” says our author, just for the unjust ?” Is the name of the Saviour, as the only hope of guilty man, and as the gracious Shepherd of souls, seldom on their lips? By no means. But they none of them use (nor does Pas¬ cal) that precise controversial style in speaking of justification, or observe that polemical precision, which has come to be considered in certain quarters as the criterion of soundness in the faith. And yet, could but the most jealous stickler for evangelical accuracy read the “ Thoughts on death,” particularly the passages referred to in the margin,* or the “ Prayer for Grace in Sickness,” not knowing whence they came, and uninformed of the fatal cir¬ cumstance, that these breathings issued from papis¬ tical ljps ; — could such a reader doubt the spirituality of the author? This we must assume to be impos¬ sible; and if so, then we also assume it as certain that there are more styles than one of that piety which is conveyed to the hearts of men by “ one and the same Spirit — It must then be an impiety to dis- • Pages 293-4; and chapter xxiii, throughout. 33 1 allow any of the species or varieties of the grace so imparted; nor is it any thing less than to limit the divine operations. 44 Justification by faith, ” to quote an excellent writer, 44 or that free forgiveness which is offered, without our deservings, through the righteousness of Christ, has, we all know, been styled by a great authority, the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesite. But, profoundly important and absolutely essential as this great doctrine is, still, it may be questioned whether its rank, comparatively with other doctrines, is not higher in the scale of Protestantism, than in that of the scripture revelation generally ; whether, in other words, it does not occupy a more prominent part in the system of Christianity as opposed to po¬ pery, than in the system of Christianity considered in itself.”* It does not appear that Pascal had, in any instance, directed the forces of his mind toward theological O questions, as such : — he took things as he found them among the better class of romanist divines. It is thus that he states in rather crude terms, f the doctrine of original sin ; and if he affirms nothing more than what might be made good by quotations from Augus¬ tin or from some modern writers, he surely goes beyond what can be sustained by fair usage of Scrip¬ ture. But then, again, he perplexes the partisans of any school; for if, on one page, he falls in with the Westminster Confession, on the next, perhaps, ne is found no better than a sheer Arminian.J Never¬ theless, whether Calvinist, or Arminian, or neither, * Woodward’s Thoughts, Essays, and Sermons, f Page, 140. f Page 186, li he speaks as one who has been “ taught from above,” and who knows how to build on “ the sure founda¬ tion.”* The time, let it be hoped, is coming on, in- which less solicitude will be felt concerning the theo¬ logical dialect of parties, or of individuals ; and when far more importance will be attached to what are the unquestionable and the palpable evidences of spiri¬ tuality. It was thus in the primitive age, when, who¬ ever lived a Christian life, and was faithful to the death, was accounted a Christian ; but it ceased to be so after the time when all minds had been throughly heated and distorted by furious and wordy controver¬ sies. V. We have, in the last place, to speak of Pas¬ cal’s Thoughts as embodying an argument for Reli¬ gion in general; and for Christianity, as well as for Jansenism, and for Romanism. Looking simply at the relative bulk of the several parts of this collection, the argumentative portion is the larger, or at least it amounts to a full half of the whole. Those of the Thoughts which, in the present translation, stand foremost, constitute a regular, al¬ though it may seem a broken chain of reasoning, in the course of which a gradual development of con¬ secutive propositions is effected, sffch as might he ima¬ gined actually to have been elicited by an intelligent and candid mind, honestly inquiring for truth, and starting from principles questioned by few. These Thoughts offer a sort of ratiocinative soliloquy, some¬ times running into the form of a dialogue, and (a fact which the reader should be apprised of, and should bear in mind) sometimes propounding, without notice, * Pages 218, 219. lii the probable objections of an opponent, which are to meet their reply in the next paragraph. A very unfair advantage has been taken, by some of Pascal’s commentators, of this mode of presenting his argu¬ ment; and which, no doubt, he would have set clear of any possible ambiguity, had he lived to digest his materials. The utility and merit of treatises in defence of religion generally, or specifically of Christianity, must he held to hinge on the previous question — To what class of persons is the argument addressed ? — to As¬ sailants. , who are to be driven from their ground; or to Inquirers, who desire to be informed and confirmed. It would have been well if these very distinct purposes, which demand to be pursued each in the mode and spirit proper to it, had always been kept apart by Christian apologists. There seems some reason to believe that the slight, and often ambiguous effect produced by the ablest works of this kind, upon the minds of the persons for whose benefit they ’are in¬ tended, is to be accounted for mainly on this ground — that a mixture of incongruous arguments has been admitted into them; the writers, on one page, encoun¬ tering the perverse, obdurate, and flippant disbeliever , and on the next, addressing himself to those who ask for nothing but to have the question fairly and calmly set forth, and cleared of the difficulties which, in their view, surround it. An argument may be such that, while it fails to confound the scoffer, it may be so much more than enough for simply informing the in¬ quirer, that it rather alarms and perplexes him. Meantime those just and calm representations which, though not severely conclusive, would satisfy and liii gladden a candid temper, furnish only occasions of triumph to the virulent sophist, who is not to be silenced but by the most severe and condensed rea¬ soning. In fact there are hardly to be found two classes of minds more dissimilar in their intellectual and moral characteristics, than the two, now referred to, and which have often been treated as one and the same, by those who have undertaken to deal with infidelity. The ill consequences of this want of discrimination, on the part of many of our apologists, has perhaps been of small account in relation to those whose in¬ fidelity, springing from impulses not at all connected with reason, is not to be removed by argument. Such persons may be silenced for an hour; but they are never convinced by that which is enough to convince them. But as to those who, in fact, should be chiefly if not exclusively kept in view by Christian apologists, these, conscious as they are of a willingness — nay perhaps, an intense anxiety to be relieved of their doubts, and yet finding themselves treated as opponents, if not enemies, have either mournfully turned away from their unfriendly guide, or have given indulgence to a reciprocal feeling of resent¬ ment, of which in the end, the Christian system it¬ self, and all its professors, have come to be the objects. Pascal’s strain of argument for religion, and for Christianity, ought, in the main, to be considered as addressed to minds of the last named class;* that is to say, to persons occupying the position in which he himself had stood, when, having been profoundly affected by religious considerations, he had looked * Page 366. liv about for reasons , corroborative of the principles which already, though vaguely apprehended, had ob¬ tained a decisive influence over him. The author seems, in fact, to he retracing his own path, and to be formally stating the considerations or the general proofs, which had presented themselves to his own mind in working his way onward toward a full and cordial acceptance of the hope of the gospel; and to persons in a like state of mind, these Thoughts can hardly fail to be highly acceptable. The Christian revelation, while, as to its external form, it is a communication of facts previously un® known, is, as to its substance , a fresh conveyance to mankind of the lost elements of moral and spiritual well-being. Now, while mere reasoning may suffice to put beyond all reasonable doubt the jacts affirmed in the Scriptures, much more than any process of reasoning can supply, is needed to bring any human mind into the position in which the substance of the Christian revelation can be apprehended : and yet it is alone from such an apprehension of these moral and spiritual rudiments, that an efficacious or steady belief even of the facts of Christianity can arise. A belief in these facts is an opinion, coming and going, like the gleams of a showery day ; but not beaming, with any power, upon the character or conduct : — nothing is ripened by any such variable influence. But the belief that attends, or that springs from a perception of the moral and spiritual elements of the gospel scheme — a belief animated by a discern¬ ment of the divine perfection of our Lord’s character, constitutes altogether another sort of mental condi¬ tion, and is as unlike the other, as our waking O Iv impressions are unlike our dreams. T. he seeming paradox is therefore substantially true, that the Christian system must already have been admitted, as real and divine, before the main part of its evi¬ dence, or the more convincing portion of it, can have been understood.* The most irreligious minds have, at all times, dimly discerned the moral splendour of the gospel; just as we are conscious of the presence of the sun above the horizon, in a cloudy day; and such minds, moreover, have admitted the wisdom and excellence of single points of the Christian ethics ; just as the blind are pleased when, from a collection of rare and beautiful objects, this and that article, a stalactite, a nautilus, a gem, is put into their hands : “ Ah, how fine is this,” say they ; but what know they of the wonders of the museum, as it offers its ten thousand specimens to those who have eyes ? A genuine history of conversions from infidelity would, we believe, confirm our principle, that, in all such cases, a vital change, by whatever means ef¬ fected, has first put the intellect in a new position ; as well as altered the temperament of the soul ; and that then, the argumentative evidence, which never disappoints those who ingenuously give it their atten¬ tion, has made them rationally, as well as spiritually, believers. It is well that there should be treatises (consise and dense always) to which, when occasion demands, infidels may be referred, and which they may be boldly challenged to refute. But we want works of a very different sort to meet the case of those who are to be treated as having already taken their position on the side of truth. * Page 365. lvi Pascal s Thoughts (the portion now spoken of) come under the latter, rather than the former de¬ scription. Had they been of the kind to stop the mouth of the gainsayer, or to chastise his arrogance and flippancy, neither Voltaire nor Condorcet, we may he assured, would have given them to the world with their annotations. The reader, then, should look only for what he will actually find— namely, consi¬ derations, not condensed proofs. In our own sifting times the Christian evidences have been analysed, and brought into a state of argumentative perfection, which leaves Pascal’s mode of treating them in the rear; that is to say, if we are in quest of irrefragable ogic. Yet it is true that minds seeking rather for general views of the subject, than for the severity of proof, may, with peculiar advantage, take him as their guide. A general scheme of the author’s argument in behalf of Christianity, as sketched by himself in a long conversation with his friends, and of which notes were taken soon afterwards, has been prefixed to the Thoughts by the French editors. But a concise statement, to the same purport, constitutes the 11th chapter of the present edition, and to this the reader is referred, as being, in fact, a proper introduction to the whole of the argumentative por¬ tion of the Thoughts. The intelligent reader will not need more than he there finds, for opening to him the plan which the author would have fully developed, had he lived to prepare his Thoughts for the press. If, once and again, the English reader thinks that he iccognises in these pages certain views of the evidences, not new to him, and which he may even remember to have seen more fully expounded else¬ where ; he should, in mere justice to our author, be reminded, that Pascal was in fact the first modern writer to suggest some very striking and convincing considerations, which others, and especially those of our own country, have caught up, elaborated, and presented in a still more advantageous manner. Pas¬ cal has set in a new light, or was the first to discern, some of those nicer characteristics of historical and moral truth which the acumen, and the fine moral feeling of the modern European mind fits it to ap¬ preciate. The early Christian apologists have indeed anticipated most of the prominent proofs of the truth of Christianity ; but there are other proofs, not at all less conclusive, although of a refined and occult kind, which it required the intelligence of later times to discover. Neither Porphyry, nor Celsus, nor their contemporaries, could have been made to comprehend, even if Origen himself had perceived them, those delicate, yet infallible marks of genuineness in the gospel history, and in the Epistles, which, to modern minds, constitute the irrefragable part of the argument. One might take, as an instance, a thought pro¬ pounded in a very broken manner by Pascal, but which has been adopted, and much insisted upon, by later writers. What we mean is the indirect argu¬ ment in proof of the reality of our Lordrs statements concerning the invisible world, and the vast movements of the Divine government, resulting from the ease, simplicity, and nativeness 'naivete) of his manner, when touching upon these superhuman subjects. <£ An artisan or labourer who speaks of the wrealth c 2 Iviii lie has never touched or seen, a lawyer who talks of battles, or a private man who describes the state of kings, is wont to speak in terms of exaggeration, or of wonder, or of constraint ; whereas the wealthy talk of the disposal of large sums, with indifference, and in a common style; the general describes a siege coolly and simply ; and a king enters upon the in¬ terests of an empire, just as a private person does upon the most ordinary affairs. And thus it is that Jesus Christ speaks of the things of God, and of eternity.” To feel the full force of this argument, or consideration, one should be well aware of the style of those, whether Jewish prophets, or Grecian sages, who, heretofore, had taken up kindred topics. Our Lord’s manner, in every such instance, was precisely what was natural , and what became him who, having “ been with the Father from before the foundation of the world,” had lately descended to hold converse with man, concerning the things which O O he had seen and known. In meeting then, in Pascal, with thoughts of this sort, some of them perhaps, hastily and incompletelv expressed, let not the reader think slightingly of them, as having found the same better stated else¬ where; but rather remember that Pascal’s Thoughts have now, for a hundred years and more, been car¬ ried hither and thither; and that the collection has been a seed-book, which has stocked the fields of our English Christian literature with fruitfulness and Moreover, some few of the Thoughts, in this portion of the work, may, at the first, startle the reader, who perhaps will be ready to reject them as lix paradoxical, exaggerated, or absolutely false. But in most such instances, if what is roughly thrown out in one place, be collated with analogous passages elsewhere occurring, a clue will be furnished for dis¬ covering those modifications, or connecting statements, which were present to the writer’s mind, and apart from which he would never have given such passages to the world. Many things also are advanced pe¬ remptorily, which must be received with limitations or exceptions, as thus — <£ Charity is the one and only thing aimed at in Scripture ; and whatsoever therein found does not tend directly to this end, is to be accounted figurative ; for inasmuch as there is but one (ultimate) end or intention, all that, in plain terms, does not point that way, is figure.”* This may be true, roundly stated, or very generally understood ; but if assumed as a rule of interpreta¬ tion , it would carry us as far from sober truth as the Rabbins, or as Origen and some of the Fathers have gone, in allegory ; and would turn the history of real events — the story of battles and conspiracies, into something as airy as Bunyan’s Holy War. Pascal, as we have already said, although perfectly sincere in his profession of romanism, took a position in relation to those corruptions that are properly popish, such as places him toward protestantism ; and, a few incidental phrases excepted, it might not be easily guessed that he was not such in fact. It is only as occasion offers that he comes forward, as the apologist of the Romish church ; and it is due to him — to his friends of Port Royal, and to many of the best of men who have lived and died within its * Page 179. lx pale, to place ourselves, for a moment, in that point of view whence they were accustomed to look abroad over Christendom. It is not difficult to gather, either from the explicit arguments, or from the casual phrases employed by writers of the class to which Pascal belonged, the general principles or axioms, which, when once admitted as unquestionable, secured their submission to the church, notwithstanding their knowledge of her flagrant corruptions and gross su¬ perstitions. Resting chiefly upon the purport of our Lord’s last conversations with his disciples, as recorded by St. John, and which may fairly be assumed as in¬ tended, in a peculiar manner, to embody the first principles of the institute he was then consigning to their hands, the good men now referred to, gathered what they might well consider as the prime and con¬ stant characteristics of the true church, namely, union, uniformity of worship, agreement in opinion, and continuity, or a perpetuated, unbroken transmission, from age to age, of the doctrine and the institutions of the gospel. Now although it may be very easy to invalidate, in detail, the claims advanced by the Church of Rome to these characteristics, and to show, that her boasted union has been that only of a civil despotism —that her uniformity, so far as it has been main¬ tained, has been the product of terror and cruelty ; and that the scheme of religion she has transmitted has been, not the apostolic doctrine, and worship, but a mass of later inventions; — notwithstanding th ese just exceptions, which we protestants take against the pretensions of Rome; yet it must be lxi granted, that she possesses — or that at least she can make a show of possessing, what, in some tolerable degree- answers to the above named characteristics. Ot whatever sort it may have been, and by whatever unholy means secured, the Church of Rome has actually held up, before the world, the imposing spectacle of a widely extended polity, united under one head — adhering, in all lands, to the same wor¬ ship, and to the same ecclesiastical constitution, and flowing down, from age to age, without any such violent or conspicuous interruptions, as could be held to destroy the identity of the system. The romanist could always say, ii We are one church : we have one head, one faith, and the same sacraments; and what we are now, is what those were from whom we derived one spiritual existence : we have not inno¬ vated, we have not revolted.”* This view of their position, even considered by itself, could not but strongly influence serious minds : and then, with what was it contrasted? The first and broad characteristic of the Reformation — the mark which it carried with it into every country, was — not ecclesiastical revolt merely, in relation to Rome, but internal variance — disunion, and innovation, or novelty. But were not these the very tokens of error — the symbols of antichrist ? Could it be ne¬ cessary to inquire any further concerning the pre¬ tension of those who were seen to be waging a bitter and fierce warfare among themselves ? Thus Pascal, and Fenelon, and many others, have looked at the question between the Romish Church, and her assail¬ ants: and although they ought to have gone more * Page 283. lxii deeply into this question, and to have reached its real merits, they felt, as men fearing God, satisfied that they stood on the safer side of the great modern schism ; and that, even if the Church might cover some abuses, she was the church still; and the sole mistress or dispensatrix of eternal life. Not only have views, such as these, retained good and enlightened. men of the past age in allegiance to liome ; but they still produce the same effects, and must continue to secure for her the vitalizing support of many conscientious persons, throughout Europe, until protestantism, or, let us rather say, until the Christianity of the New Testament, shall have ap¬ proved itself to the world by exhibiting the genuine characteristics of union, uniformity, or unanimity, and perpetuity. Then shall all men flock toward the church, when they know, without a question, where to find it ! A very useful lesson may be gathered in fob- lowing a mind, like Pascal’s, on those particular occasions when, overruled, or, we might say, over¬ awed, by an assumed axiom, it comes to regard the plainest matters of fact altogether in a false light. We may be ready to wonder that one so well informed as was Pascal, and so clear-sighted, could have blinded himself to the true state of the ease regarding the Romish auricular confession. Can one imagine,” says he, “ anything more kind, more tender, than the practice of the church (in directing us to unburden our consciences to the priest, and to him alone)? Nevertheless, such is the depravity of the human mind, that it thinks even this benign law hard ; and in fact, this has been one of’ the principal reasons of the revolt of a great pait of Europe against the church.” Pascal, who was conversant with the ecclesiastical history of Spain — to say no more, had he not come to the knowledge of the unutterable abominations connected with the confessional in that country ? oi could he think that these abuses, everywhere pre¬ valent, as they were, and in some countries reaching the extreme point of atrocity, could he think them incidental only, or that the evils inseparable fiom the practice were yet outweighed by its beneficial consequences ? No : — he could not have made good any one of these suppositions ; but, at ah events, auricular confession was an inseparable part of the Romish system ; and to question its expedi- encv would have been to stand out, declared, as a heretic. He scorned to shelter himseif in meie silence; and therefore breaks through every check of reason, not to say of truth, boldly to defend what, although indefensible, could not be disclaimed. As a matter of history, every one knows, that it was not confession, but the confessional ; not the abstract usage, or principle ; but the universal and invariable abuse of it, that roused the indignation of northern Europe,, and put into the hands of the Re¬ formers one of the most efficacious of those weapons with which they demolished the papal edifice, in their several countries. It would be easy to dispose, in a similar mannei, of all those passages wherein Pascal explicitly vindi¬ cates the practices of the Romish Church ; but it cannot be necessary to do so : his personal adherence to that church is a matter, as of no perplexity, so of 1 xi v ho general importance : he advances nothing in be¬ half of its errors that is new, or that has not been, a hundred times, met by irrefragable argument j mean¬ time, as we have said, the main stress of his mind presses against the spirit of the Romish Church ; nor is he a writer whom modern romanists can be fond of adducing, as an authority on their side. T ake this specimen of Pascal’s feeling in relation to the sacramental question, a question which, in fact, condenses within itself the elements of the great and ancient controversy between superstition and Christi¬ anity : and which, in its modern form, is the pivot of the polemics of our day. “The Jews were of two parties — the one having the sentiments only of the heathen world : — the other possessing the feelings of Christians (essen¬ tially so). The Messiah, according to the carnal Jews, was to be a great secular prince ; and accord¬ ing to the carnal Christians he has come to re¬ lease us from the obligation of loving God, and to bestow upon us sacraments, which work every thing for us, apart from our concurrence. But neither was the one true Judaism, nor is the other true Christianity. The real Jews, and the real Chris¬ tians, have acknowledged a Messiah, who should make them love God ; and by the means of this love, triumph over their enemies.”* This passage expresses as well, and as concisely perhaps, as it could be expressed, the vital distinc¬ tion which, in all ages, has divided the professedly Christian world. Whoever takes his part with the secular minded Jew, attaches himself to a system * Page 166-7. Ixv obsolete, corruptible, and evanescent. But concern¬ ing those who “hold to the spirit,” we need hardly ask whether, in, and by the world, they be called papists or protestants; for they are of that kingdom that “ shall not be shaken,” and they are those who, in the end, shall be knit together as members of the true church. Firm in this great and first principle, Pascal too readily admitted some positions which his acute and logical mind must instantly have rejected, had he chosen to bring them under examination. Thus, for instance, he so lays down the conditions of an authentic miracle, as shall save ample space for all the lying wonders of the romish romancers — “ When a miracle,” says he, “is witnessed, one ought either to yield to it (admit its reality) or be able to adduce extraordinary reasons to the contrary : — one should ask, whether he who performs it denies the being of a God, denies Jesus Christ, or denies the Church?* Now we might be very content to let this rule pass without comment, if only a due care were always given to the determination of the previous, and very pertinent question — Is such or such an alleged mira¬ cle, a miracle indeed ? The exercise of this neces¬ sary and reasonable discretion would, in fact, super¬ sede Pascal’s rule, inasmuch as the few instances, remaining, after such a scrutiny has been made, would, all of them, be on the side of truth, and would all range around the apostolic history. But Pascal had, as a romanist, to look to innumerable miracles beside those wrought in the first age of the church ; and among the number, to that of the “ Holy Thorn.”* * Page 221. f Page 237, and Chap, xx, throughout, Ixvi Were there not an inference of practical im¬ portance — — an inference touching our own times, derivable from the fact, one should willingly draw a veil over the extreme credulity of so great a man : (we will not now speak of the cure itself in whatever way effected) we mean his credulity in regard to this boasted relic of Port Royal. Did he then know so little of the wholesale manufacture of, not “ holy thorns ” merely, but of true crosses — veritable nails — genuine rags, reeds, hammers, spikes, as well as of leg-bones, arm-bones, finger-joints, and what not? Did he know so little of this monkish craft, as to believe, without inquiry, in the genuine¬ ness of the Port Royal “holy thorn.” And must we yield an indulgence to Pascal, the geometrician, of the 17th century, which we do not grant, without reluctance, to the benighted St. Louis of the 13th century? One might have thought that the author of the tract on the properties of the cycloid, would have left “ holy thorns,” to be the play-things of the debauched and debilitated understandings of monks ! But it is not so; meantime who shall cal¬ culate the damage thus done to the religious senti¬ ments of mankind, by the like insanities of powerful minds? It has been thus that the entire influence of Pascal’s religious writings in France has been turned aside, and his powerful thrust at impiety suc¬ cessfully parried by a contemptuous reference, on the part of his infidel commentators, to the childish su¬ perstitions to which he was accustomed to surrender himself. For example, Condorcet, in putting for¬ ward a foolish paper of abbreviated notes of Pascal’s daily religious observances, and which was constantly lxvii worn by him as a sort of amulet, stitched in his dress, insultingly exclaims — i( What an interval between this paper and the treatise on the cycloid ! Nothing in fact can better serve to explain how all the thoughts contained in this collection could have come from the same brain. — The author of the treatise on the cy¬ cloid wrote some; and the rest are the work of the author of the amulet.” So it is, and it must be confessed with some appear- ance of reason, however inequitably, that the whole weight of Pascal’s testimony in favour of religion, is thrown out of the scale, and placed to the account of that infirmity of temper to which he gave way. Let good and eminent men be as absurd as they please in things which the world can never hear of; but let them remember that every absurdity of theirs which comes to be talked of, costs nothing less than the well-being of hundreds, or of thousands of souls ! Expensive recreations truly, are the religious freaks and follies — the superstitions and the extravagancies, of the wise and good ! There are those around us, even now, who might derive a caution or two, of another kind, from this great man’s example. Pascal— right in a general principle, but deplorably wrong in the application of it, believed himself compelled to deliver over to hope¬ less perdition, one and all, the very men whose memory we protestants love and honour, as the re¬ storers of Christianity, and the emancipators of Europe. “ The body can no more live,” says he, “without the head, than the head without the body. Wh oever then separates himself from the one, or the other, no longer belongs to the body, and has nothing lxviii more to do with Jesus Christ. Neither all the virtues, nor martyrdom, nor any austerities, nor any good works, can be of the least utility out of the pale of the Church , and apart from the communion of the head of the Church, that is to say — the pope.”* How sad the consequences, as affecting his own charity and comfort as a Christian — how sad as af¬ fecting his influence in after times, was that artificial blindness which excluded from his view the unques¬ tionable piety of many of the reformers, and of thousands of their followers ? What has so often —nay in every age hitherto, of the Christian history, turned the best heads, and chilled the best hearts, has been the placing reliance upon that flimsy eccle¬ siastical logic which has made it appear that the great realities, for the very sake of which the Christian dis¬ pensation was given to men, namely — the active love of God, and of our neighbour, are of no account, apart from certain conditions, attaching to the medium of conveying this dispensation from hand to hand. As if, in visiting a people full-grown, fair, and ruddy, whom one found to subsist on the “finest of the wheat,” one should sourly turn upon them, and say — ‘you delude yourselves, altogether, in fancying yourselves robust and happy these appearances of health are utterly fallacious: — you are, in fact, al¬ though you think it not, you are emaciated, squallid, and feeble. — You must be so, for the seed-corn wherewith, at the first, your fields were sown, was sun eptitiously obtained from the royal granaries, and therefore could not produce a wholesome crop : — nay it is all virulent poison.’ * Page 24i7. lxix Such is the language that has been held by nar¬ row minds to whoever has stood outside of their little enclosure ! The ecclesiastical virulence of one age differs extremely little from that of another : All is the same, saving a phrase or two. “ Except ye be circumcised, and keep the law ol Moses, ye can¬ not be saved.” So spake the staunch men of the apostolic age. “ Out of the church, that is to say, not in allegiance to the pope; there is no salvation.” So have spoken the successors and representatives of the Jewish zealots, from Gregory I, to the present day. “Deprived of Christ’s sacraments, there cau be no life in you ; but Christ’s sacraments are in the hands of Christ’s ministers, and of none else ; and his ministers are they whose canonical descent from the apostles, in the line of episcopal ordination, can be unequivocally traced : — the merest shadow of un¬ certainty in the matter, of ecclesiastical genealogy, is fatal to the pretensions of the holiest of men, or of any who may seem holy; for them, and the com¬ munities under their care, the abyss of perdition yawns wide.” Thus, even now, is one half of the protestant world talked to by the other half! But what must we think if, in the fine net-work of reasoning on which these anathemas hang, there should be some flaw ! — some rotten thread ! what if, in the historical materials out of which it is spun, some facts have been too hastily assumed ! — V\ hat? why then these adventurous logicians have been coolly outraging Christian charity, they have been maligning thousands of Christ’s faithful people, they have been poisoning the hearts of their follow¬ ers, they have been heaping calumnies upon the Ixx gospel itself, and so have turned multitudes of souls out of the path of truth, and all this has been done on the strength of a chain of syllogisms, which alas ! happens, in some part of it, to want a link ! Many there are, unthought of by these zealots, who, with some honest anxiety, desiring to inform themselves concerning Christianity, stumble at the threshold, when they find that those of its adherents who stand the highest in rank and office, and who claim to be the only authorized interpreters of its mysteries, are inflamed by the spirit of cursing and bitterness, and that arrogance and jealousy are, the characteristics of their .temper ! The vague and suppiessed feeling excited in thousands of ordinary minds, on such occasions, gets utterance through the lips of the crafty and politic enemies of all reli¬ gion. We are unwilling here to quote Voltaire, at length ; yet it might be useful (to some at least) to read and take home to themselves, the keen and just, although in the main sophistical comment, which ne attaches to that passage of the Thoughts in which Pascal sums up his argument for Christianity;* an argument irrefragable, if the gospel be looked at abstractedly ; or if the noiseless story of its genuine followers in every age, be regarded ; but miserably contradicted by the general current of what is called cnurch history; the history of ecclesiastical arro¬ gance. Pascal’s better nature triumphs, once and again, over his faulty church logic, when, happily, he for¬ gets Rome, and the heretics. In the passage re¬ ferred to in the margin, he lays down a great princi- * Page 131-4 Ixxi ple — a principle clear and inexpressibly momentous, and which in substance is this — That the manifest operation and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, produc¬ ing the Christian graces in the hearts of men, must, in all cases , be acknowledged and allowed to authen¬ ticate, substantially, the institutions through which the Spirit has thus deigned to operate. To reject or to scorn the work of God, in renovating the souls of men, is, if not to commit the sin against the Holy Ghost, at least to limit him, and to arrogate to our¬ selves the disposal of his sovereign favours !# Nearly all that relates, in this collection, to the Jansenist and Port Royal controversies, is comprised in the passages referred to beneath ;f nor do these passages demand any special remark; — they are out of the author’s ordinary style — less calm, less logical, and such as, by themselves, would leave the reader in suspense, as to the merits of the controversy be¬ tween the Jesuits and the Jansenists ; or rather, would give him the impression that this controversy, like so many, evenly divided faults and merits. Yet this was not the fact, and a perusal of the story of the Port Royalists may almost be spoken of as an act of justice, due to those oppressed witnesses for the truth in France. In England, Pascal’s writings, and his Thoughts especially, have always been in favour among medi¬ tative and intelligent religious readers. But with us, whose religious literature is so ample and various, this single writer presents himself as one in a crowd:* — we converse with him delighted, for an hour, and turn to another. In France which can * Page 248. f Chap. xx. lxxii hardly be said to possess a native religious literature, or at best a very limited classical indigenous divinity, Pascal is read much rather as an authenticated model ot style, and as an acute and eloquent dialectician, than properly as a religious writer : there are not religious readers enough to maintain his celebrity in that character. His mind and his language are ad- mired : — his principles utterly disregarded ; at least it is generally so. Nor indeed can it be thought likely that, as a religious writer, he should regain his influence at home. The controversy in which he acquired his chief celebrity, was special and tempo¬ rary ; and if ever the Gallican church shall be anew agitated by theological debate, the questions then to be mooted will be of quite another sort; — neither St. Gyran, nor Jansen, nor St. Augustin will give their names to the quarrel. And as to the Thoughts, the greater portion of them, relating to the Christian evidences, are likely to be superseded (if ever the general subject awakens the French mind) by works produced at the spur of the occasion, adapted to mo¬ dern modes of thinking, and squared by more exact and erudite methods of argumentation. May that day of religious agitation in France soon come on ! Nor must it be said that there are no indications of its near approach. We do not here allude to the silent diffusion of the Scriptures, which, it may be hoped, will produce, at length, a happy effect upon the middle and lower classes. Nor should we care to enquire particularly into the internal con¬ dition and prospects of the Reformed and Lutheran communions ; inasmuch as many reasons, nc*t now to be set forth, seem to render it highly improbable lxxiii that the religious renovation of France (if it is ever to take place) should burst out from the dying embers of protestantism. — The French people, we may be sure, will not take their religion from those who ap¬ pear themselves to have so little to spare ; or in fact from the descendants and representatives of the Hu- gunots. There are however facts which warrant the belief that a stirring of life is even now taking place in the heart of the Gallican church : — inquiry is awake, and sedulous studies are pursued, such as must, or probably will, bring with them some change of the ecclesiastical position of the church, and some reforms. The French clergy of the present day, very unlike, as a body, the creatures of the revolution, and of Napoleon's church government, are reported to be men who will not leave themselves to be contemned, like their immediate predecessors, as the dregs of the people — persons who, for a morsel of bread, would do the dirty work of the state, in carrying forward the mummeries of the government superstition. Such, too generally, were the Bonaparte clergy; but such are not, if report speak truly of them, the clergy of the Gallican church at the present moment. Feeling their destitution of a native theological literature, the clergy (as it appears) are eagerly de¬ manding that of other countries, even not exclusive of some of our protestant commentaries. But espe¬ cially are they recurring to the Greek and Latin Fathers — the accredited literature of the Romish church. The lately revived demand for the Fathers in this country, had already added a thirty per cent, to the commercial value of the best editions ; and now, 33 d Ixxiv a not less vivid anxiety, on the part of the French clergy, to possess them, has still further enhanced that value. Until of late, the tide of ecclesiastical literature set steadily from France and Germany, toward England, where a ready sale was obtained for the importations which drained the foreign shops and libraries. But at length this tide has turned, and many ponderous works — the Benedictine editions, and the like, after having seen the day and “ taken the air,” during a few years’ sojourn in England, are finding' their way again across the channel, and to Paris, where they meet purchasers, eager to possess them at a price which leaves a handsome profit in the hands of all who have been concerned in push¬ ing them round in this circuit. O Nor is this all ; for at a time when no such enter¬ prise would be ventured upon in London, the Pari¬ sian press is issuing costly editions of the most volu¬ minous of the Fathers— -Chrysostom, and Augustin: — reprints of the noble labours of the congregation of St. Maur ! But it will be said, disdainfully or despondingly, ii What of this? What will be the probable issue of a revived study of the Fathers in France, ex¬ cept it be to rivet popery anew upon the minds of the clergy? What are the Fathers but the authors and patrons of popery ?” We look for a different and happier result of this return of ecclesiastical erudition. Taught by the course of controversies elsewhere, and of which they cannot be ignorant, to look out, as they read, for the distinction between the romish superstitions, and ancient Christianity, this dis¬ tinction will meet them at every turn: it will (with s Ixxv all its important consequences) be forced upon their notice ; and even if, for a while, they are confirmed in their respect for so much of popery as belongs to ancient Christianity, they can hardly fail, in the end, to resent, with a fresh indignation (as the Gallican church has in fact heretofore resented) those imposi¬ tions and corruptions which are attributable, not to the Fathers, but to the bishops of Rome, and in which popery — if we use the designation with any pertinence, really consists. Our times are times of irresistible progression, in every path on which movement takes place at all. Ecclesiastical research, once set on foot (in France or elsewhere) once gone into with eagerness, and undertaken by men who are commencing their pro¬ fessional career, will not, as we venture to predict, come to a stand at any point of arbitrary limitation ; but will go as far as it can go: — it will reach the real or natural boundary of the ground within which it is carried on. French science, French historical learn¬ ing, are not now sleepy, inert, or superstitiously timid ; but are bold, persevering, and exact. French eccle¬ siastical learning, reared in the same schools, will partake of the same spirit, and will hold a similar course : — it will pursue its objects, and will overtake them. And while, in this country, we are going round about, feeling our way in the dark, a very few competent to take their part in any such inquiries, and more deprecating them as pernicious or idle; — while, in England, we are very likely to reap only new embarrassments from our inadequate researches into Christian antiquity, it may be predicted, as a not improbable event, that the French ecclesiastical Ixxvi scholars, less encumbered in fact than ourselves, less beset, and not distracted by the foresight of secular and political consequences, attached to these pursuits, may get fairly ahead of us, and become our masters. The Germans, as every body knows, have long since done so in whatever is purely erudite and critical — in whatever relates to the historical interpretation of the sacred text; and as, in times gone by, we have looked to the French ecclesiastical compilers and historians, as to the only men who were thoroughly conversant with the subject, so may we again have to go to our neighbours for the result of their inde¬ pendent and scholastic inquiries concerning the doc¬ trine and polity of the early church. To themselves, these inquiries, as they are not likely to be cut short, can hardly fail to be in the highest degree beneficial ; and the probable conse¬ quences it might not be very difficult to anticipate. This however is a subject we must not here pursue. We might perhaps wish something else for the clergy of France than that they should give them¬ selves to the painful perusal of the Greek and Latin divines. But He who “ leadeth the blind, often, in a way that they know not,” toward the fulness of truth, may be preparing, even now, happy changes for F ranee, in this very path. Or should nothing further or better be the result, what protestant would not heartily rejoice to know that the supersti¬ tions of Gregory I, of Gregory VII, and of Gregory IX, were giving way, among our neighbours, to the superstitious Christianity, albeit, of Chrysostom, Cy¬ prian, and Tertullian? In connection with the topic here adverted to, a lxxvii consideration is suggessed by Pascal’s usage (com¬ mon to romanist writers) and which he adheres to, as well in his Thoughts, as in the Provincial Letters, of making all his quotations from Scripture in the latin of the Vulgate. Be it remembered that, when stating his reasons for adopting a lively and popular style, in the Provincial Letters, he plainly avows that he wished to gain the ear of the people at large; — of the unlearned and of women; and he felt that he should have failed in this object, had he written gravely and scholastically. We have his own con¬ fession then, that he wrote for all. But now to have allowed the people, through the medium of his pages, to have heard our Lord and his apostles speaking of salvation in the vernacular dialect, would have been tantamount to heresy : it would have been to countenance the abominations of Wickliffe, Luther, Calvin, Tindal. Pascal did not forget that the in¬ tention of that stupendous miracle which first declared the promised presence of the Spirit with the apostles, was to allow every man to hear truth sr That there is, a God whom it is possible for them to resemble and enjoy, and that the corruption of their nature renders them unworthy of him* It is equally important for men to know each of these truths; since it is equally dangerous for man to know God, without knowing his fallen state-, or to know his fallen state, without knowing that Redeemer who can deliver him from it* The knowledge of these truths apart, produces either the pride of philoso¬ phers who- know God, but not their fallen state; or the despair of atheists who know their fallen state, without knowing- a Redeemer. But though the necessities of man require that he should know both these points, it depends- entirely on the mercy of God that he should inform us respecting them. This is what Christianity actually performs: this, as we just now said, constitutes its essence. Let any man examine the real state of things in the world, and see if every thing does not tend to confirm the truth of these prime articles of our religion* XI. If a man is not sensible that he is full of pride, ambition, irregular desires, weakness, misery, and unrighteousness, he is totally blind. But if he knows that such is his real state, and yet has no de¬ sire to be delivered from it, in what terms can w-e speak of so- unreasonable a being? What emotion but that of reverence can we feel for a religion, that is so well acquainted with the disorders of our na- 131 ture? And how can we help devoutly wishing the truth of a religion that proffers remedies so com¬ plete? XII. It is impossible to review the whole assem¬ blage of the proofs of the Christian religion, with¬ out feeling their force to a degree that no reasonable man can resist. Consider its establishment. Here is a religion contrary to our nature, which establishes itself in men’s minds with so much mildness as to use no external force, and yet, with so much energy, that no tortures could silence its martyrs and confessois; and all this was accomplished, not only without the assistance of a single prince, but in defiance of earthly potentates who all sought to crush it. Consider the holiness, the elevation, and the hu¬ mility of a real Christian. JThe pagan philosophers sometimes raised themselves above the rest of man¬ kind, by a more regular manner of living, and by sentiments in some measure conformable to Chris¬ tianity. But they never esteemed as a virtue what Christians term humility: indeed it would have been incompatible with other dispositions which they con¬ sidered as virtuous. The Christian religion is the only one which has known how to combine sentiments that were apparently incongruous, and has taught mankind, that so far from humility being inconsis¬ tent with the practice of other virtues, all other vir¬ tues, if this be wanting, are only blemishes and vices. Consider the numberless extraordinary facts re- 1 32 corded in holy writ, the superhuman grandeur and sublimity of its contents, the admirable simplicity of the style — without affectation, without any laboured embellishments, and bearing tbe most unequivocal impress of truth. Consider particularly the character of Jesus Christ. Whatever may be our sentiments in other respects, it is impossible not to acknowledge the astonishing greatness and elevation of his soul: of this, his very childhood gave indications, when he conversed with the doctors in the temple : yet, instead of cultivating his talents by study and the society of men of learn¬ ing, he passed thirty years of his life in retirement from the world, engaged in a mechanical employ¬ ment; and, during the three years of his ministry, chose for his associates, and delegated as his apostles, men without science, learning, or reputation, and ex¬ posed himself to the enmity of men who were deemed the wisest and most learned of their time. Strange conduct this, in a man who projected the establish¬ ment of a new religion! Consider attentively the apostles of Jesus Christ; uneducated, unlettered men, yet who, all at once, found themselves possessed of wisdom sufficient to confound the ablest philosophers, and endued with courage to resist all the kings and tyrants who op¬ posed tbe establishment of the religion they pro- mu lged. Consider the astonishing succession of prophets during a period of two thousand years, who all predicted, in various ways, tbe minutest circum¬ stances of the life, death, and resurrection of Je- 133 sus Christ) the mission of the apostles, the spread of the Gospel, the conversion of the Gentiles, and many other particulars relating to the establish¬ ment of Christianity, and the abolition of the Jewish economy. Consider the wonderful accomplishment of the prophecies in Jesus Christ, to whom they apply with such exactness, that nothing but wilful blind¬ ness can prevent the perception that he is the per¬ son they were designed to predict. Consider the state of the Jewish people, both before and after the coming of Jesus Christ; their flourishing state before the coming of the Saviour, and their miserable condition since their rejection of him: for, to this day, they are without any sym¬ bol of their religion, without a temple, without sacri¬ fices, scattered over all lands, a reproach, and a by¬ word among all nations. Consider the perpetuity of the Christian religion, which has subsisted from the beginning of the world, either among the saints of the Old Testament, who lived in expectation of the coming of Christ, or among those who have received him and believed on him in after times: no other religion has pos¬ sessed that perpetuity, which is so distinguishing a mark of truth. Lastly, consider the holiness of this religion, the light its doctrines shed upon the contrarieties of our nature, and those illustrious and supernatural marks of its divinity, which strike us wherever we turn our eyes. After considering all these things, let any man judge if it be possible to doubt whether the Chris¬ tian Religion is the only true one, or if there be any other which can at all enter into competition with its claims* 1 35 CHAPTER IX. THE TRUTH' OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION PROVED BY THE CONTRARIETIES- IN HAN, AND BY ORI¬ GINAL SIN. The traces of original greatness, and the symp¬ toms of present debasement in our nature, are so ap¬ parent, that it is impossible for them to be passed over in the true system of religion, since such a sys¬ tem must be perfectly acquainted with the nature of the beings for whom it is intended : it must know all that is great, and all- that is debased in that nature, and the cause of both : we therefore expect it to as¬ sert, that there is in man a powerful principle of greatness, and an equally powerful principle of debase¬ ment. It must also account for these astonishing contrarieties in our nature. And if there is a ]3e- ino* who is the originator and the final end of all things, the true religion must enforce the obligation of loving and adoring him alone. Yet, as we find ourselves incapable of adoring a being we do not know, and of loving any but our¬ selves, it must, while it enforces our obligations, also declare our incapacity to fulfil them, and acquaint us with its proper remedies. In order to make us happy, the true religion must show us, that there is a God whom it is our duty to love : that our true felicity consists in union with him, and all our misery in being separated from 136 him; it must apprize us, that we are enveloped in a darkness which prevents us from knowing and loving him, and that since our inclination leads us away from God, while our duty is plainly to love him su¬ premely, we are full of unrighteousness. It must explain the reason of our aversion to God, and to our own real good; and must bring within our reach the remedies for this malady. Let us examine, with this view, all the religions in the world, and see if any, excepting Christianity, will satisfy our demands. Will the lessons of the philosophers satisfy us, who offer, as the chief good, a good within our¬ selves? Can this be the true good? Is it here they have found a remedy for our disorders? WTill it quell man’s presumption, to put him on an equality with Deity ? or will it cure his irregular propensities to place his chief good in sensual pleasure, and thus to reduce him to a level with the brutes? “ Raise thy eyes to the Deity,” said some, 66 behold in him the Being thou art to resemble, and who formed thee to adore him! It depends on thyself to attain his image: Philosophy will lead thee to that elevation, if thou wilt follow her guidance.” Others said, “ Turn thy eyes downwards, base worm, to the brutes, and see for what creatures thou art the fit companion !” What then will become of man? Is he to be on a level with the Deity, or with brutes? Between these extremes how frightful a distance ! Where and what are we? Is there no religion that shall cure at once our pride and our sensuality? Is 137 there none that shall teach us our true good and our obligations, and furnish us with a remedy for the frailty that violates them ? Let us listen to the wisdom of God addressing us in the Christian revelation. — <£ In vain, O men ! you seek in your¬ selves for the remedy of your miseries. All that the light of reason can disclose will only convince you, that, in yourselves, you can find neither truth nor happiness : philosophers have promised you satisfaction, but they have never given it. They know not what constitutes your real good, nor what is your real state. How, indeed, could they apply the remedy, when they were ignorant of the dis¬ ease? Your chief maladies are pride, which draws you off from God, and the love of sensible objects, which chains you to the earth; and philosophers, in attempting to check the one, have only ag¬ gravated the other. Have they taught you to aspire after the Deity, and to consider your nature as allied to his ? In so doing they have only ex¬ cited your pride. TLhose who have seen the vanity of such attempts, have led you into an error equally fatal, by telling you that your nature resembled that of brutes, and prompting you to seek for happiness in the indulgence of those sensual propensities which are common to both. Be assured, it is not by such means that you will correct the perversities of your nature. Look not to men either for truth or con¬ solation. — I am that being who formed you, and I alone can teach you what you are. \ou aie not now in the state in which I formed you. I created man holy, innocent, and perfect : I filled his soul 138 with light and intelligence: I manifested my glory to him: 1 displayed the wonders of my power. The eye of man then gazed upon the majesty of God. No darkness blinded him; neither pain nor mortality oppressed him. But this glorious state was too much for him; it excited his presumption. He wished to make himself his own centre, to be inde¬ pendent of my aid. He withdrew from my control, and as he strove to resemble me by seeking for hap¬ piness in himself, I allowed him to make the trial. I caused the inferior creatures once under his sub¬ jection, to revolt, and made them his enemies. And now man is become like the beasts; and so far has he wandered, that scarcely a ray of light reaches him to remind him of the Author of his being: all his conceptions of me have been lost or confounded. The senses, rendered independent of reason, and often its masters, impel him to unlawful gratifica¬ tions. All creatures are his open foes, or his se¬ ducers, and he is their slave, subdued by force, or allured by pleasure, that most terrible and imperious of all dominations.” Such is the actual state of man. A powerful instinctive feeling of the happiness of his primitive nature remains, but he is plunged into a miserable state of blindness and sensuality, which is become a second nature. II. From the principles I have laid down, you may discover the cause of the contrarieties which have excited the astonishment of mankind, and di¬ vided them into so many sects. Observe all those 139 inward promptings after glory? those indistinct con¬ ceptions of greatness, which the deepest sense of misery cannot quench or obliterate, and ask yourselt whether they are not the indications of a nobler nature ? III. Acknowledge then, proud being, what a paradox thou art to thyself. Let thy powerless reason be humbled, let thy feeble nature be silent. Learn that man infinitely surpasses the comprehen¬ sion of man, and be taught by thy Maker, what thou knowest not — thy true condition. If man had never become corrupt, he would have enjoyed truth and happiness with certainty ; and if man had always been corrupt, he would have bad no idea of truth or of happiness. But unhappy mortals as we are, (and the more so because there are some remains of greatness in our condition,') we have the idea of an happiness which we can never reach; there glimmers before us the image of truth, but we grasp falsehood only; we are incapable alike of ab¬ solute ignorance and of complete certainty: these are sufficient indications that we were once in a state of perfection, from which we are unhappily fallen.. What can this incessant craving, and this impo¬ tence of attainment mean, unless that there was once a happiness belonging to man, of which only the faint traces remain, in that void which he attempts to fill with every thing’ within his reach ? But it re¬ in vain he seeks from absent objects the relief which things present cannot give, and which neither of them can give; because, in a soul that will live for ever. 140 there is an infinite void that nothing can fill, but an infinite unchangeable being. IV. It is very astonishing, that the mystery most remote from our knowledge, that, I mean, of the transmission of original sin, should be a thing with¬ out which we can possess no real knowledge of our¬ selves. Certainly nothing confounds our reason more than to say, that the sin of the first man has rendered those persons guilty who are so far removed as to seem incapable of sharing it. This transmis¬ sion seems to us not only impossible, but most un¬ just; for can any thing be more contrary to the rules of our pitiful justice, than to pass eternal condemna¬ tion on an infant incapable of volition, for a sin com¬ mitted 6000 years before it was born? Certainly nothing shocks us more than this doctrine, and yet without this most incomprehensible of all mysteries, we are an unintelligible enigma to ourselves. This is the master-key to the intricacies and perplexities of human existence. So that, however inconceiv¬ able this mystery may be, man, without it, is still more inconceivable. Original sin is foolishness in the sight of men : this we allow, but let not the defect of reasonable¬ ness, in this doctrine', be objected to it, since it is not pretended that reason can explain it. But this foolishness is wiser than all the wisdom of men. u For the foolishness of God is wiser than men.” 1 Cor. i. 25. Without this, what can be said of man ? His whole condition depends on this point, which our feeble vision can scarcely descry. But how 141 could it be perceived by reason, since it is a thing above reason? And reason, far from discovering, revolts from it, when it is declared. V. When these two states of innocence and cor¬ ruption have been explained, we instantly perceive their reality. Indeed, to obtain the most convinc¬ ing proofs of their existence, we need only watch the movements of our own minds ; for we shall detect so many contradictions, as to make us feel it to be impossible that they could ever be found in an un¬ compounded subject. This twofold tendency in man is so glaring, that some have thought that we have two souls; for one only has seemed utterly incapable of such great and sudden changes, of falling from unbounded presump¬ tion, into the most grovelling debasement. Thus all those contrarieties which appear to place men at the greatest distance from all religion, may be the means of leading them to the knowledge of the truth. For myself, I am free to declare, that as soon as I discovered in the Christian religion the doctrine that man is fallen and separated from God, I saw on every side indications of its truth; for nature everywhere, both in man and out of man, gives signs of a Deity departed. Without divine revelation, what could men do but either flatter themselves, by indulging the in¬ stinctive feeling that remained of their former great¬ ness, or lie prostrate under a sense of their present weakness? For want of seeing the whole truth, they could never attain to perfect virtue. 142 Some, looking upon our nature as slightly injured, and others deeming it irretrievably ruined, the for¬ mer have become the victims of pride, and the latter of sloth, the two sources of all vice. Men were forced either to submit to their degradation, or to escape from it by pride. Those who perceived the excellence of human nature, knew not its corruption; so that, though they rose above despondency, they were ruined by presumption. Others who acknow¬ ledged the weakness of nature, were ignorant of its dignity, and therefore suppressed the feeling of am¬ bition only by plunging into despair. Hence arose the various sects of the Stoics and Epicureans, the Dogmatists and the Academy. The Christian religion alone has cured man of these two vices : not by employing one to expel the other, ac¬ cording to the maxims of earthly wisdom, but ex¬ pelling both by the simplicity of the Gospel; for it warns the pious, when it raises them to be partakers of a divine nature, that in that state of elevation, they still carry in their bosoms a principle of corrup¬ tion, which renders them, during life, liable to error, misery, sin, and death ; and it proclaims to the most impious, that it is possible for them to partake of the grace of the Redeemer. Thus cherishing fear in those whom it justifies, and offering consolation to those whom it condemns, it so mingles hope and fear by means of that capability, common to all men, of grace and condemnation, that it humbles infinitely more than reason, but without producing despair ; and elevates infinitely more than the pride of nature, but without inspiring presumption; and having evinced 143 itself alone to be free from error and vice, establishes its sole right to instruct and regenerate mankind. VI. We cannot form a conception either of the glorious state of Adam before his fall, or of the nature of his sin, or of the transmission of it to his posterity. These events took place in a state alto¬ gether different from our own, and surpass our pre¬ sent capacity; nor would a perfect acquaintance with them be of any service in freeing us from our mise¬ ries. All it concerns us to know, is this, that through Adam, we are miserable, corrupt, and separated from God, but that we are redeemed by Jesus Christ ; and of these facts the world furnishes the most strik¬ ing proofs. VII. How strange! that Christianity should en¬ join man to acknowledge himself worthless, and even abominable, and at the same time, to aim at resem¬ bling his Maker. Without the counterpoise which each of these injunctions forms to the other, his ele¬ vation would render him superlatively proud, or his abasement would render him dreadfully abject. Misery tends to despair: greatness inspires pre¬ sumption. VIII. The incarnation shows man the greatness of his misery by the greatness of the remedy. IX. In the Christian religion, we find attributed to man, neither a debasement which renders him in¬ capable of excellence, nor a holiness exempt from 144 imperfection. No doctrine can be more suitable for man, than that which informs him of his twofold capability of receiving and losing grace, on account of the two extremes into which he is always in dan¬ ger of falling — despair and pride. X. Philosophers never inculcated sentiments adapted to both these states. They attempted to inspire sentiments purely of an elevated order, but these were not suited to our condition. Or they en¬ deavoured to instil base and grovelling notions, and these were as little adapted to human nature as the former. There must be indeed emotions tending to humble, but consisting in sorrow for the actual state of our nature, not in unworthy notions of its capability. There must also be elevated emotions, but of an elevation attained by grace, and not by merit, and not indulged till emotions of the other kind have been felt. XI. No one is so happy as the true Christian: no one so rational, so virtuous, so lovely. With how little pride may a Christian believe himself united to God ! with how little abasement may he put him¬ self on a level with the very worms ! Who can refuse to believe and reverence these celestial communications? Is it not clear as noon¬ day that we perceive in ourselves indestructible marks of excellence? And is it not equally true, that the experience of every hour tells us, how deplorable is our present condition? And does not this chaos and unnatural confusion proclaim to us, with a voice ui U5 too powerful to be resisted, the reality of the two¬ fold state of man? XII. That which prevents men from believing that they are capable of being united to God, is no¬ thing but a sense of their degradation. But if they are really sincere, let them meditate on it as much as I have done, and they will perceive, that this de¬ gradation is so entire, that we cannot of ourselves determine whether the divine mercy will restore us or not. For I would ask, whence does a creature who acknowledges himself to be so vile, acquire the right to measure the mercy of God, and to limit it according to his fancy ? Man, so far from knowing what God is, does not even understand his own na¬ ture, and yet, perplexed with his own condition, he ventures to affirm that God cannot restore him to communion with himself! But let me ask, whether God demands any thing excepting to love and know him? and since man is naturally capable of love and knowledge, why should he not believe that God can make himself known and beloved? For man has no doubt of his own existence, and that he loves some objects. If, then, even in the darkness that sur¬ rounds him, he can discern various objects, and find some to excite his love, why, if God imparts some rays of his glory, should he not be capable of know¬ ing and loving him, according as he shall be pleased to reveal himself? The reasonings, therefore, that go to deny the possibility of this, must be excessively presumptuous, although founded on an apparent hu¬ mility: but our humility is neither sincere nor ra- G 23 146 tional, if it does not induce us to confess, that un¬ able of ourselves to know our nature, or our destiny, God alone can inform us. 147 p&Y S' \ X V Jr \/ CHAPTER X. THE SUBMISSION AND THE USE OF REASON. I. The highest attainment of reason is to know that there are an infinite number of things beyond its reach. And it must be extremely feeble, if it does not go so far. A man ought to know, when to doubt, when to be certain, and when to submit. He who cannot do this does not understand the real strength of reason. Men violate these three prin¬ ciples either by being certain of every thing as de¬ monstrative, for want of being acquainted with the nature of demonstration, or by doubting of every thing for want of knowing when to submit; or by submitting in every thing, for want of knowing when they ought to judge. II. If we submit every thing to reason, our reli¬ gion will have nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we violate the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous. Reason, Saint Augustine remarks, would never submit to revelation, if it were not convinced that submission, on some occasions, is its duty. It is proper, therefore, that it should submit, when ac¬ cording to its own decision, it ought to submit; and that it should not submit, when it decides on proper grounds, that it ought not to submit; but it must take great care not to deceive itself. G 2 148 III. Piety is quite distinct from superstition: as soon as piety passes into superstition it is destroyed. Heretics reproach us with this superstitious submis¬ sion. And we deserve the reproach, if we require submission in things which are not fit subjects for submission. Nothing is so consonant with reason, as a dis¬ avowal of its authority in things which belong to faith, And, on the other hand, nothing is so opposed to reason, as to reject an appeal to it, on things which are not the object of faith. A total rejection of reason, or an exclusive deference to it, are two ex¬ tremes equally dangerous. IV. Faith says many things on which the senses are silent; but nothing which they deny. It is superior to them, but never contrary. V. If I saw a miracle, say some persons, I should lie converted. 4 hey would not talk in this mannei, did they know what it is to be converted. They imagine that for this purpose it is only necessary to acknowledge that there is a God, and to offer ad¬ dresses to him, not very different from what the pagans make to their idols. But true conversion consists in annihilating one’s-self before that Eter¬ nal Sovereign whom we have so often provoked, and who might justly destroy us at any time; in acknow¬ ledging that we can do nothing without him, and deserve nothing from him, but his displeasure; and finally, in being convinced, that there is an inveter¬ ate opposition between God and ourselves, and that 149 without a Mediator, communion with him is impos¬ sible. VI. Do not be surprised at seeing plain unlet¬ tered men believe without reasoning. God inspires them with a love of holiness, and a hatred of them¬ selves. He inclines their hearts to believe. And unless God incline the heart, no man will ever be¬ lieve with real and efficient faith; but, when inclined by him, no man will disbelieve. David well knew this when he said, “ Incline my heart, O Lord, to thy testimonies.” Psalm cxix. 36. VII. The faith of those who believe without hav¬ ing examined the evidences of religion, is owing to a holy disposition of their hearts, to which what they hear of our religion is conformable. They perceive that they are the creatures of God; they wish to love none but him, and to hate none but themselves. But they feel that they want power; that they can¬ not draw near to God, and that unless he draws nigh to them, they can hold no communion with him. They hear it asserted in our religion, that we should love God alone, and hate none but ourselves, and that because we are wholly depraved and separated from God, God has become man to unite himself to us. There needs nothing more to induce men to believe, with such a disposition of heart, and with such a knowledge of their duty and their inability. VIII. Those who are Christians, without the knowledge of the prophecies and other evidences of 150 religion, can judge of its truth as correctly as those who possess that knowledge, but by a different me¬ dium. They judge by the heart, as others judge by the understanding. It is God himself who in¬ clines them to believe, and therefore they are most efficaciously persuaded. I readily allow that one of these Christians who believe without logical proof, might be unable to convince a clever infidel. But those who are ac¬ quainted with the evidences of religion will prove, without difficulty, that the faith of such a man is really inspired by God, though he himself could not prove it to be so. 151 CHAPTER XI. THE REFLECTIONS OF A MAN WHO IS WEARY OF SEARCHING AFTER GOD BY THE LIGHT OF NA¬ TURE, AND IS BEGINNING TO STUDY THE SCRIP¬ TURES. I. When I observe the blindness and the misery of man, and the astonishing contrarieties his nature exhibits; when, amidst the unbroken silence of her universe, I behold him groping in darkness, aban¬ doned to himself, a wanderer in this by-place of creation, without knowing who placed him here, what is his proper business, or what will become of him at death, I am filled with consternation ; I feel like a person conveyed while asleep, to a desert island, who, on awaking, knows not where he is, or by what means he may make his escape. And what increases my amazement is, that it is possible to exist in this dreadful situation without despair. I see other beings about me of the same nature as myself; I ask them whether they are better informed than I am : they tell me they are not; and upon this, in¬ stead of feeling alarm, the wretched wanderers gaze carelessly round, and suffer themselves to be capti¬ vated by the first alluring object that strikes their senses. But for myself, I cannot rest in such a state, nor be content in the society of persons, who resemble me in their nature, their weakness, and their misery. They can be of no service to me at 15c2 death; I must die alone: surely then I ought to act now, as if I were alone. But if I were alone, I should not build houses, nor perplex myself with business, nor be anxious about my reputation ; to dis¬ cover the truth respecting my condition, would be my only concern. As I have a strong presumption that there is something existing besides the visible universe; I begin to examine whether that God, of whom all men speak, has left any marks of himself. I look round on all sides, and meet with nothing but what excites doubt and restlessness. If 1 saw no traces of a Deity, I should make up my mind, and conclude that there is no God. On the other hand, if I saw every where the proofs of a Creator, my mind would repose in the belief of his existence. But seeing too much to allow me to deny the fact, and too little to make me certain of it, I am in the utmost perplexity, and have wished an hundred times, that if there is a God, nature would manifest him without ambiguity, and that if there is not, every imaginary sign of his existence might vanish : in short, let nature speak distinctly, or be totally silent, and I shall know what course to take. In the pre¬ sent case, ignorant alike of what I am, and what I ought to do, I know neither my condition, nor my duty, yet my heart is wholly set on discovering the true good, and would deem no sacrifice too great to obtain it. I see a multitude of religions, existing in various parts of the world, and through all ages. But none of them have cither moral principles that I can ap¬ prove, or evidences, that can challenge my belief. I 153 reject equally the religion of Mahomet, of the Chi¬ nese, of the Romans, and of the Egyptians, for this simple reason, that since one has no greater marks of truth than another, my reason cannot be disposed to receive any one in preference to the rest. But while reviewing this unsettled and strange variety of manners and belief, I find in one small country, a peculiar people, separated from all other nations, and whose records are many ages earlier than the most ancient histories. I find that this people, who (in proportion to their extent of terri¬ tory) are very powerful and numerous, adore one God, and are governed by a law which they aver was received from his hands. They maintain, that they are the only people in the world to whom God has revealed his mysteries, and that all men are cor¬ rupt, and have lost his favour; that all are abandoned to their appetites and waywardness; and that hence arise the strange mistakes, and continual changes in customs and systems of religion, while their own re¬ main unaltered and inviolate. They declare, further, that God has determined not to leave the rest of the world in darkness for ever ; that he will come as a universal deliverer; that they have been chosen to announce his coming, that they are expressly consti¬ tuted heralds of this great event, to invite all man¬ kind to join with them in expecting this Deliverer. This people present an astonishing spectacle, and seem worthy of the greatest attention on account of many extraordinary peculiarities in their national character. They are a people composed entirely of brothers; 154 instead of being formed like all other nations, of an assemblage of numberless distinct families, this, though very numerous, consists of the posterity of one man: the individuals composing it being mem¬ bers one of another, form one powerful body out of a single family; a circumstance totally unparalleled. They are a people of the greatest antiquity; which seems to entitle them to peculiar veneration, and is of special importance in relation to our pre¬ sent inquiry; for if God has from the beginning of time, made communications to mankind, it is among such a people we shall find the records of his will. This people is not only noted for its antiquity, but is still more remarkable, for having continued without interruption, from their origin to the present time. The nations of Greece and Italy, the Lace¬ demonians, the Athenians, the Romans, and others of later date, have long ago perished, but the peo¬ ple I am speaking of, have always subsisted, and, notwithstanding the invasions of many powerful kings who (as the most authentic historians testify, and as might be expected from the usual course of things,) have attempted their destruction, they have been con¬ stantly preserved, as well as their national records, which, extending from the very origin of the human race, to our own times, include in their duration all other histories. The law by which this people is governed, is by far the most ancient in the world, and the only one, which, like the nation itself, has continued to exist without interruption. Philo the Jew, has noticed this fact, in several passages of his writings, and Josephus 1 55 has stated it with great force in his book against Appion, where he shows, that the very name of law was not known among other nations, till a thousand years after the Jewish code had been promulged; so that Homer, who mentions so many nations, never once makes use of it. We may judge of the perfection of this law, by simply reading it : we shall find that all its provisions are made with so much wisdom, equity, and judgment, that the most ancient legis¬ lators of Greece and Rome, who had any knowledge of it, have grafted their principal laws on it; as may be seen in the Twelve Fables, and as Josephus shows by other instances. Yet this law, is distinguished above all others for its rigour and severity, binding the people, in order to retain them in their allegiance, to a thousand minute and laborious observances under pain of death. So that its preservation, for ages, among a people prone to rebellion and impatient of con¬ trol, is most marvellous; especially, when we find, that all other states have from time to time altered their institutions, though far easier to be observed. II. This people are also remarkable for their sin¬ cerity. They guard with the utmost devotion and fidelity, the very book in which Moses declares that they have always been ungrateful to God, and that he knows that they will be so to a greater degree after his death; but that he calls heaven and earth to witness that he has forewarned them ; that at last God will be provoked against them, and scatter them through all nations, and that, as they provoked him 156 by worshipping1 gods which were not their Gods, he will provoke them, by calling a people which were not his people. Nevertheless, that very book which reproaches them in so many forms, they preserve at the hazard of their lives. Such sincerity is without example in the history of the world, and cannot be traced to any natural principle. Lastly, I find no reason to doubt the authenticity of the book which narrates all these things; for there is a very great difference between a book com by an individual, and getting into circulation among a people, and a book composed by the people them¬ selves. In the latter case, the antiquity of the book and of the people is the same. Here is a hook made by authors who lived at the time when the events took place which they record. Every history which is not thus contemporaneous, is of doubtful authority: such were those of the Sybils and Trismegistus, and many others which have ob¬ tained currency for a time, but have afterwards been exploded. But this cannot be' the case when writers are contemporaneous with the events. III. What a difference between one book and another ! I am not surprised that the Greeks pro¬ duced the Iliad, nor that the Chinese and Egyp¬ tians compiled their national histories. One can easily see how all this was accomplished. These fabulous historians were not contemporaneous with the events. Homer composed a romance which he gave as such: for no one can believe that Troy and Agamemnon ever existed any more than the golden 157 apples in the gardens of the Hesperides. Homer never intended to write a history, but simply to com¬ pose an interesting poem. His book was almost the only one of that age; its beauty ensured it duration; every body knew and talked ol it, and in short could say it by heart. After four centuries, the wit¬ nesses of events are dead, no one can tell on bis own knowledge whether a narrative be true or fabulous : the reports of one’s ancestors are the only authoiity, and these suffice sometimes to make a story pass for true. 158 CHAPTER XII. j THE JEWS, CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY. I. After the deluge and the creation, as it was not the intention of the Almighty to manifest himself again by such extraordinary events as the destruc¬ tion of a world, or the creation of a new one, he ori¬ ginated a chosen nation, with a design to continue it till the times of the Messiah, who would form a people by his Spirit. II. God, intending to show that he could form a holy people of invisible sanctity, and conduct them' to eternal glory, bestowed temporal blessings, as he intended to dispense spiritual blessings, that men might judge, by what he performed with visible ob¬ jects, of his power over invisible things. He saved his chosen people from the deluge, in the person of Noah; he caused them to spring from Abraham, he redeemed them from their enemies, and gave them rest in the promised land. The design of God was not simply to save from the deluge, and to raise from the stock of Abraham a whole people, in order to bring them into a fruitful land; but as nature is an image of grace, so these visible miracles were im¬ ages of those invisible ones which he intended to perform. 159 III. Another reason why God formed the Jewish people was to show, that as he designed his spiritual people should want carnal and perishable blessings, these things would not be withheld through defect of power to bestow them. The Jewish nation were engrossed with earthly expectations; they believed that God bore an exclu¬ sive regard to their progenitor Abraham, and to all his posterity; that for this alone he had multiplied them, and kept them from intermixing with other nations; had brought them out of Egypt with signs and wonders; had fed them with manna in the wil¬ derness; had placed them in a rich and fertile coun¬ try; had given them kings, and a magnificent temple, where sacrifices were offered to purify them by the shedding of blood; and finally, that, for this reason, he would send the Messiah, to make them masters of the world. The Jews were accustomed to great and splendid miracles; and looking upon the wonders wrought at the Red Sea, and on their entrance into Canaan, as an epitome of what would be achieved by the Mes¬ siah, they expected events still more extraordinary to attend his coming, compared with which, all that Moses wrought would be a mere scantling. When these carnal prejudices were inveterate among them, Jesus Christ appeared at the predicted time, but not with the grandeur they anticipated, and therefore was not recognized as the Messiah. After his death, St. Paul was raised up to teach his countrymen, that all the events of their history were but figures; that the kingdom of God was notin 160 flesh, but in spirit; that their enemies were not the Babylonians, but their corrupt propensities; that God was not pleased with temples made by hands, but with the pure and humble heart ; that not out¬ ward circumcision, but the circumcision of the heart only was of any avail. IV. As it seemed fit to the Almighty, not to dis¬ cover these events to a people who were unworthy of knowing them, and yet to predict them, that they might be the objects of faith, he caused his prophets to announce the time clearly, and sometimes the events, though most generally in figures: so that those who loved the sensual objects which formed u the types, might rest in them; and those who loved the things prefigured, might discern them. The consequence was, that when the Messiah came, the nation were divided into two classes — the spiritual who received him, and the carnal who rejected him, but who still continue to be his witnesses. V. The carnal Jews understood neither the gran¬ deur, nor the humiliation, of the Messiah predicted by their prophets. They understood not his gran¬ deur: as when it is said, that the Messiah was the Lord of David, although his Son ; that he was be¬ fore Abraham, and yet that Abraham rejoiced to see his day. They did not believe that his nature was so exalted as to exist from all eternity; and they as little comprehended what was declared respecting his humiliation and death. The Messiah, said they, abideth for ever; but this man asserts of himself 161 that he shall die. They believed in him neither as appointed to suffer death* nor as eternal : they only looked for the signs of earthly grandeur. They were so in love with the figure, and fixed their attention so exclusively upon it, that they knew not the real personage, when he came, at the time, and in the manner, predicted. VI. Persons who are disposed to infidelity, as¬ sume as a pretext the unbelief of the Jews. If the Messiahship of Jesus Christ was so evident, say they, why was it not admitted ? But the rejection of Jesus Christ by the Jews, is one of the grounds of our belief. Our own faith would be shaken, if they had adopted it ; we should then have a more plausible reason for unbelief and scepticism. Is it not most striking, to observe the Jews admirers of the prophecies, but rejecters of their fulfilment, and that even this rejection should have been predicted? VII. That the Messiah might be properly attested, it was requisite that there should be antecedent pro¬ phecies, kept by persons not liable to suspicion, of extraordinary diligence, fidelity, zeal, and general notoriety. For this purpose, the Almighty chose a carnal people, to whom he entrusted the prophe¬ cies which foretold the Messiah as a deliverer and dispenser of those carnal blessings which they loved: this excited an ardent attachment to the writings of their prophets, which they held up to the view of the whole world, and assured all nations, that the predicted Messiah would come in the manner these 162 writings specified. But deceived by the appearance of the Messiah in abasement and poverty, they be¬ came his most virulent enemies. Thus that very people, who of all others can be least suspected of favouring us, have rendered the greatest service to our cause, and by their zeal for the law and the pro¬ phets, bear and preserve with incorruptible fidelity, their own condemnation, and the evidences of our religion. VIII. Those who rejected and crucified Jesus Christ, and to whom he was an offence, are the very persons who preserve the books that declare he would be rejected and become an offence. Thus by re¬ jecting him, they have established his claims : and he is proved to be the Messiah equally by the pious Jews who received him, and by the impious who re¬ jected him; for both these events were foretold. It was for this purpose, that a double sense was attach¬ ed to the prophecies, the one spiritual, to which the Jews were averse, the other carnal, which they loved. If the spiritual sense had been apparent, they could not have loved it, and their repugnance to it would have quenched their attachment to these sacred books, and the ceremonies they so scrupulously ob¬ served. And if they had really loved these spiritual promises, even supposing they had preserved them uncorrupted, till the times of the Messiah, their testimony would have lost its force, since it would have been that of friends. This shows the propriety of obscuring the spi¬ ritual sense. Yet, if this sense had been com- / 163 pletely concealed, it would have furnished no testi¬ mony to the Messiah. How then does the matter stand? In the greater number ol passages, the spi¬ ritual sense is obscurely conveyed under the literal, while in a few others, it is clearly expressed ; the period of the Messiah’s appearance especially, and the state of the world at that time, are foretold in the most precise terms. Indeed, so clearly is the spiritual sense expressed in some passages, that it would indicate a mind lost in sensuality not to dis¬ cern it. Such then has been the conduct of divine Pro¬ vidence. The spiritual sense is veiled by the literal, in the great majority of passages, and unfolded in others ; rarely, it is true, but yet it has been so or¬ dered, that the passages in which the spiritual sense is obscured, are equivocal and admit of both senses, while the passages which speak of spiritual things only, are so constructed as to admit of no other ap¬ plication. Thus the possibility of error is avoided, and none but persons as carnal as the unbelieving Jews them¬ selves, can misinterpret these prophecies. When extraordinary blessings are promised, "hat should prevent men from understanding spiritual good to be intended, unless that love of sensible objects, which confines their views to the things of the world ? But those who place their happiness in God, readily refer every thing to him. Pheie aie in fact two principles, one or other of which pre¬ dominate in the human mind — the love of the world and the love of God. I do not mean that all at- 164 tachment to visible objects is incompatible with faith, or that the love of God excludes all affection for visible objects. But where the former is the go¬ verning principle, though these blessings may be acknowledged to come from God, yet the world has possession of the heart : on the contrary, where the latter is supreme, the goods of this life may be used, but God will be the centre of happiness. We denominate objects from their relation to our main pursuit. Every thing which hinders us in that, is termed an enemy. Thus creatures, though good in themselves, are the enemies of the righte¬ ous, when they draw them off from God ; and God is the enemy of worldly men, when he destroys their schemes of aggrandizement. As the term enemy depends for its application on our main pursuit, the righteous Jews understood by it their corrupt propensities, and the carnal ap¬ plied it to the Babylonians: it was therefore obscure only to the unrighteous. To this Isaiah referred when he said, 44 Seal the law for my disciples,’’ Isa. viii. 16. and that Jesus Christ 44 would be a rock of offence,” viii. 14. 44 But happy are those who are not offended in him,” Matt. ii. 16. To the same purport says Hosea, 44 Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent and he shall know them ? for the ways of the Lord are right and the just shall wralk in them : but the trans¬ gressors shall fall therein,” Hosea xiv. 9. Such was the peculiar nature of the old dispensa¬ tion, that, while it enlightened some, it blinded others, but by their blindness confirmed the truth to 1 65 the former; for so extraordinary and divine were the temporal blessings they received from God, that they evinced the divine power to bestow spiritual blessings and a Messiah. IX. The time of the first coming of Jesus Christ is foretold ; the time of his second coming is not foretold, because the first was to be concealed : but the second will be so illustrious, that even his ene¬ mies must recognize it. At his first coming, he was to be known only by those who searched the Scriptures diligently; and for such persons, God so ordered things, that every thing served to point him out. The Jews who received him proved his claims, because they were the depositary of the prophecies; and those who rejected him proved his claims, be¬ cause, by so doing, they accomplished the prophe¬ cies. X. The Jews had miracles and prophecies which they saw accomplished; and the doctrine of iheii law was to adore and love one God. It was also perpe¬ tual. Thus it had all the marks of the true reli¬ gion, and was proved to be that religion. But we must distinguish the doctrine of the Jews fiom the doctrine of the laws of the Jews. For the doc¬ trine of the Jews, although it had miiacles, prophe¬ cies, and perpetuity, was not true, because it wanted the adoration and love of God alone. The Jewish Religion must be considered very dif¬ ferently, as it was held by the sincerely pious and by the mass of the people : the sentiments of the peo- 166 pie respecting morals and happiness were ridiculous, those of the truly pious were incomparable. The foundation of their religion is admirable. It is the most ancient book in the world, and the most au¬ thentic. Mahomet, to preserve his writings, has forbidden his followers to read them ; Moses, for the same reason, has laid his open to all mankind. XI. The Jewish Religion is divine in its author¬ ity, its duratiou, its perpetuity, its morality, its ad¬ ministration, its scheme of doctrine, and its effects. It was formed to shadow forth the truth respecting the Messiah, of which it is at once the symbol and the evidence. Among the Jews, truth existed only in figure. In heaven it is unveiled. In the church it is veiled and recognized by its correspondence to the figure. The figure is spread over the truth, and the truth is seen through the figure. XII. Whoever forms an opinion of the Jewish Religion by its exterior, will grossly misconceive it. From its sacred books, and the declarations of its prophets, it plainly appears, that it is not to be un¬ derstood according to the letter. So our Religion exists in divine purity in the Gospels, the Apostolic writings, and tradition, but is disfigured by those who have perverted it. XIII. The Jews were of two kinds: one felt like Pagans, the other like Christians. The Messiah, according to the carnal Jews, was to be a great tern- 167 poral prince. According to the carnal Christians, he is come, that the love of God may be dispensed with, and to give us sacraments, which may be effi¬ cacious without any thing being done on our part. Neither of these is either the Jewish Religion or the Christian. True Jews and true Christians both acknowledge a Messiah, who will make them love God, and by this love triumph over their enemies. XIV. The veil which is spread over the Scriptures for the Jews, is also there for false Christians, and for all who do not hate themselves. But only let a man be sincerely disposed to hate himself, and how eager will he be to understand them, and to ob¬ tain the knowledge of Jesus Christ ! i XV. The carnal Jews occupy the middle, between Christians and Pagans. The Pagans know not God, and love only the world ; the Jews know God, and love only the world ; Christians know the true God, and do not love the world. The Jews and the Pagans love the same kind of good; the Jews and the Christians know the same God. XVI. The Jews are evidently a people formed on purpose to serve as witnesses to the Messiah. They preserve and revere their sacred books, but under¬ stand them not. And all this has been predicted ; for it is said, that the judgments of God are in¬ trusted to them, but as a sealed book. As long as the prophets existed to maintain the law, the people neglected it. But, by a remarkable 168 interposition of providence, when the succession of prophets was closed, a zealous attachment to the law sprung up among the people. XVII. When the creation of the world began to he a distant event, God provided a contemporary his¬ torian, and constituted a whole nation the guardians of his writings, that the history of this great event might be the most authentic in the world, and that all men might be informed of what it was so impor¬ tant for them to know, but which they could not know by any other method. XVIII. Moses was unquestionably a man of supe¬ rior abilities. If, then he had intended to deceive, he would have formed a plan by which he would lrave been likely to escape detection; but on the contrary, he has written in such a manner, that if he had dealt in fables, any Jew whatever might have detected the imposture. Why, for example, did he make the lives of the antediluvians so long, and the generations so few ? He might have concealed his errors, by introducing into his chronology a multitude of generations ; for this it is, and not the number of years, which ren¬ ders history doubtful and obscure. Truth is altered merely by passing through a number of hands. But Moses puts two of the most memorable events that can be thought of, the Crea¬ tion and the Deluge, so close together, that they seem almost to touch, owing to the small number of generations between each. For at the time when o 169 lie wrote, the memory of them must have been quite fresh in the minds of all his countrymen. Shem, who had seen Lamech, the contemporary of Adam, saw Abraham : and Abraham was seen by Jacob, who saw those who lived in the time of Moses. The Deluge and the Creation, therefore, really hap¬ pened. This will be conclusive with those who un¬ derstand the nature of the argument. The longevity of the Patriarchs, instead of occa¬ sioning the loss of the memory of past events, was the means of preserving it. For, the reason that men now a days are not well acquainted with the history of their ancestors is, that they have scarcely ever lived with any of them, and that the latter are generally dead before their descendants have at¬ tained to years of maturity. But when human life was protracted to such a length, children lived a long time with their parents, and had ample opportunities for conversing with them. And on what could they converse, excepting the story of their ancestors, since all history would be comprised in this, and the arts and sciences, which take up so much of our time, had then no existence ? We may easily con¬ ceive why persons in those early ages would take particular care of their genealogies. XIX. The more I examine the Jews, the more marks of truth I find; particularly, that they are without prophets, and without a king, and that, being our enemies, they are such admirable witnesses of the truth of the prophecies in which their blind¬ ness and its consequences are foretold. It is in II 23 170 this depository I find a religion truly divine in its authority, its duration, its perpetuity, its morality, its administration, and its effects. And I stretch forth my arms to my Redeemer, who, after being predicted for four thousand years, came into the world to suffer and to die for me, at the very time, and under all the circumstances foretold : by his grace, I wait for death in peace, in the hope of being eternally united to him ; and meanwhile, I re¬ joice to live, receiving either the good things he is pleased to give me, or the trials he sends for my be¬ nefit, and which he has taught me how to endure by his own example. Thus I refute all other religions : here I find an answer to all objections. It is just that a Crod so pure should discover himself only to those whose hearts are purified. It is to me a most convincing argument, that, since the memory of man, this people has always existed. They have constantly declared, that men are in a state of universal corruption, but that a Re¬ deemer should come: it is not one man who has said so, but an infinite number of men ; in fact, a whole nation uttering prophecies for four thousand years. 171 CHAPTER XIII. ^ THE types; that the old dispensation was FIGURATIVE. I. Some types are clear and demonstrative, but there are others which seem less natural, and im¬ press only those who are convinced on other grounds. Such types may appear to resemble those employed by persons who found prophecies upon the Apoca¬ lypse, which they explain just as suits their fancy. But there is this difference, that, in the latter case, there is no firm basis to rest upon. So that nothing can be more unreasonable, than to pretend that their types are as well founded as some of ours ; for they have no demonstrative ones, but we have. The two cases, therefore, are not parallel. We must not, on account of a partial similarity, confound and blend things which in other points are so very dif¬ ferent. II. One of the principal reasons why the pro¬ phets veiled the spiritual blessings they promised, under the types of earthly blessings, was, that they had to do with a carnal people, who were to be the depository of a spiritual covenant. Jesus Christ was typified by Joseph, the well-be¬ loved of his father, and sent by him to see his brethren; by them, though innocent, sold for twenty pieces of silver, and by that means becoming their H 2 172 lord, their saviour, and the saviour of strangers, and the saviour of the world : for these events would not have taken place had it not been for their intention of killing him, and then actually dis¬ owning and selling him. Joseph, on a false accusation, was put in prison between two criminals; Jesus was crucified between two thieves. Joseph predicted the deliverance of the one, and the death of the other, though both were apparently in the same circumstances. Jesus Christ saved one, and left the other, though charged with the same crimes. Joseph foretold deliverance, Jesus effected salvation. Joseph requested the one whose life would be spared to remember him when restored to his office; the saved thief besought Jesus Christ to remember him when he should come into his kingdom. III. Grace is a type of glory ; for it is not the ulti¬ mate end. Grace was typified by the law, and itself typifies glory, yet in such a mannei tnat it is, at the same time, the means of attaining it. IV. The synagogue could not be utterly destroyed, because it was a type of the church — but, because it was only a type, it was brought into a state of subjection. The type subsisted till the antitype was established; so that the Church has been always visible, either in that figurative representation which was an earnest of it, or in reality. \T, To prove at once the truth of both J esta- 173 merits, it is only necessary to examine whether the prophecies of the one are accomplished in the other. To judge of the prophecies, we must understand them : for if we believe that they have only one sense, it is certain that the Messiah is not come : but if they have two senses, it is certain that he is come, in the person of Jesus Christ. The whole question is, Whether they have two senses, whether they are figurative or literal; that is, whether we must endeavour to find something as their real object, which does not appear at first sight, or be satisfied with the first meaning they present ? If the law and the sacrifices are the substance, they must be pleasing to God, and in no sense dis¬ pleasing ; if they are types, they must be pleasing to God, and in a certain sense displeasing. But in the Scriptures, they are represented as being both pleasing and displeasing to God : therefore they are types. VI. Two considerations will suffice to evince that the language of the Old Testament is figurative, and that, by temporal blessings, those of a higher or¬ der were shadowed forth. In the first place, it would be unworthy of the Divine Being to communicate in his Revelation promises of only temporal happi¬ ness, and secondly, though the prophets gave most explicit assurances of temporal prosperity, yet they asserted that their prophecies were obscure, and that they had a meaning different from what appeared at first sight, which would be understood only in latter times. They must therefore have referred to other sacrifices and to another saviour. 174 Let it also be observed, that tbeir expressions would be contradictory and absurd, if they are not supposed to mean, by the terms law and sacrifices, something besides the Mosaic law and sacrifices : for this would involve gross and palpable contradic¬ tions in their writings, sometimes even in a single chapter. Hence we conclude that they must have referred to other objects. VII. In the Jewish Scriptures, it is declared, that the law would be changed; that the people should be without a king, without princes, and without sa¬ crifices; that there would be a new covenant; that the law should be new modelled; that the precepts they had received were not good ; that their sacri¬ fices were abominable, and that God desired them not. On the other hand, it is said, that the law should endure for ever; that the covenant should be ever¬ lasting; that the sceptre should never depart from them, till a king should come, who would reign for ever. Do all these passages point out the reality ? No. Do they all point out the figure? No. But they point out either the reality or the figure. But the first class, by excluding the reality, show that they must be taken figuratively. These declarations, taken collectively, cannot be understood literally; but as all difficulty vanishes if they are understood figuratively: we infer that they are not spoken ol the reality, but of the figure. VIII. To ascertain whether the law and the sacri¬ fices are the reality, or the figure, we must observe 175 whether the prophets employ a phraseology which implies that their views were confined to the old co¬ venant, as something ultimate and unchangeable, or whether they looked upon it as the representation ot an object to which it bore the same relation as a painting to the original. Now, what is their lan¬ guage on these topics ? When they say, that the covenant will be eternal, do they speak of that cove¬ nant which they say will be changed ? and so of the sacrifices? &c. IX. The prophets declared, in the most express terms, the never-failing love of God to Israel, and the perpetuity of the law. They also said, that the meaning ol their predictions was veiled, and not un¬ derstood by their countrymen. A cipher has a two-fold sense. When an im¬ portant letter is intercepted, to which a meaning may be attached, and yet we are told, that there is another meaning, so concealed that the letter may be seen without seeing that, and understood without understanding that, what can we suppose but that the cipher has a double meaning, and especially if we also find palpable contradictions in the literal sense ? And how highly should we esteem that per¬ son who would decipher the letter, and explain the hidden meaning, particularly if he did it on natural and intelligible principles! But this is what Jesus Christ and his Apostles have done. They have broken the seal, they have removed the veil, and revealed the spirit of the prophecies. They have shown, that the enemies of men are their passions, 176 that the Redeemer must be a spiritual one, and that it was ordained he should appear twice ; the first time in meanness, to abase the proud; the second time, in glory, to raise the humble; and that Jesus Christ is both God and Man. X. Jesus Christ made it his business to teach men that they were lovers of themselves; that they were enslaved, blind, sick, unhappy, and sinful; that to him they must look for deliverance, illumination, health, and happiness; that this must be obtained by hating ourselves, and following him through the ignominy and death of the Cross. The letter killeth ; the whole was figurative; it was necessary that the Messiah should suffer. Behold the cipher he has given ! A Deity in a state of hu¬ miliation ; a circumcision of the heart; a real fast; a real sacrifice; a true temple; a twofold law; a two¬ fold table of the law; a double temple and a double captivity. He has taught us that all these things were only figures : he has shown who are the true Israelites, and what is real freedom, and true circumcision, and the true bread from heaven. XI. In the promises of the Old Testament, every one may find that to which he is most attached; either spiritual or temporal blessings; God, or the creatures; with this difference however, that those who look there for the creatures, find them indeed, but with many contradictions, with a prohibition from loving them, and with a command to adore and 177 love God alone; while those who look there for God, find him without any contradiction, and with a command to love him alone. XII. The source of the apparent contradictious in Scripture are these: a God humbled to the death of the Cross, a Messiah triumphing over death by submitting to death, the two natures in Jesus Christ, his two advents, and a twofold state of human na¬ ture. As, in describing a person’s character, it is not enough to dwell merely upon its most agreeable features, but every part must be brought into one view, and harmonized ; so, to understand an author completely, a consistent sense must be given to his whole work. In the works of every author who writes intelli¬ gibly, there is a sense which harmonizes all the parts. It is not enough that the sense suits several passages, it must also reconcile those that seem con¬ tradictory. Now, let us apply this principle to the Scriptures : no man will assert that they are a tissue of nonsense; the marks of intelligence are too strong. What, then, is that mode of interpretation which will reconcile the apparent contradictions of this volume? The true sense is evidently not that of the Jews. But in the person of Jesus Christ all the discordances are harmonized. The Jews knew not how to reconcile the termina¬ tion of the kingly power, and their national inde¬ pendence, predicted by Hosea, with the prophecy of Jacob. If the law, the sacrifices, and temporal dominion, H 3 178 are taken for the substance, we cannot reconcile all the passages of any one writer or book in tbe Bible, sometimes not even of a chapter. This indicates pretty plainly the real sense of Scripture. XIII. The Jews were not allowed to sacrifice out of Jerusalem, the place chosen by God, nor even to eat the tithes elsewhere. Hosea predicted, that they should be without king, without prince, without sacrifices, and without idols; and we see this accomplished at the present day, since they cannot sacrifice out of Jerusalem according to the law, XIV. When the Word of God is false, taken literally, it is true in a spiritual sense. (( Sit thou on my right hand.” This is false literally, but true spiritually. In expressions of this sort, God is spoken of after the manner of men; the one just mentioned, means, that God holds the Messiah in similar esteem to what men feel towards those whom they place on their right hand. It is, in fact, a token of the purpose of God, and not of his manner of accomplishing it. Thus, when it is said, 6( God hath received the odour of your incense, and will recompense you with a fruitful land,” it means, that as one man is pleased with receiving a present from another, and rewards him accordingly, so God would reward those who felt towards him as a man who presents an offering to a superior. 179 XV. The only object of the Scriptures is cha¬ rity. Every thing which does not directly tend to promote this is figurative. And, since there is only this one end, every thing which does not refer to it expressly, must do so figuratively. God has presented this one principle of charity under many various forms, in condescension to our weakness, which always craves variety, yet in a man¬ ner that always leads us to one object; for one only is absolutely needful, and we love variety : but, by a variety which leads to one object, God satisfies at once our necessities and our wishes. XVI. The rabbies consider the breasts of the spouse as figurative, and every thing else which does not tend to what, in their view, is the great object of the Scriptures, namely, temporal blessings. XVII. There are those who clearly perceive, that man has no enemy but that propensity to evil which draws him from God, and that his only good must be God, and not earthly good. Let those who be¬ lieve that sensual enjoyment constitutes man’s chief good, and that its deprivation is the greatest evil that can befall him, indulge themselves without restraint, and perish in their excesses. But for those who seek God with all their heart, who dread nothing but the hiding of his countenance, whose only desire is to gain his favour, and whose only enemies are those who hinder their obtaining it — enemies whom they deplore to be surrounded and subdued by — let such be consoled : for them there is a God and a Sa-* 180 viour. A Messiah was promised, to deliver his people from their enemies : and a Messiah has come to deliver them, not from their temporal enemies, but from their sins. XVIII. When David predicted that the Mes¬ siah would deliver his people from their enemies, taken literally, he might be supposed to mean the Egyptians; but in that case, it would be difficult to show how the prophecy has been accomplished. But the expression may also be interpreted to mean their iniquities; for, in fact, the Egyptians are not the enemies of the Messiah’s people, but their iniquities are so. The word enemies , therefore, is equivocal. But if David (as well as Isaiah and others) de¬ clared, as he actually has done, that the Messiah should deliver his people from their sins, the ambi¬ guity is taken away, and the double sense of the term enemies is reduced to the simple sense of ini¬ quities ; for, supposing their sins were the object he had in view, he might well term them enemies ; but if he meant enemies, he could not designate them by the term iniquities. But Moses, David, and Isaiah, used the same terms. Who will assert, then, that their meaning was not the same, and that, since David, when he speaks of enemies, means iniquities, Moses does not also mean the same when he, too, speaks of enemies. Daniel prayed for the deliverance of his people from captivity, but his thoughts were fixed on their sins ; and to show this, he says, that the angel Ga¬ briel came to him, to declare that his prayers were 181 heard, that seventy weeks only were to elapse, after which, his people would be delivered from their ini¬ quities, an end would be made of sin, and the deliv¬ erer, the Most Holy One, would bring in, not a le¬ gal, but an everlasting righteousness. When this explanation has once been given, it is impossible not to see its propriety. Keeping it in view, let us read the Old Testament, and inquire, Whether the sacrifices were real, and not typical; whether the obedience of Abraham was the true course of the friendship of God; whether the pro¬ mised land was the true place of rest? Surely not. Then they were figurative. If we examine, in the same way, all the ceremonies and all the command¬ ments, except those that relate to the love of God and our fellow-creatures, we shall see they are only figures. 182 CHAPTER XIV. ' JESUS CHRIST. I. The infinite distance between matter and spirit, is a type of the transcendently infinite distance be¬ tween mere spirit and divine charity; for that is su¬ pernatural. All the splendour of external grandeur has no lustre in the eyes of those who are devoted to intel¬ lectual pursuits. Intellectual grandeur is invisible to the lovers of wealth, to kings, to conquerors, and to all whose grandeur consists in external things. The grandeur of the wisdom that comes from above is invisible to the sensual, and to the merely intel¬ lectual ; thus, there are three orders of minds. Great geniuses have their empire, their renown, their grandeur, their victories: they have no need of sensual grandeur, which has no relation to that which they covet. They are perceived by other minds, not by the senses — but that is enough. Saints, too, have their empire, their renown, their grandeur, their victories, and have no need of either sensual or intellectual grandeur, which belong not to their order, and can neither add to, nor diminish the grandeur they desire. They are beheld by God and the angels, not by material beings, or by philo¬ sophic speculators. God is enough for them. Archimedes is not less venerated for wanting the distinctions of birth. He gained no splendid vie- 183 tories, but he has bequeathed to mankind his inesti¬ mable inventions. Oh how great in the eyes of the intellectual ! Jesus Christ living in poverty, and without composing any works of science, stands in his own order — that of holiness ! He communicated no inventions, he exercised no temporal dominion, but he was humble, patient, holy in the sight of God, without sin, and terrible to evil spirits. But with what superlative majesty and glory did he come to those who looked upon him with the eyes of the heart, and beheld his heavenly wisdom ! It would have been useless for Archimedes to have acted the prince in his works on geometry, even had he been one. And it would have added nothing to the splendour of our Lord Jesus Christ, in his kingdom of holiness, to have appeared as a temporal monarch ; but how great was the splendour of his own order ! It is absurd to take offence at the external meanness of Jesus Christ, as if this was of the same order as the grandeur which he came to exhibit. Only contemplate this grandeur in his life, in his passion, in his obscurity, in his death, in the choice of his disciples, in their flight, in his secret resurrec¬ tion, and in the other events of his life, and you will see that it is of a kind not to be affected by a mean¬ ness that bears no relation to it. But there are some persons who can admire only a grandeur that strikes the senses, as if there were none of an intellectual order; and others who admire only what is intellec¬ tual, as if there were not in divine wisdom a grandeur infinitely superior. 184 All material things, the firmament, the stars, the earth, and its kingdoms, are nothing, compared with a spirit even of the lowest order; for a spirit knows all these and itself, while they know nothing. And all material things with all spirits, and all their pro¬ ductions, are nothing, compared with the slightest emotion of charity, for this belongs to an order in¬ finitely more elevated. All material things cannot produce the least thought, for they belong to two distinct orders of being. And all material things, and all spirits, can¬ not produce an emotion of real charity, for it belongs to an order wholly supernatural. II. Jesus Christ lived in such obscurity (accor¬ ding to what the world deems obscurity) that the historians, who narrate only the most remarkable events, have scarcely noticed him. III. What man ever obtained more renown than Jesus Christ? The whole Jewish People pre¬ dicted him before his coming. The Gentile world adored him after his coming. Both Jews and Gen¬ tiles look to him as their centre. And yet, what man ever enjoyed less of this renown ? Of the thirty-three years of his life, thirty were passed in retirement. In the remaining three, he was treated as an impostor; the priests and the chiefs of the nation rejected him; his acquaintance and relations despised him. At last he suffered an ignominious death, betrayed by one of his Apostles, denied by another, deserted by all. 185 What, then, did he obtain by this renown? Never had man more renown — never had man more ignominy. All this renown was for our sakes, that we might recognise him : it was of no advantage to himself. IV. Jesus Christ speaks of the greatest things so simply, that it seems as if he had not thought upon them, and yet with such clearness, as convinces us, that he did think upon them. This union of per¬ spicuity and simplicity is admirable. Who taught the evangelists the qualities of real heroism, in order to delineate them so perfectly in the character of Jesus Christ ? And why do they describe him as feeble in his agony ? Did they not know how to describe firmness in death ? Certainly they did ; for one of them (St. Luke) exhibits it in the person of Saint Stephen. They describe Jesus as capable of fear, before it behooved him to die, but then perfectly calm. When he was troubled, the perturbation arose from within ; but when men as¬ sailed him, he was unmoved. The church has been obliged to prove that Jesus Christ was man, against the impugners of his hu¬ manity, as well as to prove that he was God ; and appearances were as much against one as the other. , Jesus Christ is a God to whom we approach with¬ out pride, and before whom we are humbled without despair. V. The conversion of the Pagans was reserved for the Messiah. The Jews either did not attempt it, 186 or attempted it without success. All that Solomon and the Prophets had written was useless. The philosophers, such as Plato and Socrates, could never induce men to adore the true God. Nothing is said of the life of the Virgin Mary in the Gospels, till the birth of Jesus Christ j every thing is said in relation to him. Both Testaments point to Jesus Christ — the Old as the object of hope, the New as the object of imita¬ tion ; and both as their centre. The prophets foretold future events, but were not the subjects of prophecy. The saints of the New Testament were the subjects of prophecy, but are not prophets. Jesus Christ was prophesied of, and uttered prophecies. Jesus Christ was for all; Moses for a single na¬ tion. The Jews were blessed in Abraham : “ I will bless those that bless thee,” Gen. xii. 3. But all nations are blessed in his seed, Gen. xviii. 18. “ A light to lighten the Gentiles,” Luke ii. 32. C£ He hath not done so to every nation,” Ps. cxlvii. 20. said David, speaking of the law. But speaking of Jesus, it must be said, he hath done so to every na¬ tion. Thus it is the prerogative of Jesus Christ to be a universal blessing. The church offers sacrifice only for the faithful, Jesus Christ offered himself on the cross for all. 187 CHAPTER XV. PROOFS OF JESUS CHRIST FROM THE PROPHECIES. I. The strongest proofs of the Messiahship of Jesus Christ are taken from prophecy. And, that there may be no defect in this branch of evidence, God has made it, by the successive accomplishment of predictions, a standing miracle from the com¬ mencement of the church to the end of time. Pro¬ phets were raised up among the Jews during a period of sixteen hundred years, and at the captivity, the prophetic writings were dispersed with the nation itself, for four centuries, over all parts of the earth. Thus the way was prepared for the advent of the Messiah ; for, since his Gospel was intended for general acceptance, it was requisite that the prophe¬ cies should not only exist, but be spread over the world, in order that, with these evidences before their eyes, all men might believe. Supposing a single prophet had foretold the exact time and manner of the M^essiah s appearance, the perfect coincidence of the event with his predictions would be of immense weight. But in the instance before us, there is much more. Here is a succes¬ sion of men, for four thousand years, who constantly, and without discrepancy, predict the same event. Here is a whole people, who are his heralds, and who have subsisted for four thousand years, main- 188 taining their belief in his coining — a belief which no threatenings or persecutions could prevail in them to disavow. This is very striking. II. The time of the Messiah’s appearance was marked out by four things, namely, the state of the Jewish nation, the state of the heathen world, the state of the Temple at Jerusalem, and the number of years between the prediction and the event. The Prophets specified several signs of the Mes¬ siah’s advent, which must, of course, come to pass at the same time. Thus, it was necessary that the fourth monarchy should be established, wdien the seventy weeks of Daniel were accomplished; that the sceptre should depart from Judah, and that then the Mes¬ siah should appear. At that time, Jesus Christ did appear, and declared himself the Messiah. It was predicted, that, under the fourth monarchy, before the destruction of the second temple, before the Jewish polity was at an end, and in the seven¬ tieth week of Daniel, the Gentiles should be in¬ structed, and brought to the knowledge of the God of the Jews, and his sincere worshippers should be delivered from their enemies, and filled with his fear and his love. And it came to pass, during the fourth monarchy, and under all the circumstances just mentioned, that multitudes of gentiles worshipped the true God, and led an angelic life: women devoted their virginity and their lives to religion, and men re¬ nounced all sensual indulgences. What Plato 189 could not effect even among a few select and re¬ fined spirits, a secret energy, by means of a few words, effected in thousands of uneducated men. And how shall this be explained? It is what had been foretold long before : “ I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,” Joel ii. 28. All nations were given up to unbelief and carnality; yet suddenly the flame of’ divine charity was kindled; princes renounced their grandeur; the rich surrendered their wealth, even women endured martyrdom, and children forsook their homes to wander in deserts. What power produced these extraordinary effects? The Messiah had appeared, and these were the consequences and signs of his advent. l or two thousand years, the God of the Jews was unknown to the heathen world; but, at the time predicted, the Gentiles, in crowds, worshipped this God alone. The temples of their idols were de¬ stroyed, and kings themselves submitted to the Cross. And whence came this? Why, from the Spirit of God poured forth upon the earth. It had been predicted, that the Messiah would establish a new covenant with his people, which should cause them to forget their coming out of Egypt; that he wmuld write his law, not on tables of stone, but on their hearts (Isaiah li. 7.) ; that he would put his fear in their hearts (Jer. xxxi. 33. xxxii. 40.); that the Jews would reject Jesus Christ, and that they would be rejected by God, because the vine which he had planted brought forth wild grapes (Isaiah, v. 2, 3, 4, &c.); that bis chosen people would be treacherous, ungrateful, and 190 unbelieving — ££ a rebellious people walking in a way that is not good,” Isaiah Ixv. 2. ; that God would smite them with blindness, and that they should grope at noon-day like the blind (Dent xxviii. 28, 29.) ; and that the church should be small in its formation, and afterwards mightily increase (Ezek. xlvii.) It had been also predicted, that idolatry should be overthrown ; that the Messiah would destroy all idols, and cause their images to cease, and lead men to the worship of the true God (Ezek. xxx. 18.); that the idol temples should be cast down, and that, among all nations, and in every place, a pure offering, and not burnt sacrifices, should be offered (Mai. i. 2.); that the Messiah would teach men the perfect way (Isaiah ii. 3. Micah iv. 2.); that he should be king of the Jews and Gentiles (Ps. ii. 6. 8. lxxi. 8.) And there never has existed a man, either before or after Christ, who, pretending to be the Messiah, has taught any thing approaching to this. But Jesus Christ, after his advent had often been foretold, appeared, and said, £ The time is fulfilled; I am he.’ He declared, That men had no enemies but themselves; that their evil hearts alone separ¬ ated them from God; that he came to deliver them from their iniquities, to bestow his grace upon them, and to form, out of all mankind, a holy church; to unite in one spiritual body Jews and Gentiles; to destroy the idolatry of the one, and the superstition of the other. What your prophets, said he, have foretold would come to pass, that my apostles are 191 about to effect. This nation will be rejected by God; Jerusalem will be soon destroyed; and the Gentiles will be brought to the knowledge of God, by the preaching of my Apostles, when you have slain the heir of the vineyard. Accordingly, after his ascension, the Apostles declared to the Jews the destruction that awaited them; and invited the Gen¬ tiles to the service of the true God. But all men, owing to their natural depravity, were opposed to the design of Christ s coming. This king of Jews and Gentiles was persecuted by both, and put to death by them. All that was great in the world combined against the rising Religion : the learned, the philosophic, and the powerful. Some wrote against it, others disputed against it, and a third class employed secular power against it. But, in the face of this various opposition, we see Jesus Christ, in a little time, reigning over Jews and Gentiles, destroying the Jewish worship at Jerusa¬ lem, which was the centre of it, and where he formed his first church; and abolishing the idol-worship at Rome, which was likewise its centre, and where he formed his principal church. Unlettered men, without external authority, for such were the Apostles and first Christians, with¬ stood all the powers of earth, made the powerful, the learned, and the philosophic, submit to them, and destroyed the long established systems of idolatry. And their only instrument was the force of that word, which had foretold it. The Jews, by putting Jesus Christ to death, rather than they would receive him as the Messiah, 192 fixed upon him the final mark of being the Messiah. By refusing to acknowledge him during his life time, they became unexceptionable witnesses; and by putting him to death, and continuing to reject him, they fulfilled the Prophecies. But who among us, can refuse to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, after reviewing the numerous particular circumstances which have been foretold respecting him? It was predicted, that he should have a fore¬ runner (Mai. iii. 1.); that he should be born an infant (Is. ix. 6.); that he should be born in the town of Bethlehem (Micah v. 2.); of the tribe of Judah (Gen. xlix. 10.); of the posterity of David (2 Sam. vii. 12 — 16. Isaiah vii. 14, &c.); that Jerusalem should be the principal scene of his appearance (Mai. iii. 1. Hag. ii. 9); that he would close the eyes of the wise and learned (Is. vi. 10.), and proclaim glad tidings to the poor and the needy (Is. lxi. 1.); that he would open the eyes of the blind, give health to the sick, and cause light to shine on those who were in darkness (Is. xlii. 6); that he should teach the perfect way (Is. xxx. 21.) and be the light of the Gentiles (Is. xlii. 6); that he should be a sacrifice for the sins of the world (Is. liii. 5.); that he should be a precious corner stone (Is. xxviii. 16.); that he should be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence (Is. viii. 14.); that many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem should fall on this stone, and be broken (Is. viii. 15.); that the builders should reject this stone (Ps. cxvii. 22.); that God would make this stone the head stone of the corner (Ps. cxvii. 22.); that this stone should become a great mountain, and fill the whole earth (Dan. ii. 35.); that he must 193 be rejected (Ps. cxviii. 22.) ; unknown (Is. liii. 2, 8.) betrayed (Ps. xli. 9.); sold (Zech. xi. 12.); buffet- ted (Is. 1. 6.); mocked (Ps. xxxv. 16.); vilified in numberless ways (Ps. lxix. 7.) ; received gall for drink (Ps. lxix. 21.); pierced in his hands and feet (Ps. xxii. 16.); spit upon (Is. 1. 6.); put to death (Dan. ix. 26.); and that lots should be cast for his garment (Ps. xxii. 18.); that he should rise again the third day (Ps. xvi. 10. Hosea, vi. 2.); that he should ascend to heaven (Ps. xlvii. 5. lxviii. 18.); and sit at the right hand of God (Ps. cx. 1.); that kings should set themselves against him (Ps. ii. 2.); that being at the right hand of his Father, he should be victorious over all his enemies (Ps. cx. 5.); that the kings of the earth and all people should worship him (Ps. lxxii. 11.); that the Jews should exist as a distinct nation Jer. xxxi. 86.); that they should wander among all nations (Amos ix. 9.) ; without a king, without sacrifices, without an altar (Hosea iii. 4.); without prophets (Ps. Ixxiv. 9.); expecting sal¬ vation, but not finding it (Is. lix. 9. Jer. viii. 15.) III. The Messiah, it was predicted, would form for himself a great people, elect, holy, and precious. It was further declared, that he would guide and support them, and lead them into a place of holy rest ; consecrate them to God, by making them his temple ; reconcile them to God, and deliver them from his wrath ; free them from the slavery of sin, which so visibly tyrannizes over mankind; give them laws, and engrave those laws on their hearts; and finally offer himself to God for them as a sacrifice, a I 23 194 spotless offering — himself also the priest, presenting his body and blood to God, and also bread and wine: Jesus Christ performed all this. It was predicted, that a deliverer would come, who would break the serpent’s head, and deliver his people from their sins, and from all their iniqui¬ ties (Ps. cxxx. 8.); that he would make a new covenant, which would be eternal; that he would be of a priesthood distinct from the Jewish, accor¬ ding to the order of Melchisedec, which would be everlasting. It was also predicted, that the Mes¬ siah must be glorious, powerful, and mighty, and, nevertheless, so mean in external appearance, as not to be recognized in his real character ; that he would be rejected, and put to death ; that his people who had denied him, would be his people no longer; that the Gentiles would receive him, and put their trust in him ; that he would forsake Zion, to reign in the chief seat of idolatry; though the Jews would still continue to exist; and that he would arise out of Judah, when the sceptre had departed from among them. IV. Let it be considered, that from the earliest ages, the expectation or the adoration of the Mes¬ siah has continued without interruption ; that he was promised to the first man immediately after the fall; that subsequently he was known to men who declared, that God had revealed to them that a saviour would be born, who should redeem his people; that Abra¬ ham declared, it was revealed to him, that this great personage would descend from his son Isaac; that 195 Jacob declared he would be born of the tribe of Ju¬ dah ; that Moses and subsequent prophets pointed out the time and manner of his coming; that they affirmed the law they were under was only preparatory to that of the Messiah, which would endure for ever; that thus either their law or that of the Messiah, of which it was the earnest, would always exist, and in fact, had always existed ; and lastly, let it be con¬ sidered, that Jesus Christ came according to all the circumstances predicted. — This is worthy of admira¬ tion. If the Messiah’s advent was so clearly predicted to the Jews, it may be asked, Why did they not be¬ lieve on him? or how is it that they have not been destroyed for refusing to believe a thing so evident ? I answer, that both these facts were predicted — the unbelief of the Jews, and their continuing to exist as a Nation. And nothing is more for the glory of the Messiah. It was not enough that there should be prophecies; it was necessary that they should be preserved without suspicion of being corrupted. V. The Prophetical Writings are composed of predictions of particular events, and of those relating to the Messiah, in order that the prophecies respect¬ ing the Messiah might not be without proof, and that the predictions of particular events might not be destitute of a secondary advantage. — 44 We have no king but Caesar,” said the Jews, John xix. 15. Then Jesus Christ was the Messiah, since they had no king but a foreigner, and wished for no other. The seventy weeks of Daniel are ambiguous, as 196 to the time of their commencement, on account of the terms of the prophecy; and as to the time of their end, on account of the diversities of chronolo™ crists. But all this will not make a difference of more than twenty years. The prophecies which describe the Messiah as poor, describe him also as Ruler of the nations (Zech. ix. 9, 10.) The prophecies which predict the time, predict him only as Ruler of the nations, and suffer¬ ing, and not as coming in the clouds to judgment. And those which describe bim as judging the na¬ tions in his glory, do not mark the time. When the Messiah is spoken of as great and glo¬ rious, it is evidently in his character as Judge of the whole world, and not as its Redeemer, (Is. lxvi. 15, 16.) 197 CHAPTER XV I. VARIOUS PROOFS OF JESUS CHRIST. I. If the testimony of the Apostles was unde¬ serving of credit, they must have been either deceived themselves or deceivers. It is difficult to maintain either supposition. As to the first, it was impossible for men in their senses to believe that they beheld a man restored to life whom they had seen expire, and laid in the grave, unless he had really risen from the dead ; and as to the hypothesis, that they were impostors, nothing can be more absurd. Only follow it out. Imagine these twelve men meeting together after the death of Jesus Christ, to frame a tale about his resurrection, and on the faith of it, daring the united force of all the religious and civil establishments in the world. The human heart, we know, is prone to levity and change, easily moved by promises of worldly advantage. If by such motives, or by the still more powerful ones of a dif¬ ferent class, by the prospect of imprisonment, torture, and death, one of their number had been induced to contradict himself, they and their scheme would have been ruined for ever. Pursue this thought to its legitimate consequences. As long as Jesus Christ was with them, his ex¬ ample might support them. But if after his death he did not appear to them again, what encourage¬ ment had they to proceed? 198 II. In reading the Gospels, among many other qualities of the narrative that excite our admiration, one is struck with the total absence of invective against Judas, or Pilate, or any of the enemies of Jesus Christ, or of the persons engaged in putting him to death. Had this reserve of the evangelical historians been only assumed, as well as many other beauties in their compositions, and assumed for the purpose of attracting notice, even supposing they had refrained from alluding to it themselves, yet they would have set their friends upon pointing it out for their advan¬ tage. But, as they wrote without artifice or any private ends, they made use of no such device to gain applause. I know not whether this has ever been remarked before ; a proof of the artlessness with which the thing was done. III. Jesus Christ wrought miracles : so did his Apostles and the Primitive Christians : and for this reason, that, since many of the prophecies were to be accomplished by their instrumentality, miraculous powers formed the necessary credentials of their mis¬ sion. It was predicted, that the nations of the earth should be converted by the Messiah. How could this prophecy be accomplished without the conversion of the Gentiles? And how could they be converted to Jesus Christ as long as the final proof was want¬ ing of his beinff the Messiah? Till after his death and resurrection, and the conversion of the Gentiles, all was not accomplished: in the mean time, there¬ fore, miracles were requisite. In our day they are 199 no longer wanted, to prove the truth of the Christian Religion ; for the accomplishment of the prophecies is a standing miracle. XV. The present condition of the Jews is a strong argument for the truth of our Religion. It is very striking to observe, that this people has existed lor so many centuries, and yet always in a state of de¬ pression. It was necessary they should exist, as an evidence of the IMessiah, and that they should be reduced to so abject a condition, because they ciuci- fied him : and although their continued existence might seem incompatible with the sufferings they have had to endure, yet they have subsisted notwith¬ standing all their calamities. But were they not, it may be asked, nearly in the same state at the Babylonish captivity? By no means. The sovereign authority was not abrogated by that event, inasmuch as their return was promised and predicted. When Nebuchadnezzar led away the People, they were told, lest they should suppose that the sceptre was taken from Judah, that, after being in a foreign land for a short time, they should be restored. During the whole period of their cap¬ tivity, they were consoled by the prophets, and the succession of their kings was preserved. But the second national catastrophe is without promise of re-establishment, without prophets, without kings, without consolation, without hope; for the sceptre is taken away for ever. They could scarcely be said to be in captivity 200 when they were assured of being delivered in seventy years. But in their present condition, they have no such hope. God promised, that though he dispersed them to the ends of the earth, yet, if they were faithful to his law, he would reassemble them. They have faith- fully adhered to it, and still continue in subjection to the nations among whom they dwell. The infer- ence is, that the Messiah has come, and that the law which contained these promises is abrogated by the establishment of a new dispensation. V. If the Jews had all been converted to Jesus Christ, they would have been looked upon as suspi¬ cious witnesses; and if they had been exterminated, we should have lost their testimony altogether. The Jews, in general, rejected Christ, but not all of them. The pious received, and the carnal rejected him. But this is so far from lessening his glory, that, on the contrary, it puts the finishing stroke to it. The reason they assign for their re¬ jection of Jesus Christ, and the only one that can he found in the Talmud and the rabbinical writings is, O ' that he did not subdue the Gentiles by an armed force. “Jesus Christ was put to death,” say they; “ he was himself overcome; he did not conquer the heathen; he enriched us not with their spoils.” And is this all? What they considered defects, only make, in my estimation, his character more admir¬ able, and far superior to the representations of their 201 VI. How delightful is it to see, by the eye of faith, Darius, Cyrus, Alexander, the Romans, Pom- pey, and Herod, all contributing, without being aware of it, to the glory of the Gospel! VII. Mahometanism is founded on the Koran and Mahomet. But this prophet, who gave him¬ self out to be the final hope of the world, was he ever the subject of prophecy? What sign of a com-’ mission from heaven did he possess which any other man may not pretend to, who chooses to call himself a prophet? What miracles did he ever perform? What mystery has he taught, even according to his own showing ? With what scheme of morals or of happiness has he enlightened the world ? Mahomet is unsupported by authority. His rea¬ sonings, then, ought to be very powerful, since they depend entirely on their own strength. VIII. If two persons were speaking apparently on common subjects, but the language of one had a double sense, understood by his followers, and that of the other only one sense, a person not in the se¬ cret would pass the same judgment on both. But supposing, in the sequel, the former should utter sublime truths, and the latter mean and trivial things, and even absurdities, the bystander would then judge that the former had been talking mysteriously, but that the latter had not : the one having shown that he was incapable of absurdities, but capable of being mysterious ; the other showing that he was incapable of uttering mysteries, but very capable of absurdities. 202 IX. I do not wish a judgment to be formed of Mahomet by those parts of the Koran that are ob¬ scure, of which it might be said, that they have a recondite meaning ; but by the plainest passages — by his Paradise, and such like scenes. In these he appears ridiculous. But, how different are the Scriptures! I allow there are obscurities; but then, other parts are perfectly perspicuous, and the fulfil¬ ment of many of the prophecies is unquestionable. The parallel, therefore, which some are disposed to make, will not hold good. We must not confound and equalize things that are not equal. The resem¬ blance is partial; for it is only in the occasional ob¬ scurities of both, and not in that divine splendour and luminousness, by which holy writ claims our reverence for its darker passages. The Koran asserts, that St. Matthew was a good man. It follows, that Mahomet was a false pro¬ phet, either in calling those persons good who were impostors, or if they were not impostors, in not believing what they declared respecting Jesus Christ. X. It required no supernatural power to effect what Mahomet effected. He was never foretold, and wrought no miracle ; but no man could ever per¬ form what Jesus Christ performed. Mahomet established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ, by commanding his followers to lay down their own lives. Mahomet interdicted his followers from reading their sacred writings; Jesus Christ commanded his disciples to 203 read theirs. In fine, their plans were so totally dif¬ ferent, that if Mahomet, humanly speaking, took the way to succeed, Jesus Christ took the way to in¬ sure a failure. And instead of inferring, that, since Mahomet was successful, Jesus Christ might be still more successful, we conclude, that, since M^ahomet succeeded, Christianity must have perished, had it not been supported by Heaven. 204 CHAPTER XVII, THE DESIGN OF GOD IN CONCEALING HIMSELF FROM SOME, AND DISCOVERING HIMSELF TO OTHERS. 1. It is the design of God to redeem mankind, and to bestow salvation on those who sincerely seek it. But such is the demerit of our race, that he may most justly refuse to some, on account of their hardness of heart, what he grants to others by that mercy which they cannot claim. Had he been dis¬ posed to overcome the obstinacy of the most hard¬ ened, lie might have effected it by such a manifesta¬ tion of himself, as would have rendered it impossible to doubt of his existence. It is thus he will appear at the consummation of all things, when, amidst thunders and lightnings, and the general convulsion of nature, he will force the blindest to behold him. But it is not in this manner that he has been pleased to appear in his advent of Mercy. Num¬ bers of mankind had rendered themselves so un¬ worthy of his clemency, that he resolved to leave them in destitution of a boon they made light of. Justice did not require that he should appear with such palpable marks of Divinity as would convince all men; and, on the other hand, it would have been unjust to come so disguised as not to be recognized by those who sincerely sought him. To these, ac¬ cordingly, he renders himself easily discernible, and, 205 in short, as it is his intention to be visible to those who seek him with all their hearts, and concealed from those who are equally disposed to shun him, he so regulates his communications with mankind, that the signs of them are plain to those who seek him, and obscure to those who do not seek him. II. There is light enough for those who are dis¬ posed to see, and darkness enough for those who are disinclined. There is illumination sufficient to inform the elect, and obscurity sufficient to humble them. There is obscurity sufficient to prevent the reprobate from seeing, and illuminatipn sufficient to condemn them, and to render them inexcusable. If the world existed simply for the purpose of im¬ pressing mankind with the existence of the Deity, his divinity would beam forth, from all parts of it, with unshaded splendour; but, as it subsists by Jesus Christ, and for Jesus Christ, to instruct men in the two great facts of the fall and the redemption, these are the truths of which the proofs are every where apparent. Whatever we behold, marks neither the total absence nor the unveiled manifestation of Deity, but the presence of a God who hideth him¬ self: all things bear this impress. Were there no appearances of Deity, such a uni¬ versal blank would be equivocal, and might be sup¬ posed to indicate as much the total absence of Deity, as the unworthiness of men to receive his manifesta¬ tions. But the occasional glimpses and obscure inti¬ mations of his presence take away the ambiguity. A single manifestation proves his existence, and that he 206 always exists ; and we infer from it, that there is a God, and that men are unworthy of communion with him. III. The design of God is rather to rectify the will, than to satisfy the understanding. If there j were no obscurity in religion, the understanding might be benefited, but the will would be injured. In the absence of obscurity, man would not be sen¬ sible of his fallen state; and were he left in total darkness, he would despair of a remedy : so that it is not only just, but advantageous for us, that the Deity should be partially manifested ; since it is equally dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own corruption, and to know his corrup¬ tion without knowing God. t i IV. We may learn from every quarter something respecting our condition ; but let us guard against mistakes : for it is not true that God is wholly mani¬ fest, nor is he totally concealed. But it is invari¬ ably true, that he conceals himself from those who tempt him, and manifests himself to those who seek him ; for mankind are, at the same time, unworthy of God, and capable of being restored to his favour: unworthy by their depravity, but capable by the constitution of their nature. V. Every thing in the world shows either the un¬ happy condition of man, or the mercy of God ; either the weakness of man without God, or the power of man assisted by God. The whole universe bears witness 207 to the corruption or the redemption of man. Every thino* betokens his grandeur or his degradation. T. he withdrawment of God is seen among the Pagans; the protection of God is seen among the Jews. VI. Every thing tends to the good of the elect, even the obscurities of Scripture ; for they reve¬ rence them on account of the divine illumination of other parts of the sacred volume : and every thing is perverted to a bad purpose by the impious even the most luminous parts of Scripture; for they blas¬ pheme them on account of the remaining obscuri¬ ties, which are above their comprehension. VII. If Jesus Christ had come only for the pur¬ pose of Redemption, the whole of Scripture, and all things else, would have co-operated to that end; and nothing would have been easier than to convince infidels : as, however, he came for a stone of stum¬ bling and rock of offence, we cannot overcome their obduracy. But this is no argument against the truth of our sentiments; since we maintain, that it is agreeable to the w'hole course of the divine dis¬ pensations that no conviction shall be produced in the minds of the self-willed, and those who are not sincere seekers of truth. Jesus Christ came that those who saw not might see, and that those that saw might become blind: he came to cure the sick, and to leave the whole to perish; to call sinners to repentance, and justify them ; and to leave in their sins those who thought 208 themselves righteous; to satisfy the needy, and send the rich empty away. What do the prophets predict respecting Jesus Christ ? That he would appear evidently as God ? No. But that he would he indeed a God that hid- eth himself; that he would not be known nor received by the Jewish nation at large as the Messiah ; that he would be a stone of stumbling, on which many would fall. That the Messiah might be recognized by the pious, but be indiscernible to the ungodly, the Almighty so ordered it, that the prophecies should be of a mixed character, neither perfectly plain, nor totally obscure. Had the manner of the Messiah’s appearance been clearly predicted, there would have been no obscurity even to the wicked. If the time had been obscurely predicted, there would have been obscurity even to the pious; for the rectitude of their hearts could never have informed them that, for instance, a Mem D, signifies 600 years. The time, therefore, has been predicted clearly, but the manner in figures. By this means, the wicked taking the blessings promised to mean temporal good, have egregiously erred, although the time has been clearly predicted ; and the pious have not erred, because the right ap¬ prehension of the nature of the promises depends on the state of the heart: for men call that good which they love. But the determination of the precise time does not depend on the heart: thus the predic¬ tion of the time being clear, but the nature of the blessings being obscure, the wicked only could be misled. 209 VIII. How are these two characteristics of the Messiah to be reconciled; that in his person the sceptre should remain lor ever in Judah, and yet that, at his advent, the sceptre should be taken away from Judah ? Nothing could be better adapted than this to verify the saying of the prophet, that seeing, they should not see, and understanding, they should not understand. Instead of complaining that God is so concealed, it is the duty of men to bless him, that he has so far revealed himself, and also, that he has not discoveied himself to the worldly wise, or to the proud, who are unworthy to know so holy a God. IX. The genealogy of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament is so mixed with a number or unimportant matters as scarcely to be distinguishable. If Moses had registered only the ancestors of Jesus Ghtist, the line of descent would have been too palpable; yet, as it now stands, it may be discovered, on close inspection, and traced through Tamar, Ruth, &c. Let no one, then, reproach our religion with its defect of clearness, since we profess this to be its character. But let the truth of religion be acknow¬ ledged even in its obscurity, in the little knowledge we have of it, and in the indifference we feel about knowing it. If there had been no false religions, or if there had been martyrs only in ours, God would have been too manifest. Jesus Christ, to leave the impious in their blind- <210 ness, never said that he was not of Nazareth, nor that he was not the Son of Joseph. X. As Jesus Christ remained unknown amono- & men, so truth remains unknown among vulgar opin¬ ions, without any external difference: thus the Eu¬ charist among common bread. If the mercy of God is so great that even when he conceals himself, he gives us the knowledge of salvation, how great will be our illumination when he discovers himself! We can understand none of the works of God unless we assume, as a first principle, that he blinds some and enlightens others. 211 CHAPTER XVIII. THAT TRUE CHRISTIANS AND TRUE JEWS ARE OF THE SAME RELIGION. I. The Religion of the Jews apparently con¬ sisted in their relationship to Abraham, in the rite of circumcision, in sacrifices, and ritual observances, in the ark, in the Temple of Jerusalem, and in the Mosaic law and covenant. I affirm, that it did not consist in any of these things, but only in the love of God, and that God rejected every thing else — that God had no legaid to the carnal people who were the descendants of Abraham — that the Jews were punished by God like strangers, if they offended him: “ And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day, that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish,” Deut. viii. 19, 20. _ that strangers were received by God, like the Jews, if they loved him — that the true Jews valued their relationship to God, and not to Abiaham . “ Doubtless, thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thovT, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer,” Is. lxiii. 16. Even Moses declared to his countrymen, that God was not influenced by partialities towards persons 212 “ God regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward,” Deut. x. 17. I affirm, that circumcision of the heart was en¬ joined : 6e Circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked. For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty and a terrible,” Deut. x. 16, 17. Jere¬ miah iv. 4— that God declared, that it should be brought to pass : ii And the Lord thy God will cir¬ cumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live,” Deut. xxx. 6. — that the uncircumcised in heart were to be judged : “ Behold the days come, saith the Lord, when I will punish all them which are circumcised with the uncircumcised ; all the house of Israel that are un¬ circumcised in heart,” Jeremiah ix. 25, 26. II. I affirm, that circumcision was a symbol, pre¬ scribed to distinguish the Jews from all other nations (Genesis xvii. 11.) For this reason, when they were in the wilderness, they v7ere not circumcised, because they were in no danger of mixing with other nations; and, since the advent of Jesus Christ, it is no longer necessary. The love of God is, on all occasions, commanded: “ I call h eaven and earth to record this day against you, that X have set before you life and death, bless¬ ing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live; that thou mayest love the L ord thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him; (for 213 he is thy life and the length of thy days.)” Deut. xxx. 19, 20. It is declared that the Jews, for want of this love, and for their transgressions, would be rejected, and the heathen chosen in their stead: 44 I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not god; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; 1 will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation,” Deut. xxxii. 20, 21. Isaiah lxv. It is declared that earthly enjoyments are vain, and that real happiness consists in being united to God, (Psalm lxxiii.) ; that the feasts of the Jews were displeasing to God— 44 I hate, I despise* your feast-days, and I will not smell in your solemn as¬ semblies” (Amos v. 21.); that the Jewish sacrifices were displeasing to God, not only those of the wicked, but those also of the good, as appears from the 50th Psalm, where, before these words, 44 Unto the wicked God saith,” it is said, that he wished not for the sacrifices or blood of beasts (Isaiah lxvi. Jer. vi. 20.) ; that the sacrifices of the heathen would be received by God, and that he would withdraw his approbation from the sacrifices of the Jews (Mai. i. 10, 11.); that God would make a new covenant by the Messiah, and that the old covenant should be abolished (Jer. xxxi. 31.); that the former things should be forgotten (Isaiah xliii. 18, 19.); that the ark of the covenant should not be remembered any t 214 more (Jer. iii. 16.); that the temple should be de¬ stroyed (Jer. vii. 13 — 16.); that the sacrifices should be rejected, and other pure sacrifices estab¬ lished (Mai. i. 10, 11.); that the Aaronic priest¬ hood should be rejected, and that of the Messiah introduced in its stead (Psalm cx.); that this priest¬ hood should be everlasting; that Jerusalem should be rejected, and a new name be given to the servants of God (Isaiah Ixv.); that this name should be bet¬ ter than that of Jews and perpetual (Isaiah lvi. 5.); that the Jews should be without prophets, without kings, without princes, without sacrifices, without an altar (Hosea iii. 4.); that nevertheless the Jews should be preserved as a distinct nation. Jer. xxxi. 36. 215 CHAPTER XIX. GOD CAN BE KNOWN USEFULLY ONLY THROUGH JESUS CHRIST. I. Most persons who attempt to prove to unbeliev¬ ers the existence of the Deity, begin with an appeal to the works of Nature, and they rarely succeed. Far be it from me to question the soundness of proofs which are consecrated by the inspired writ¬ ings. They are conformable to the reason of man, I allow; but they are not sufficiently conformable to the dispositions of those whom they are employed to convince. It should be recollected, that we are not addressing persons whose hearts already glow with vital faith, and who perceive instantaneously that every thing around them is the work of the God they adore. To such, all nature proclaims its Author, and the heavens declare the glory of God. But as for those in whom this light shines not, and in whom we wish to kindle it, who are destitute of faith and charity, and meet with nothing in nature but darkness and obscurity, we must not expect to set them right by reasonings founded on the. course of the heavenly bodies, or by those common- places of argument which they are always proof against. The obduracy of their minds renders them deaf to the voice of Nature, though it sounds continually in their ears; and experience shows, that so far from per¬ suading, there is nothing more likely to repel them, 216 and to render their finding the truth hopeless, than attempting to convince them by reasons of this sort, and telling them, that it is their own fault if they do not see the truth as clear as the day. It is not in this manner that the inspired writers, who understood the things of God better than we do, have treated the subject. It is true, they tell us, that the beauty of the Creation manifests its Author; but they do not affirm that this is univer¬ sally the case. On the contrary, they assure us that in every instance where this effect is produced, it is not from the simple contemplation of natural objects, but owing to a divine illumination which disposes the heart aright. “ What is known of God is manifest in them; for God hath manifested it to them,” Rom. i. 19. The Scriptures declare, in general terms, that God is a God concealed from men_“ Verily thou art a God that hideth thyself;” and that, since the fall, men have been left in a state of blindness, from which they are rescued only by Jesus Christ, separate from whom all communication between God and ourselves is cut off. i No one knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal him,” Matt. xi. 27. The same facts are implied in the numerous passages where we are told, that those who seek God shall find him. This language cannot be used respecting an object that is perfectly luminous and exposed to view. We cannot be said to search for what manifests itself at once to us. II. The metaphysical proofs of a Deity are so 217 intricate, and so far removed from the usual track of men’s thoughts, that they strike the mind with little force, and the persons most capable of entering into them feel the impression only while the demonstra¬ tion is before their eyes; an hour after, they cannot trust their own conclusions. 4< Quod curiositate cognoverunt superbia amiserunt.” Besides, proofs of this kind furnish only a specu¬ lative knowledge of God; and to know him merely in this manner, is not to know him at all. The Beinff whom Christians adore, is not a God who is simply the Author of geometrical truths, and of the material universe: this would be a Deity for Pagans. Nor is he simply a God whose providence extends over the lives and fortunes of men, and in¬ sures external prosperity to his worshippers. Such was Jehovah to the Jews. But the God of Abra¬ ham and of Jacob, the God of Christians, is a God of love and consolation — a God who fills the hearts and minds of his people; who gives them an inward sense of their own wretchedness, and of his infinite mercy; who unites himself to the very centre of their souls, fills them with humility, joy, confidence, and love ; and renders them incapable of choosing any end but himself. The God of Christians is a God who makes the soul feel that he is its only good ; that its repose is wholly in him ; that its only joy is in loving him ; and who, at the same time, makes it hate every thing which seduces it, and keeps it from loving him with all its powers. That self-love, and that carnality which inthrall it, are insupportable. God has caused K 23 218 it to perceive the deep infection of self-love, and that he alone can cure it. This is what it is to know God as a Christian. But to know him in this manner, man must know at the same time his fallen state, his unworthiness, and the need of a Mediator to bring him near, and unite him to God. These truths must not be known apart; for in that case, they are not simply useless, but absolutely noxious. The knowledge of God without the knowledge of our fallen state, produces pride. The knowledge of our fallen state, without the knowledge of Jesus Christ, produces despair. But the knowledge of Jesus Christ rescues us at once from pride and from despair, because there we find God, and our fallen state, and the only way of deliverance. We may know God without knowing our fallen state, or our fallen state without knowing God ; or even God and our fallen state, without knowing the means of deliverance. But it is impossible to know Jesus Christ without knowing, at the same time, God, and our fallen state, and the means of re¬ storation; for Jesus Christ is not simply God, but he is God, the Restorer of our fallen state. Thus all who seek to know God apart from Jesus Christ, can obtain no information that can satisfy them, or be of any real use. For either they . do not proceed so far as to know whether there be a God, or, if they do, it is of no use to them, because they attempt to hold intercourse, without a mediator, with a God whom they have discovered without a Mediator. So that they relapse into atheism or 219 settle in deism, two things to which Christianity is almost equally abhorrent. We must then aim simply at knowing Jesus Christ, since through him alone we can hope to know God in a manner that shall be for our real good. He is the being who is the true God for men, that is, for unhappy and sinful creatures. He is the centre of all, the object of all; whoever knows not him, knows nothing aright, either of the world or of himself. For not only it is impossible to know God, excepting through Jesus Christ, but we cannot know ourselves excepting through Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ man must remain in sin and misery; with Jesus Christ, man is rescued from sin and misery. In him is all our happiness, our virtue, our life, our light, our hope; out of him there is nothing hut vice, misery, darkness, and de¬ spair ; all is obscurity and confusion in the nature of God, and in our own nature. 220 CHAPTER XX. THOUGHTS ON MIRACLES. I. The truth of a doctrine is to be judged of by the miracles wrought to support it; the reality of miracles is to be judged of by the doctrine. The doctrine discriminates the miracles, and the miracles discriminate the doctrine. Both these positions are true, but not contradictory. II. Some miracles are certain proofs of truth, and others are dubious. Now, we must have some mark to distinguish them, or they will be useless. But they are not useless; but, on the contrary, lie at the foundation of our belief. The rule, there¬ fore, must be such as does not destroy the proof which true miracles give of truth, for that is their chief end. If miracles were never alleged in support of false¬ hood we should feel complete certainty. If there were no rule to distinguish real miracles, they would be useless, and furnish no grounds of belief. Moses has given one mark of false miracles, namely, their leading to idolatry, Deut. xiii. 1, 2, 3. 66 If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; 221 thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that pro¬ phet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul.” And Jesus Christ has given us another, Mark ix. 39. “ There is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me.” Hence it may be inferred, that whoever de¬ clares openly against Jesus Christ, cannot work miracles by his authority; and consequently, what¬ ever miracles he may perform, must be unworthy of credit. Thus we have a rule for withholding our faith in miracles, clearly defined, and from which we must be careful not to deviate. Under the Old Testament, the rule was, the tendency of miracles to lead men from God; under the New Testament, it is their tendency to lead us away from Jesus Christ. Whenever we witness a miracle, we must either submit to its evidence, or examine whether it has marks of falsehood, that is, whether he who per¬ forms it denies God, or Jesus Christ and the Church. III. Every religion is false which, in its theore¬ tical principles, does not acknowledge one God as the first cause of all things, and which, in its practi¬ cal principles, does not enforce supreme love to God as the final end of all things. And at this period of the world, every religion which does not acknow¬ ledge Jesus Christ is indisputably false, and miracles can be of no use in its behalf. The Jews had a doctrine respecting God, as we 222 have one respecting Jesus Christ, and confirmed by miracles, with a prohibition not to believe workers of miracles, who taught a contrary doctrine ; and be¬ sides that, an injunction to apply to the High Priests, and to abide by their decision. Thus it may seem that all the reasons we have to disbelieve workers of miracles, they also had for disbelieving Jesus Christ and his Apostles. Yet we are certain that the miracles they witnessed rendered their unbelief highly blameworthy ; for Jesus Christ declared, that in the absence of miracles, they would have been free from guilt — (( If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin,” John xv. 24. In his judgment, there¬ fore, his miracles wTere indubitable proofs of the truth of his doctrine, and of course laid the Jews under an obligation to credit it. And in fact, the criminality of their unbelief consisted chiefly in their rejection of the evidence arising from miracles. For the evi¬ dence to be drawn from the writings of the Old Tes¬ tament, could not be looked upon as demonstrative during the lifetime of Jesus. Moses, for instance, predicted that the Lord would raise up a prophet like himself ; but this was not sufficient proof that Jesus Christ was that prophet, which was the point to be determined. Such declarations made it pro¬ bable that he was the Messiah, and the additional evidence of miracles ought to have settled their belief. IV. The prophecies alone could not prove Jesus to be the Messiah during his lifetime. It would not, therefore, have been criminal not to have be- 223 lieved in him before his death, had not miracles fur¬ nished decisive evidence of his claims. Miracles, then, are sufficient, when the doctrine is not contra¬ dictory, to impose an obligation to believe. It was by the miracles of Jesus that Nicodemus was convinced that his doctrine came from God — « Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God ; for no man can do those miracles that thou dost except God be with him,” John iii. 2. He did not judge of the miracles by the doctrine, but of the doctrine by the miracles. Even where there are reasons for suspecting the doctrine, as was the case with Nicodemus in reference to Jesus Christ, from the opposition of his precepts to the traditions of the Pharisees ; if there are clear and indisputable miracles to support the doctrine, the evidence of the miracles will overrule the difficulties attached to tne doctrine, on the sure principle, that God cannot lead men into error. There is a reciprocal obligation between God and man — “ Come now and let us reason together,” says God in Isaiah; and in another passage, “What ought I to have done to my vine which I have not done?” Is. v. 4. Men are under obligation to God to receive the religion he sends them. God is under obligation to men not to lead them into error; but they would be led into error if the workers of miracles declared a false doctrine, of which the falsehood was not ap¬ parent to common sense, or if a greater worker of miracles had not warned them against believing the false teacher. Thus, in the case of a division in the 224 Church, and suppose, for example, the Arians, who, as well as the Catholics, affirm, that Scripture is on their side, had wrought miracles, but the Catholics had wrought none, men would have been led into error. For as a man who professes to make known divine mysteries has no right to be credited on his private authority, so a man who, to prove his being intrusted with divine communications, raises the dead, foretells future events, removes mountains, and heals the sick, challenges belief, and it would be an act of im¬ piety to refuse crediting him, unless he should be refuted by one who should perform still greater miracles. But is not God said to tempt men ? May he not therefore tempt us by miracles which seem to sup¬ port falsehood? There is a great difference between tempting, and leading into error. God tempts, but does not lead into error. To tempt is to present occasions which lay us under no necessity of acting wrong. To lead into error is to put a man under the necessity of believing and following falsehood. This is what God cannot do, and what, nevertheless, he would do, if, in a case that was otherwise doubtful, he per¬ mitted miracles to be wrought on the side of false¬ hood. We infer, then, that it is impossible that a man secretly holding false doctrine, and pretending to hold the truth, and to be devoted to God and the church, should work miracles, to introduce a false and sophistical doctrine. This can never be: still less can we suppose, that God, who knows all 22,5" hearts should perform miracles in favour of such a person. V. There is a great difference between not being for Jesus Christ and avowing that we are not ; and not being for him, while we pretend that we are. Persons of the former class possibly may work mira¬ cles, for they are evidently opposed to the truth, which cannot be said of the latter ; and thus the de¬ fect of authority in their miracles is instantly perceived. Miracles distinguish in doubtful cases: between Jews and Pagans, Jews and Christians, Catholics and Heretics, the calumniated and calumniators, and between the three crosses.* We see that this has been the case in all the combats of truth against error, of Abel against Cain, of Moses against the Magicians of Pharaoh, of Eli¬ jah against the false prophets, of Jesus Christ against the Pharisees, of Paul against Bar- Jesus, of the Apostles against the Exorcists, of the Christians against Infidels, of Catholics against Heretics; and this we shall also witness in the combat of Elijah and Enoch against Antichrist, The truth always prevails in miracles. Lastly, in a controversy respecting the true God, or the truth of religion, a miracle is never performed on the side of error, without a greater miracle being performed on the side of truth. It is evident that, by this rule, the Jews were obliged to believe in Jesus Christ. They suspected * See note at the end of this volume. 226 his pretensions, but his miracles were of infinitely greater weight than their suspicions. They ought therefore to have believed. During1 the life of Jesus Christ, some believed on him, and some disbelieved, because the prophecies said the Messiah should be born at Bethlehem, while they supposed that Jesus Christ was born at Nazareth. But they should have examined with greater care whether he was not born at Bethlehem; for his miracles were so powerful, that these alleged contradictions to the Scriptures, and the obscurity of his origin, were no excuse for them, though they were the occasion of their blindness. Jesus Christ cured a man who had been blind from his birth, and performed many other miracles on the Sabbath-day. This blinded the Pharisees, who said, that they must judge of his miracles by his doctrine. But by the same rule, that we ought to believe Jesus Christ, we ought not to believe Antichrist. Jesus Christ spoke neither against God nor against Moses. Antichrist and the false prophets, who were foretold both in the Old and New Testa¬ ment, speak openly against God and against Jesus Christ. A secret enemy will never be permitted by God to work miracles openly. Moses predicted Jesus Christ, and enjoined men to follow him. Jesus Christ predicted Antichrist, and forbade men to follow him. The miracles of Jesus Christ were not predicted by Antichrist ; but the miracles of Antichrist were predicted by Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ had not 227 been the Messiah, men would have been led into error, but they cannot well be misguided by the miracles of Antichrist ; and for this reason, the miracles of Antichrist cannot lessen the authority of the miracles wrought by Jesus Christ. In short, can any one believe that, by predicting the miracles of Antichrist, Jesus Christ destroyed the credit due to his own ? Whatever reasons there may be for believing in Antichrist apply, with equal force, to believing in Jesus Christ; but there are reasons for believing in Jesus Christ, which do not exist for believing in Antichrist. VI. Miracles were employed in laying the foun¬ dation of the Christian Church, and will be em¬ ployed for its preservation till the times of Antichrist and the end of the world. And the Almighty, in order to preserve this species of evidence in his Church, has either exposed the falsehood of pre¬ tended miracles, or predicted them; and thus the divine power has shown itself superior to what might appear to us supernatural, and we ourselves have been raised above it. We may rest assured that it will be the same in future: either God will not allow false miracles, or he will provide greater miracles as an antidote; for such is the influence of miracles over the human mind, that it is necessary that God should warn us against them when they are in oppo¬ sition to him, however clear the evidence of his ex¬ istence may be, or we should be thrown into the ut¬ most perplexity. 228 So far, therefore, are the passages in the 13th Chapter of Deuteronomy, which warn against be¬ lieving or hearkening to those who work miracles in support of idolatry, and that prophecy in Mark’s Gospel, “ False Christ and false prophets shall rise, and show signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, the very elect so far are these, and some other similar passages, from tending to lessen the authority of miracles, that nothing can give a stronger impression of their importance. VII. That which prevents men from giving cre¬ dit to real miracles is want of charity — u Ye be¬ lieve not,” said Jesus Christ, speaking to the Jews, “ because ye are not of my sheep,” John x. 26. And that which prompts men to credit false mira¬ cles, is also want of charity — (( Because they re¬ ceived not the love of the truth, that they might be saved; for this cause, God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie,” 2 Thess. ii. 10. When I have set myself to find out the reason why pretenders to the healing art have gained such amazing credit (for we know there are folks who will trust them even in matters of life or death), the true cause has appeared to be, the existence of real re¬ medies; for, unless this were the case, it would be impossible that so many false ones should acquire such credit. Had there been no real remedies, and had all diseases been incurable, it would have been impossible for men to have imagined the contrary, and still more that they should become the dupes of 229 empirics. If a man were to tell his neighbours that he could keep them from dying at all, no one would believe him, because there never was such a thing known. But they might believe that he could cure them of this or that particular disorder, because spe¬ cific remedies have been ascertained by men of the greatest eminence; and thus, particular cases favour¬ ing the general conclusion, the common people, un¬ able to discriminate, find no difficulty in crediting all accounts alike. In this way so many false effects are attributed to lunar influence, because there are some real ones — -the tides for example. And it appears to me equally evident, that there never would have been so many false miracles, revela¬ tions, and pretended communications with the invisible world, if there had been none that were real; nor so many false religions, if there had not been a true religion. Had there been no such thing, mankind would have never imagined, much less believed it ; but as certain facts, out of the common course of things, have been always received by men of emi¬ nence, the consequence has been, that almost every body has acquired a propensity to believe falsehoods. So that, instead of concluding that there are no true miracles, because there are false ones, we ought to infer that there are true miracles, because false ones are so numerous: for there would be no false miracles if there were no true ones ; and so many false reli¬ gions would not have sprung up, but for the exis¬ tence of the true religion ; and the human mind having been conversant with real instances of super¬ natural agency, has more easily fallen into the error of 230 admitting a variety of others without proper evi¬ dence. VIII. It is said, Believe in the church; but it is never said, Believe in miracles; because the mind is naturally disposed to the latter, but not to the for¬ mer. The one requires to be inculcated, but not the other. God makes himself known to so very few, by these extraordinary tokens, that we ought to make the best use of such occasions: since he never issues from that concealment in which nature veils him, unless to excite our faith, that we may serve him with greater ardour, in proportion as we know him with greater certainty. If the Almighty constantly manifested himself to mankind, belief in his existence would be no longer praiseworthy: if he never manifested himself, our faith would be faint and contracted. In general he is concealed, but discovers himself, on rare occasions, to those whom he chooses to engage in his service. That mysterious secrecy, impenetrable to human vision, which is the dwelling-place of Deity, is a strik¬ ing lesson to us, to seek retirement from the world, and to live alone. In that secrecy, he remained till the Incarnation; and when, by this event, he made his appearance, he was still more concealed, by cloathing himself with humanity .\ He was more known when invisible, than when he became an object of sight. And, finally, in fulfilling the promise he made to his apostles, to remain with men till his last advent, he chose the most wonderful and obscure secrecy of all, namely, that under the form of the Eucharist. This 231 is the sacrament which St. John calls in the Apoca¬ lypse, the hidden manna , (Rev. ii. IT.) and I be¬ lieve that Isaiah alluded to it, when he said, in the spirit of prophecy, vv y y S' . . , h v >. ,r f ^ \\jr x\y\ . (V^ y*3 {^X V \f> yf t^v- erally remain the same. 288 „ , 4/ • x' y*- cr ^ ^ y ^ to age. The virtue and the vice in the world, gen- CIX. A wise man will have some thoughts on the back-ground, by which to judge of every thing; but in society, he will use the current mode of talk¬ ing. CX. Force is the queen of the world, and not opinion; but opinion is that which makes use of force. / i v,. CXI. Thoughts come by chance, and are lost by chance; there is no art either of preserving or ac¬ quiring them. . Si. yr. & CXII. According to you, the Church is not to judge of what is internal, because that belongs to God, nor of what is external, because God pene¬ trates into the internal ; thus, by not allowing it to judge of character, you retain in the church the most abandoned men, even those who are so notoriously bad, that Jewish Synagogues, and the schools of Pagan philosophers would have abhorred and ex¬ communicated them. / £ jy f zr A s* £ \j V ^ v v VF3 CXIII. Now-a-days, whoever wishes is made a priest, as it was in the time of Jeroboam. CXIV. A multitude not reduced to unity, is con¬ fusion. A unity not dependent on the multitude, is despotism. A \S 289 CXV. Men consult only the ear, because they want courage. CXVI. In all our intercourse, we should be able to say to those who are offended, “ Why do you complain ?” CXVI I. Children who are terrified by a coun¬ tenance they have disfigured, act like children ; but how comes it to pass that the being who is so feeble when an infant, is so courageous in latter life? It is not so, he only changes his weakness to other objects. CXVI II. It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and incomprehensible that he should not exist; that a soul should be united to a body, and that we should have no soul; that the world should be cre¬ ated, and that it should not be created ; that orim- * O nal sin should exist, and that it should not exist, &c. CXIX. Atheists ought to have the clearest proofs of their opinions, but it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material. CXX. No men are so credulous as unbelievers; they will believe the miracles of Vespasian, in order to disbelieve those of Moses. / CXX I. On the philosophy of Des Cartes. — We may say, in general, this is produced by figure and motion — for that is true; but to say N 23 290 what figure and motion, and to compose a machine, is ridiculous, for it is useless, uncertain, and trouble¬ some. And if it were true, we should not reckon all the philosophy in the world worth an hour’s anxiety. 291 CHAPTER XXII. THOUGHTS ON DEATH. Extracted from a Letter written by Pascal on the occasion of his father’s death. I. When distressed on account of the death of one whom we loved, or for any other calamity, we ought not to seek consolation in ourselves, nor in our fellow-men, nor in any created thing. We ought to seek it in God alone ,* and for this reason, that no creature is the first cause of the events we term misfortunes. The providence of God being the true and only source, the arbiter and sovereign, to find any substantial relief we must revert directly to the source, and trace events to their origin. Let us follow this rule, and consider that instance of mortality which now afflicts us, not as the effect of chance, or of a direful necessity, nor as the sport of the elements and parts that compose the human frame, (for God has not abandoned his chosen to the caprice of chance,) but as the indispensable and inevitable, but just and holy consequence, of a de¬ cree of Divine providence ; and let us remember, that all that has happened has been continually pre¬ sent to God, and pre-ordained by him. If by a vi¬ gorous operation of grace, we thus regard the event, not as in itself and independently of God, but as agreeable to his just decree, and the order of his providence, its true cause, without which it would 292 never have happened, by which alone it happened exactly in the very manner it did happen, we shall adore in humble silence the impenetrable depth of his councils, we shall venerate the holiness of his decrees, we shall bless the conduct of his provi¬ dence, and our will harmonizing with that of God, we shall will with him, in him, and for him, the thing he has willed in us, and for us, from all eternity. II. There is no consolation hut in the Truth. Socrates, and Seneca, have nothing wherewithal to console us on these occasions; they were in the error which has misled all men since the fall ; they con¬ sidered death as natural to man ; and all the dis¬ courses founded upon this false principle, are so vain and superficial, that they only serve to show the weakness of human nature, since the highest efforts of the greatest men are so low and puerile. It is not so with Jesus Christ; it is not so with the canonical books; there truth is revealed, and consolation as infallibly connected with it, as it is infallibly wanting to error. Let us consider death, then, according to the light in which the Holy Spirit h as placed it. We have the inestimable ad¬ vantage of knowing that death is truly and really the punishment of sin, imposed on man to expiate his crimes, and necessary for man in order to purge away his sin; that it is the only thing which can deliver the soul from the irregular bodily propen¬ sities which the saints cannot live without in this world. We know that life, especially the life of Christians, is a continual sacrifice, completed only 293 at death : we know that Jesus Christ on entering the world, presented and offered up himself to God as a sacrifice and real victim; that his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, his session for ever at the right hand of his Father, and his presence in the Eucharist, are one unparalleled sa¬ crifice ; we know also that what happens to Jesus Christ must happen to all his members. Let us then consider life as a sacrifice, and be convinced that the events of life should make no impression on the minds of Christians, except in proportion as they retard or promote this sacrifice. Let us call that only evil, which makes what ought to be a sacrifice to God, a sacrifice to the devil ; and call that good which renders what in Adam is a sacrifice to Satan, a sacrifice to God; and with these views let us examine the nature of death. For this purpose it. is necessary to refer to the person of Jesus Christ; for as God regards men only through the mediator Jesus Christ, so men must regard themselves and others only through the same medium. Unless partakers of his mediation, we shall find in ourselves nothing but deadly miseries, and for¬ bidden pleasures: but if we regard all things in Jesus Ch rist, we shall find whatever can impart consola¬ tion, pleasure, and improvement. Let us, then, contemplate death in Jesus Christ, and not out of him. Without Jesus Christ it is dreadful, detestable, and a terror to our nature. In Jesus Christ, its character is totally changed : 294 it is lovely, holy, and the joy of the faithful. All tilings are delightful in Jesus Christ, even death, and for this reason he suffered and died, to sanc¬ tity death and its sufferings; as God and Man, lie united all that was sublime with all that was abject, that he might consecrate to himself all things, sin excepted, and might be the model of all conditions of being. To understand what death is, and especially what death in Jesus Christ is, we must examine what rank it holds in his perpetual and uninterrupted sacrifice, and for this purpose we may remark, that in sacrifices the principal part is the death of the victim. The presentment and consecration which precede are preparatives : but the completion is its death, in which, by the destruction of life, the crea¬ ture renders to God all the homage in its power, annihilating itself before the majesty of his presence, and adoring that supreme existence which alone exists essentially. It is true, there is another part after the death of the victim; the divine acceptance of the sacrifice. This is spoken of in Scripture, when it is said, as the vessel recedes. Now, if we suppose the course of the vessel to be perpetually lengthened to infinity, on a plane parallel to the horizon, this point will continue to rise, and yet will never reach a position coinciding with the horizontal ray, drawn through the eye to the glass, but will always appro¬ ximate, without ever touching it, by a continual di¬ vision of the space remaining below the horizontal point. The necessary inference must be apparent, which is to be deduced, from the infinite elongation of the vessel, in reference to the infinite division of space, and the infinite minuteness of the small por¬ tion remaining below the horizontal point. Persons who are not satisfied with these reasons, but persist in the belief, that space is not infinitely Q 2 364 divisible, must never pretend to master Geometrical demonstrations ; they may rest assured, that though they may be well informed on other subjects, they cannot go far in this; for it is possible to be a very able man, and a bad Geometrician. But those who have a clear perception of these truths, will admire the grandeur and the power of Nature, in the twofold infinity which surrounds us wherever we are ; and they will be taught by this wonderful fact to know themselves, placed, as it ap¬ pears they are, between an infinity and a nonentity of extension, between an infinity and a nonentity of number, between an infinity and a nonentity of mo¬ tion, and between an infinity and a nonentity of time. Hence they may learn to estimate the true value of their own minds, and be led into a train of reflection, infinitely more useful than all the rest of Geometrical science taken together. I thought myself obliged to go through this long discussion for the sake of those persons who, though they may not at first comprehend this twofold infi¬ nity, are yet capable of being convinced of its real¬ ity. And though there are many whose knowledge of the subject would allow them to pass over this Essay, yet possibly, while it will be necessary to some, it may not be entirely useless to others. 365 / CHAPTER XXVIII. ON THE ART OF PERSUASION. The art of Persuasion has a necessary relation to the procedure of the mind in giving its assent, as well as to the circumstances of the objects pre¬ sented for belief. Every one knows, that the two inlets by which opinions find their way into the soul, are its two principal powers, the Understanding, and the Will. The most natural would be that of the Understand¬ ing, for our assent ought never to be given, except to demonstrated truths; but the most usual, though contrary to the order of nature, is that of the Will; since most men are generally induced to believe, not by argument, but by pleasure. This method, ne¬ vertheless, is so mean, dishonourable, and prepos¬ terous, that it is universally disavowed. Every one professes not to believe, and even not to love, any thing but what he knows to be really deserving of his belief or affection. I do not here treat of divine truths, which I am far from considering as fit topics for the art of per¬ suasion, for they are infinitely above nature : God alone can put them into the soul, by the method which he approves. And I am aware, that he chooses that they should pass from the heart into the understanding, and not from the understanding into the heart, in order to humble that proud fa- 366 culty of reason, which pretends to decide what ob¬ jects the will should choose, and in order to cure that diseased will, which its unworthy attachments have totally corrupted. Hence saints, when speak¬ ing of divine things, instead of saying, we must know them before we can love them, (a proverbial expression respecting the things of the world;) say, on the contrary, that we must love them in order to know them ; and it is one of their most useful maxims, that we can enter into the truth only by love. Thus it appears that God has established a su¬ pernatural order, quite contrary to the order which it is fit men should observe respecting natural ob¬ jects. But men have perverted this order, treating secular objects as they ought to treat sacred truths ; for, in fact, we scarcely believe any thing excepting what pleases us. Hence arises our reluctance to receive the truths of the Christian religion, which is so totally opposed to our pleasures. “ Tell us pleasant things, and we will hear thee,” said the Jews to Moses, as if pleasantness ought to regulate belief ! And to correct this disorder, by an order conformable to himself, God does not impart his il¬ luminations to the understanding, till he has sub¬ due d the rebellion of the will by a celestial sweetness, which charms and bears it away. I shall confine myself, therefore, to such truths as lie within our province ; and, in reference to these, we may say, that the understanding and the heart are the gates by which they are admitted into the soul, But, alas ! how very few enter by the un- 367 derstanding, compared with the crowds introduced without the permission of reason, by the rash ca¬ prices of the will ! These powers have each their peculiar principles and springs of action. Those of the understanding are natural and uni¬ versally known truths ; as, for instance, that (( the whole is greater than a part besides many parti¬ cular axioms, received by some persons, and not by others ; but which, wherever they are admitted, even though false, are as cogent as if they were true, in producing belief. Those of the will are certain natural and univer¬ sal desires ; as for instance, the desire of happiness, which no one is without ; besides many particular objects that every one endeavours to obtain ; and which, since they are capable of giving pleasure, though pernicious, are as powerful in exciting the action of the will, as if they contributed to our real well-being. So much for the powers which induce our assent. But as to the qualities of things that ought to effect persuasion, they are exceedingly various. Those of one class are deduced, by necessary consequence, from common principles, and acknow¬ ledged truths. Of these, we may be indubitably convinced ; for, by showing the relation they bear to received principles, conviction necessarily and in¬ evitably follows: and it is impossible that they should not be received into the mind as soon as we can logically connect them with truths already ad¬ mitted. 368 Again, there are other things, which have an intimate connection with the objects that excite pleasure ; and these also are received with certainty. For the soul, as soon as it perceives something that will bring it to an object it loves supremely, un¬ avoidably tends towards the secondary object with j°y- < . The effect of things which have this twofold con¬ nection, namely, with received truths and with the desires of the heart, is so certain, that nothing in nature can be more so ; and on the contrary, what has no relation either to our previous belief or to our pleasures, is irksome, false, and absolutely foreign to our nature. In all these instances there is no room for doubt; but it is not so when the thing's of which we desire to produce the conviction, are indeed firmly estab¬ lished upon well-known truths, but are contrary ne¬ vertheless, to the pleasures that most vividly affect mankind ; there is great danger of their evincing (as experience too commonly testifies,) what I be¬ fore stated, that this imperious soul, which boasts of acting according to reason, will follow by a rash and shameful choice, the desires of a corrupted will, in spite of whatever resistance may be made by an enlightened understanding. This makes the balance doubtful between truth and pleasure : the knowledge of the one, and the feeling of the other, give rise to a contest of un¬ certain issue ; for, to decide upon it, we must know all that passes in the deepest recesses of a man’s mind, which the individual himself can scarcely ever know. 369 Hence it appears, that, whenever we attempt to persuade, we must take into account, the character of the person addressed, and be well acquainted with his understanding and his heart; we must know what principles he holds, and what objects he loves. We must then examine what relation our subject bears to these principles, and to the objects, the supposed charms of which are so delightful. So that the Art of Persuasion consists as much in pleas¬ ing, as in convincing; and men are governed far more by their fancies, than by reason ! But of these two methods, the one, of convinc¬ ing the understanding, the other, of affecting the heart, I shall here give rules for the first only; and this, too, for cases in which the principles are agreed upon, and firmly maintained. I know not if it be possible to frame an art which shall adapt arguments to the inconstancy of our caprices. The method of persuasion by exciting pleasure, is, beyond com¬ parison, more difficult, more refined, more useful, and more admirable; and, if I do not treat of it, it is simply because I am not equal to the task; in¬ deed, I feel so incompetent, that for myself, I be¬ lieve the thing is absolutely impossible. It is not, because I believe there are no rules for giving pleasure, as certain as those for demonstra¬ tion; or that a person perfectly master of them, in theory and practice, would not as surely succeed in winning the regard of kings, and men of all clas¬ ses, as in demonstrating the Elements of Geometry to those who have sufficient ability to comprehend the propositions. But I think, (perhaps my own Q 3 370 weakness makes me think so,) that such an art is unattainable. If any persons, however, are capa¬ ble of it, they are some whom I am acquainted with; for none have clearer or more extensive views on this subject. The reason of this extreme difficulty arises from the instability and uncertainty of the principles of pleasure. They are different in all men, and vari¬ able in each individual, to such a degree, that no man differs more from another, than he differs from himself at different times. A man has different pleasures from a woman ; the rich, and the poor, have different pleasures ; a prince, a soldier, a mer¬ chant, a citizen, a countryman, the old, the young, the healthy, the sick, all differ, and are changed by the most trifling accident. But there is an art, which I am about to explain, that points out the connection of truths with their principles of belief, whether of truth or of pleasure, provided these principles being once determined, re¬ main fixed and unaltered. Yet, as there are very few principles of this sort, and, excepting Geometrical truths, which relate only to the simplest figures, scarcely any to which we invariably assent, and still fewer objects of plea¬ sure which are not perpetually changing, I cannot tell (as I said before) whether this art can give fixed rules for adapting discourse to the inconstancy of our caprices. This art, which I call the Art of Persuasion, and which (properly speaking) is only the management of methodical and perfect proofs, consists of three 371 essential parts : First, to explain, by means of clear definitions, the terms used; Secondly, to lay down principles or self-evident axioms, to prove the points discussed; and Lastly, always to substitute mental¬ ly, in the demonstration, the definitions in place of the things defined. The reason of this method is evident. It would be useless to lay down a proposition, and to under¬ take its demonstration, without first clearly defining all the terms which are not quite intelligible. The demonstration also must be preceded by a statement of the self-evident principles that are requisite to form it ; for if the foundation be not firmly laid, the superstructure will be insecure. And lastly, in de¬ monstrating, if we did not substitute, mentally, the definition in place of the thing defined, an unfair use might be made of the various meanings of the terms. It is easy to see, that, by observing this method, we are sure of convincing; since all the terms being understood, and, by means of defini¬ tions, rendered perfectly unambiguous, the first principles likewise being granted, if we always sub¬ stitute mentally, in the demonstration, the defini¬ tions in place of the things defined, the invincible force of the consequences must be felt in all their energy. A demonstration in which all these circumstan¬ ces are combined, can never admit of the least doubt ; and one in which they are wanting, can never be conclusive. It is, therefore, of great im¬ portance to understand them, and have them at com¬ mand. For this purpose, and to render their use 372 more easy and practicable, I shall state them all in a few rules, which will comprise every thing neces¬ sary for the perfect construction of definitions, axi¬ oms, and demonstrations; and consequently, for the whole method of Geometrical proofs in the Art of Persuasion. RULES FOR DEFINITIONS. I. Never attempt to define expressions which are so intelligible, that no clearer terms can be found to explain them. II. N ever allow any term that is at all obscure or ambiguous, to pass without a definition. III. Employ, in the definition of terms, such words only as are perfectly intelligible without ex¬ planation, or have been already explained. RULES FOR AXIOMS. I. Never pass over a necessary principle, how¬ ever clear and evident it may be, without having first inquired whether the person you argue with will grant it. II. Place among axioms, only such truths as are self-evident. RULES FOR DEMONSTRATIONS. I. Never undertake to demonstrate self-evident propositions, since there can be none clearer to prove them by. II. Pi 'ove all the propositions that are in any degree obscure; and employ for proofs only self- 373 evident axioms, or propositions already granted or demonstrated. III. Always substitute mentally, the definitions in place of the things defined, to prevent deception from the ambiguity of the terms which the definitions are designed to limit. These eight rules contain all the directions re- O quisite to construct sound and irrefragable proofs. Three of them are not absolutely necessary ; and, as it is very difficult, and almost impossible, always to follow them, they may be passed over without material injury; although, whenever it is in our power to observe them, the demonstration will be more perfect. They are the first of each set : — namely, For the Definitions — Define no terms that are perfectly well known. For the Axioms — Never omit to require an ex¬ plicit assent, even to such axioms as are perfectly evident and simple. For the Demonstrations — Never attempt to de¬ monstrate self-evident propositions. For it will not be esteemed an unpardonable of¬ fence, to define and explain things which are very evident of themselves ; nor to omit requiring, before we begin our demonstrations, a formal assent to axioms which cannot be denied, when there is occa¬ sion for their use ; nor, lastly, to prove propositions which would be admitted without proof. But the five other rules are absolutely necessary ; we can never dispense with them, without an impor- 374 tant defect, and often not without occasioning error: for this reason, I shall repeat them. RULES NECESSARY FOR DEFINITIONS. I. Let no terms in any degree obscure or ambi¬ guous, pass without definition. II. Employ, in the definitions, such terms only as are perfectly known, or have been previously ex¬ plained. RULES NECESSARY FOR AXIOMS. Let the axioms consist only of self-evident pro¬ positions. RULES NECESSARY FOR DEMONSTRATIONS. I. Prove all the propositions, taking care to em¬ ploy for proofs, only self-evident axioms, or propo¬ sitions previously demonstrated or admitted. II. Guard against the ambiguity of terms, by substituting mentally the definitions which limit and explain them. Such are the five rules which comprise all that is necessary to render proofs convincing, irrefragable, and, in a word, Geometrical; the eight rules toge¬ ther will make them still more perfect. We have now shown in what the Art of Persua¬ sion consists. It is founded on two principles — namely, That all the terms be defined; and, That every proposition be proved, by substituting men¬ tally, the definition instead of the thing defined. But here it seems proper to anticipate three princi¬ pal objections. 375 One is, that this method has no novelty; an¬ other, that it may be very easily learned without studying the elements of Geometry, since it is com¬ prised in two words, ( define and prove,) which are understood as soon as they are uttered ; and lastly, that it is of very little service, since its use is for the most part confined to Geometrical subjects. It must therefore be shown that there is nothing so little known, nothing more difficult to practise, and yet nothing of more general utility. As to the first objection, that the rule, That we must define every thing, and prove every thing, is familiar to most persons, and that the Logicians have placed it among the precepts of their art, — I heartily wish all this were true, and so well known, that I might spare myself the trouble of investiga¬ ting, with so much care, the source of all those de¬ fects in reasoning, with which we are indeed fa¬ miliar. But, so far is this from being the case, that, if w7e except Geometricians, who in all ages have formed a very small portion of mankind, scarcely an individual is to be met with, who really understands it. This will be readily allowed by those who per¬ fectly understand the little I have already said. As for those who do not, I confess that what follows is not likely to give them any information. But if the spirit of these rules has been imbibed, and if they have made a sufficient impression to be firmly fixed and rivetted in the mind, the difference will readily be perceived between what is here stated, and what some logicians have by accident said like it, in some passages of their writings. 376 Intelligent persons are perfectly aware what a great difference there may be between two similar words, according to the occasion of their use, and other circumstances. Can any one believe, that of two persons, who have read and learned by heart the same book, each is equally master of its con¬ tents ? One, perhaps, comprehends it, so as to discern all its principles, to feel the force of the con¬ sequences, and of the answers to objections, and to understand the whole structure of the work; while to the other it seems to consist of mere words, and seeds of thought, which, although of the same kind as those that elsewhere spring up into fruitful trees, lie shrivelled, and without germinating, in the barren mind that has received them in vain. Persons who use precisely the same expressions, differ amazingly in their power of apprehending their import; and, aware of this fact, the incompa¬ rable author of the Art of Conversation takes great pains to impress upon his readers, that they must not judge of the capacity of an individual by a good thing which he may happen to say. Instead of al¬ lowing a single clever remark to excite a vague ad¬ miration of the speaker, and of all he may say or do, “ let them penetrate,’’ says he, “ the mind from which it proceeds; let them examine whether it is the effect of a good memory, or of a lucky hit ; let them treat it with coldness and neglect, and ob¬ serve whether he will be piqued, that his words do not receive their due applause. They will often find that a man will begin to retract what he has said, and may be led off from the high strain, which was not his own, till he descends into another quite vul- gar and ridiculous. They must, therefore, ascer¬ tain how the thought was held by the person who utters it, in what manner, by what means, and how far he possessed it; otherwise, their judgment will be precipitately formed.” I would ask any impartial person, whether this principle, “ Matter is in its nature incapable of thought and this, “ I think, therefore I am,” were in effect the same, in the mind of Des Cartes, and in the mind of St. Augustine, who said the same thing twelve hundred years before. I am, indeed, very far from asserting, that Des Cartes was not, in a sense, the author of these pro¬ positions, although he became first acquainted with them in the writing of that great saint ; for I know the difference between writing an expression by chance, without any deep or prolonged reflection upon it, and perceiving in the same expression, a wonderful train of consequences, which proves the distinction of material and spiritual natures, and forms the firm basis of a metaphysical system ; all which Des Cartes professed to effect with the pro¬ positions just mentioned. Now, without examin¬ ing whether he was successful in his attempt, I will assume it to be a fact, and on this supposition, I affirm, that the expressions are as different in- his writings from what they are in authors who have merely used them by accident, as a man full of life and vigour differs from a corpse. One man shall say a thing, without being aware of its excellence; and another shall find in it a won¬ derful train of consequences, that makes it appear 378 quite a different thing : so that we may affirm, that the latter is as little indebted to the person from whom he first learned it, as a noble tree is to the man who, thoughtlessly and unknowingly, dropped the seed that produced it, into a rich soil, which, by means of its own fertility, has brought it to per¬ fection. The manner in which the same thoughts spring up in the mind of their inventor, and in that of another, is vastly different. Sometimes barren in their na¬ tive soil, they become productive when transplanted. More frequently, however, it happens that a supe¬ rior mind derives from its own thoughts all that they are capable of producing, and afterwards, other per¬ sons who have heard them extolled, but are incapa¬ ble of appreciating their worth, borrow them for their own embellishment ; and it is in this case that the difference in the meaning of the same word, ac¬ cording to the persons who employ it, appears most striking. In this manner Logic has perhaps borrowed the rules of Geometry, without comprehending their force, and mixed them with others peculiar to itself ; but it does not follow, that Logicians have imbibed the spirit of Geometry; and if they can give no other proof than a casual similarity of expression, so far from putting them on a level with Geometri¬ cians, who understand the true method of ratiocina¬ tion, I shall be strongly disposed to exclude them from ever holding the same rank. For to have dropped an expression, and not to know that it in¬ cludes all we want, and instead of following up its 379 meaning, to wander far away, in useless researches after things slightly connected with it, only bespeaks the short-sightedness of those who do so, and proves that they fail in attaining their supposed object of pursuit, for this simple reason, that they have never clearly discerned it. A method of excluding error from our specula¬ tions, is an object of general inquiry. Logicians have professed to show the way to this object, but Geometricians alone have attained it ; and except¬ ing in their science, and such sciences as are formed on its model, there are no demonstrations deserving the name. The whole art is contained in the pre¬ cepts we have laid down, and in them alone ; all other rules are useless or erroneous. This I know by long acquaintance with men and books of all kinds. As to those who allege, that the rules laid down by Geometricians contain nothing new, because they have them in substance, though confounded with a multitude of useless or erroneous ones, from which they cannot separate them, I pass the same judg¬ ment on such persons, as on those who, seeking for a diamond of great value, among a large number of counterfeits, from which they know not how to dis¬ tinguish it, boast, that as long as they keep the whole number, they possess the real one, as truly, as he who, without troubling himself with the worth¬ less heap, lays his hand at once upon the gem they are in quest of, and for which they retain all the rest. A false mode of reasoning is a disorder which may be cured by the two remedies I have proposed ; 380 but men have prepared another, of an infinite num¬ ber of useless drugs, in which such as possess any virtue are lost and rendered inefficacious, by the no¬ xious qualities of the whole composition. To discover all the sophisms and ambiguities of fallacious reasoners, Logicians have invented barba¬ rous names, which astonish those who hear them; and though they can disentangle all the complexities of this involved knot, only by taking hold of the two ends marked by Geometricians, they enumerate a strange number of others, in which the former are comprised, without knowing which are the right ones. In this manner, (to change the figure,) such persons show us a number of different roads, which, they say, will conduct us to our journey’s end, al¬ though only two of them will lead to it, and must be distinctly pointed out : and they pretend that Geometry, though it assigns them with certainty, offers nothing but what they already have in their power to bestow, and indeed much less. Let them not boast, however, of their wealth, but take care, lest their present should lose its value by its very abun¬ dance, and become worthless by its bulk. There are an abundance of valuable thing's in the world; the question is, how to distinguish them; for it is certain that they are placed within our reach by nature, and their existence is matter of general notoriety. But we know not how to distinguish them. This is the universal defect. It is not in uncommon and extravagant things, that excellence of any kind is to be found. We elevate ourselves 381 to attain it, and place ourselves at a greater dis¬ tance from it than ever. It is requisite more fre¬ quently to lower ourselves. The best books are those which every reader thinks he could have writ¬ ten, Nature, which alone is excellent, is easy and accessible by all. I cannot, therefore, doubt, that these rules, if true, must be simple, unaffected, and natural, as they really are. Sound reasoning does not consist in the use of Barbara and Baralipton. We need • not strain our faculties. These laborious and pain¬ ful methods, by their unnatural loftiness, and vain, ridiculous inflation, fill the mind with a foolish pre¬ sumption, instead of supplying it with solid and in¬ vigorating nourishment. One of the principal causes of error to those who enter upon these in¬ quiries, is the imaginary assumption, that valuable things are inaccessible; a prejudice which is fostered by the use of the epithets grand , high , elevated , sublime. This spoils every thing. I would call them low , common , familiar. Such names would suit them much better. I abhor tumid phrases. 38*2 \1 CHAPTER XXIX. THE REASONS OF SOME POPULAR OPINIONS, I. I shall here put down my thoughts without a studied arrangement, though there may be one leading idea, which will give them a unity of de¬ sign. This will be the true order, and will mark my object, by its very want of arrangement. We shall see that all popular opinions are well- founded, and that the multitude are not so foolish as they are usually reputed. Thus the opinion which would destroy that of the people, will be it¬ self destroyed. II. It is true, that in one sense, men in general have false views of things : for though the opinions of the people are correct, the grounds of them are not well understood, since truth is supposed to be where it is not. Truth there certainly is in their opinions, but not exactly where they suppose it to be. III. Ignorant people pay respect to men of high birth. Smatterers in knowledge affect to despise them, because, forsooth, birth is not a personal, but an adventitious distinction. Men of real ability respect them, not according to popular notions, but from more enlarged views. Some pious folks, whose knowledge is not very profound, affect to dis¬ regard birth, in spite of those considerations which 383 induce the respect of wiser men, and believe they are directed to do so by the new light which religion has imparted. But advanced Christians respect them from a far higher degree of illumination. Thus there exists a series of alternate opinions, varying according to the degree of knowledge possessed. IV. The greatest calamity is a civil war; and this will surely happen, if the community think of placing the sovereign power in the hands of the most deserving ; for every one will say that he is the man. The mischief likely to be caused by a fool who suc¬ ceeds to the throne by hereditary right, is neither so great, nor so certain. V. Why are the majority followed ? Is it be¬ cause they have more reason ? No : but because they have more force. Why are ancient laws, and ancient customs, observed ? Is it because they are most agreeable to truth and justice? No: but because they are uniform, and destroy the' germ of discord. VI. Dominion founded on opinion and imagina¬ tion lasts for a time, and submission to it is agree¬ able and voluntary; but the dominion of force is perpetual. Thus opinion is the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant. VII. What an excellent regulation it is, to dis¬ tinguish men by their exterior, rather than by their mental qualities ! As I am travelling, I meet an- 384 other man, and the point to be decided is, which shall pass ? which of us shall yield the precedency ? The least clever, do you say ? Why, I am as clever as he is. We must come to blows, to settle the matter. But he has four lackeys, and I have only one. This difference is seen at a glance : we have only to count. It is my part to yield ; and I should be a fool to pick a quarrel. Thus we go on peaceably, which is the greatest blessing of life. r VIII. In consequence of seeing royal person¬ ages attended by their guards, officers, and music, and other things, adapted to excite reverence and awe, their subjects are impressed with the same feelings when in their presence alone, without such accompaniments, because they do not separate in thought, the person of a sovereign, from the pomp with which he is usually surrounded. The major part of mankind, who do not trace the impression to its proper cause, believe it is owing to some na¬ tural potency. Hence such phrases as, “ 71 le cha¬ racter of Divinity itself is marked upon his count e~ 7iance .” The power of Kings is founded on the reason, and on the folly of the people, but especially on the latter. The greatest and most important thing in the world, is founded on weakness; and the foundation is admirably firm ; for nothing can be more certain, than that the people will be feeble. What is founded on reason alone, is very insecure ; as for instance, reputation for wisdom. 385 IX. Our magistrates are adepts in this mystery. Their halls of justice, their robes of scarlet and er¬ mine, with the other insignia of their office, are all necessary. If physicians were to lay aside their cloaks, and the doctors in law and divinity, their hats and immense gowns, they would never be able to dupe the world, which, as matters stand, cannot resist the force of their credentials. Military men alone, require no disguise of this kind; because they have more direct means of procuring respect : they make their way by force; but men of the other professions, by show. For the same reason, our kings take no pains to disguise their persons. They are not masked in strange dresses, to indicate their rank ; but are attended by guards and halberdiers, clad in armour, whose hands and strength are en¬ tirely at their service. The trumpets, and other musical instruments that announce their approach, and the legions that surround them, make the firm¬ est tremble. They behold not the mere symbols of authority, but actual power. That man’s reason must be powerful indeed, who could look at the Grand Seignior in his magnificent seraglio, sur¬ rounded by forty thousand Janizaries, as calmly as he would at another man. If magistrates faithfully administered justice, if physicians understood the true art of healing, they might lay aside their professional garb. The ma¬ jesty of the sciences would be sufficiently venerable of itself. But their science being imaginary, and not real, makes it necessary to assume these vain ornaments that strike the imagination ; for on that R 23 • 386 they have to operate, and thus make themselves re¬ spected. We cannot even see a barrister in his gown and wig, without a favourable impression of his ability. — The Swiss reject hereditary titles of honour, and prove their plebeian extraction, in order to be eligible for the highest offices. — If on a voy¬ age, a pilot were wanted, a man would not be chosen because he, of all the persons on board, could boast the best descent. X. Every one perceives, that in commercial or military enterprises, men labour at an uncertainty ; but they do not understand the doctrine of chances, which shows that it must be so. Montaigne per¬ ceived that a lame reasoner is displeasing, and that custom governs all things ; but he did not discern the reason of these effects. Those who only see effects , but do not see the causes of things, are like persons who have only eyes, compared with those who possess intelligence ; and though there must be some intelligence to perceive these effects, yet, com¬ pared with that intelligence which discerns causes, it is like the mere bodily sense, compared with the intellect. XI. How is it that a lame man does not offend us, but that a lame reasoner does offend us? Why, because the former allows that we have the right use of our leors, but the latter maintains that we are the lame reasoners. Were it not for this, his blunders would excite pity ratber than anger. Epictetus asks, How is it that we are not of- 387 fended if persons say that we have the head-ache, but that we are offended if they say we are illogical or imprudent? The reason is this: we may be quite sure that we have not the head-ache, or that we are not lame, but we are not so sure of the cor¬ rectness of our mental operations. The only as¬ surance we have of this, being the full conviction of our own understanding : when another person, with the full conviction of his understanding, sees the subject in a light directly opposite, we are thrown into suspense and astonishment; and still more, if a thousand others ridicule our choice: for our bwn understanding is then confronted to a multitude, a painful and difficult position. Such a contradiction never happens in the evidence of the senses respect¬ ing a bodily infirmity. XII. To subject ourselves to inconvenience, is the rule of politeness: foolish as this may appear at first sight, it is really very proper. It means, I would do much to serve you ; and, as a proof of my sincerity, see what I do without being able to benefit you. Besides, forms of respect serve to distinguish persons of rank. If to sit in an arm-chair were a mark of respect, we should show it to every body alike, but as some self-denial is required, we make the proper distinctions. XIII. To be well dressed is not without its ad¬ vantages : it shows that a number of persons have been at work for us: by our head-dress, it will be seen, that we have a valet, a perfumer, &c. But R 2 388 ' there is something more than mere show or decora- tion5 in having so many hands at one s service. XIV. According to some folks, I am not to pay respect to a man merely because he is handsomely dressed, and followed by seven or eight footmen. This is very fine, truly ! Of one thing, however, I am sure, that if I do not take off my hat he will o-ive me a horse-whipping. His dress and retinue form a power : it is not so with one horse richly ca¬ parisoned in respect of another. Montaigne is so ridiculous, because he does not see the difference between admiring and inquiring into the reason of it. XV. Some opinions of the common people are very sound : tbeir preference, for instance, of hunt¬ ing and other diversions to poetry. The half-wise ridicule this, and delight in marking what they con¬ sider follv. But there is reason in it, though be¬ yond their comprehension. It is also well managed to distinguish men by external circumstances, such as birth and property. There are numbers who are pleased with declaiming upon the unreasonable¬ ness of this regulation; but it is very reasonable. XVI. There is one great advantage in high birth : a man is as much known and respected at eighteen or twenty, as another would have been, on the score of merit, at fifty; so that thirty years are gained without any trouble. 389 XVII. There are some people who, in order to convince us of the injustice we are guilty of, in with¬ holding our respect, from them, are always repeating anecdotes of the flattering attentions paid them by persons of quality. I reply; only show us the merit by which you acquired the esteem of these illustrious personages, and we will esteem you as much as they do. XVIII. If a man place himself at a window to watch the passengers, and I pass by, is it proper to say he placed himself there to look at me? No: for he had no thought of me individually. But he who loves a female for her beauty, does he really love her? No: for let the small-pox, without ending fatally, destroy her beauty, and his passion would subside. And if a man likes me for my judgment or my memory, does he like my very self? No: for I might lose these qualities without ceasing to exist. What then is this self, if it consists neither in the body nor the mind ? And how can either body or soul be loved except for these qualities, which, since they are perishable, do not constitute myself? For, can the substance of a person’s soul be loved abstractly, and certain qualities which be¬ long to it? This is not possible; and if it were possible, would be unjust. We cannot, therefore, love a person, but only his qualities; or, if we love a person, we must say that an assemblage ot quali¬ ties constitutes a person. XIX. The things which give us most anxiety 390 are often of no real importance; as, for instance, to conceal the smallness of our property. Our imagi¬ nation magnifies an atom of this sort into a moun¬ tain. In another mood, we should perhaps mention it without hesitation. XX. Few men possess the power of invention: those who cannot invent form the majority, and con¬ sequently are the most powerful ; and we may ob¬ serve, that, in general, inventors are denied the glory they merit and claim for their discoveries. If they persist in wishing for it, and treat with con¬ tempt those who do not invent, all they gain is to be nicknamed and treated as visionaries. Let them take care, then, not to be ostentatious of their superiority, great as it unquestionably is, and learn to be content with the esteem of the few who can appreciate its value. 391 CHAPTER XXX. j DETACHED MORAL THOUGHTS. I. Good maxims are very current ; but their right application is neglected. For instance, no one doubts that life itself should he hazarded for the public good: and by many this is put in practice; but men will scarcely ever venture so much for the cause of Religion. An inequality of condition is absolutely necessary ; but this being agreed upon, occasions the exercise not only of supreme dominion, hut of the most absolute tyranny. The mind re - quires a little relaxation : this is very true, but often perverted into an apology for unbounded dissi¬ pation. Certain limits may he imagined, but in ac¬ tual life there are no limits; the laws attempt to im¬ pose them, but men’s minds will not submit to their control. II. The commands of reason are far more impe¬ rious than those of a master ; for in disobeying the one, a man is uuhappy; in disobeying the other, he is a fool. III. Why do you murder me ? A strange ques¬ tion ! do you not live on the other side of the water ? If you lived on this side, my good Sir, I should in¬ deed be an assassin for killing you; but you live on 392 the other side: I am acting, therefore, like a man of honour, and every thing is as it should be. IV. Men of irregular lives charge the sober with acting unnaturally, but imagine that they themselves act agreeably to nature: thus, when a ship gets under weigh, the people on shore appear to be receding. The same expressions are used by all, a fixed point is necessary to decide. The port answers this purpose for the passengers; but where shall we find a similar point in morals ? V. As fashion regulates the agreeable, so it de¬ termines what is just. If mankind really understood justice, that most general of all maxims would never have been established : That every one should follow the maimers of his own country . The lustre of real equity would have compelled the homage of all na¬ tions, and legislators would never have taken for their model, instead of this unchangeable rectitude, the fancies and whims of Persia and Germany. Its authority would have been acknowledged in all king¬ doms, and through every age. VI. Justice is that which is established ; and therefore, all our established laws are considered just without examination, simply because they are established. VII. The only universal rules, for ordinary things, are the laws of a country, and in other cases, 393 the majority. Why is this? It is because the power is there. Hence kings, who have power from other sources, are not regulated by the majo¬ rities in their cabinet. VIII. No doubt an equality of goods is just; but as it is impossible to make men follow the dic¬ tates of justice by suasion, we must make them sub¬ mit to force. Since it is impossible for justice alone to regulate men’s minds without external force, physical power is legalized; so that justice and force being combined, peace, the greatest of all blessings, is the result. Summum jus, summa injuria. To decide by majorities is the best method, be¬ cause it is something visible, and includes the power of compelling obedience; yet, after all, it is a mode of deliberation adapted to inferior minds. If it were possible, we should put force into the hands of justice; but as force will not suffer itself to be managed as we like, because it is palpable, while justice is an immaterial quality, to be disposed of according to our fancy, we put justice into the hands of force; and that which men are forced to observe, assumes the name of Justice. IX. It is just to obey what is just; it is neces¬ sary to obey what is strongest. Justice without force is powerless; power without justice is tyranni¬ cal. Justice without force will be thwarted, as long as wicked men exist; force without justice will be reprobated by all the good. Therefore, justice and force must be joined, in order that what is just may 394 be powerful, and that what is powerful may be just. Justice is open to dispute; force is palpable and indisputable. Thus we have only to add force to justice. Unable to make what is just to be power¬ ful, we must make what is powerful to be just. X. It is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are not just ; for their obedience depends on the contrary belief. For this reason, they must be told, at the same time, that they must obey, because they are the laws; as our superiors must be obeyed, not because they are just, but because they are our superiors. If they fall in with these views, all sedi¬ tion is prevented. This is all that properly belongs to the definition of Justice. XL It is well that the laws and customs of a state should be obeyed, simply because they are established, and that the people should understand that this makes them just. In this case, they will never disown their authority ; but if it is attempted to assert their justice on any other grounds, it will easily be rendered questionable ; and nothing more is wanted to dispose the people to revolt. XII. When the question to be decided is, whether a war should be made, in which thousands will perish, and numbers of Spaniards be condemned to die, all depends on the will of one man, and he, too, an interested individual ; the right of decision ought to be vested in a third unbiassed party. 395 XIII. ‘I am handsome, therefore I ought to be feared I am strong, therefore I ought to be loved,’ & c. Speeches of this kind are false and ty¬ rannical. Tyranny consists in wishing to obtain, by one method, what can be obtained only by another. There are different orders of sentiment suited to the various kinds of excellence. Love is appropriate to the agreeable, fear to power, and belief to know¬ ledge. There is a propriety in thus exercising the feelings, and it would be unjust to withhold them, or to fix them upon other objects. It is equally erroneous and tyrannical to say, { Such a one is not strong, therefore I will not love him ; he is not clever, therefore I will not fear him.’ Tyranny consists in the desire of universal and irregular do¬ minion. XIV. Some vices adhere to us only by means of others; they are like so many branches which fall when the trunk is cut down. XV. When a malignant passion can support its pretensions by reason, its violence is increased, and it never fails to set forth the claims of reason with the utmost force. When austerity or self-denial is not regulated by a regard to real good, and we are obliged to return to the dictates of nature, that also operates with greater power, owing to the revulsion. XVI. The exhilaration produced by amusement is not happiness, for it arises from what is extraneous to ourselves: it is therefore dependent on circumstances, 396 and consequently liable to be disturbed by a thou¬ sand accidents and unavoidable misfortunes. XVII. Great enlargement of mind, not less than extreme limitation of faculty, is charged with folly. Nothing obtains currency in the world but mediocrity. The multitude have established this order of things, and are on the alert to let no one escape, who at¬ tempts to break through at either end. As for my¬ self, I have no hankering after distinction, and am content to remain just where society chooses to place me; or if I show any dislike to the lower end, it arises not from the inferiority of the situation, but because it is one of the extremes: I should be quite as reluctant to occupy the upper end. To pass be¬ yond the medium, is to go out of the sphere of hu¬ manity; true greatness of mind consists in keeping within it; though it is too often imagined to consist in going out of it. XVIII. In order to gain the reputation of being a poet, a man must put on the badge of a poet ; or to rank high in the mathematics, he must put on the badge of a mathematician. But men of sense, who are free from all such vanity, wear no particular badges: the reputation of an embroiderer or a poet is all one to them. They are not called poets or geometricians, though they can decide on the merits of those who profess to be such. Their character is an enigma to the rest of the world. When they mix with society, they readily join in whatever hap¬ pens to be the topic of conversation. They make 397 no unnecessary display of their talents, but wait till an occasion calls them into action, and then their superiority appears: with such persons, it is equally in character that their diction should not excite at* tention when the subject does not require eloquence, and that it should attract our notice, when the occa¬ sion admits of eloquence. It is poor commendation to say of a man, as he enters a room, that he is a clever poet; and an unfavourable indication of his abilities when he is appealed to only respecting a set of verses. Man is a being full of wants, and likes no persons so well as those who can satisfy them. Such a one, they tell me, is a good mathematician; but what have I to do with mathematics? I hear another applauded as a military tactician; but I detest war, and wish to live in peace with the whole world. What we want then, is a man of practical good sense, who can help us out in the daily occui- rences of life. XIX. When in health, we cannot imagine how we should behave if we were sick: but when sick¬ ness comes, it induces us to take medicine readily. The passions which agitated us in the time of health, and the desires after social amusements which were then so vivid, subside and vanish under the pressure of disease. Nature bestows upon us passions and desires suited to the change in our condition. We ought not therefore to blame her for the apprehen¬ sions we are prone to indulge: they are the offspring of our own fancy, which connects with the state in which we are, the feelings of the state in which we are not. 39 8 XX. Discourses on humility, cherish pride in the vain-glorious, but promote humility in the hum¬ ble; and just in the same way sceptical discussions increase the confidence of the dogmatic. Few per¬ sons talk of humility in a humble spirit, or of chas¬ tity with a chaste mind, or of doubt with hesitation. We are made up of falsehood, duplicity and contra¬ diction. We disguise ourselves from others, and even conceal ourselves from our own view. XXI. Virtuous actions which have been con¬ cealed from notoriety are the most estimable. When¬ ever I meet with such in history, they delight me exceedingly. But then they have not been quite concealed, or they would not have been on record; and as far as this circumstance goes, it diminishes their merit: it would have been more virtuous to have resolved to conceal them entirely. XXII. A jester is a contemptible character. XXIII. Selfishness is hateful; therefore those who do not renounce it, but are satisfied simply with concealing it, are always hateful. 4 By no means.’ I hear some one say; 4 For if we treat every one with courtesy, they have no just ground for hating us.’ I grant this would be true, if the only thing hateful in self-love, were the uneasiness its indulgence occa¬ sions us. But if I hate it because it is unjust, aim¬ ing as it does to be the centre of every thing, there is not a moment in which I can cease to hate it. In a word, selfishness has two qualities; it is essentially 399 unjust, because it aims at becoming the centre of every thing; and it is offensive to others, because it would make them its slaves: for every one in whom self is a leading principle is the enemy, and would be the tyrant of the human race. Your courtesy, I allow, checks the injurious operation of selfishness, but does not alter the injustice of its nature ; do what you will, you cannot render it an object of ap¬ probation to those who hate injustice; though the unjust may be pleased that they no longer meet it as an enemy: thus you continue unjust yourself, and please none but those who are likewise unjust. XXIV. I do not admire a man who possesses one virtue in perfection, unless he possesses, at the same time, in an equal degree, the opposite virtue; and such was Epaminondas, in whom the greatest valour was combined with the greatest benignity. Where this is not the case, the character, instead of rising, sinks. Mental greatness is shown not by being at one extremity of the scale, but by touching both ends at once, and filling up the interval too. This, however, may be nothing more than the quick transition of the mind from one extreme to the other, so that it shall be really only in one point at any given time, like a firebrand which, by a rapid gyration, presents the appearance of a circle of flame; but if so, it indicates the agility, if not the compre¬ hensiveness of the mind. 4 XXV. If our present condition were a happy one, there would be no occasion to shun the thoughts of it. Trifles console us, because trifles afflict us. 400 XXVI. I used to spend much of my time in the study of the abstract sciences, but I lost my relish for them, when I found so few with whom I could exchange thoughts respecting them. As soon as I began the study of Man, I saw that these subjects were not suited to his nature, and that I had mis¬ taken the best method of employing my faculties, in attempting to investigate them, much more than others in remaining ignorant of them: I felt per¬ suaded, however, that I should have plenty of com¬ panions in the study of man, which is our proper study. But here again I have been mistaken. There are fewer students of human nature than of Geometry. XXVII. When all things move at the same rate (as in a vessel under sail) nothing appears to move. When a whole community falls into disorder, indi¬ vidual irregularities are not observed, because the standard is lost. But let any one set himself against the general current of society, and he becomes a fixed point, from which to measure the aberrations of the rest. XXVIII. Philosophers have assumed the credit of being very ingenious, for the classifications of their moral systems. But can they explain why they should use four divisions rather than six? Why should they make four cardinal virtues rather than ten ? Why define virtue to consist in abstine et sustine , (abstain and endure) rather than in any thing else? But mark, say you, a single word con- 401 tains a whole system. Yes, but it is of no use un¬ less you explain it; and if you proceed to the ex¬ planation, and lay open the precept which includes all others, that very confusion is produced which you intended to avoid. In short, as long as moral pre¬ cepts are contained in one word, they are unknown and useless; and when developed they reappear in their original confusion. Nature has constituted each of them separately; and though we may com¬ prise one within another, each exists independently of the rest. Thus all these classifications and tech¬ nical phrases have scarcely any use, but to relieve the memory, and to be a sort of indexes ol their con¬ tents. XXIX. If we wish to reprove a person for his good, and to convince him of his mistakes, we must take notice in what point of view he has considered the matter in question, and acknowledge the correct¬ ness of his discernment so far; for correct it will generally be, within certain limits. He will be pleased to find that he was not altogether in the wrong, and that his mistakes were only owing to not having surveyed the subject on all sides. for not to have noticed every thing, is not esteemed disgrace¬ ful, but men are reluctant to acknowledge themselves mistaken in what they have observed: and perhaps this feeling arises from its being a fact, that the mind is naturally correct in its perceptions of what it sees, just as the notices of the senses are always true. XXX. A man’s virtue must be measured, not by 402 his extraordinary efforts, but by his usual course of action. XXXI. The great and the little are subject to the same accidents, the same vexations, and the same passions; but the former are near the circumference of the wheel, 4 the latter are at the centre, and are therefore less agitated by the same movements. XXXII. We must not take for granted that a man speaks the truth because he has no interest in telling a falsehood, for there are those who lie for the lie’s sake. XXXIII. Alexander’s continence has had far fewer imitators than his drunkenness. While no shame is felt for being less virtuous than he was, men think themselves excusable if they are not more vicious. They fancy, that when they indulge in the vices of the great, they rise above the vices of the multitude, without reflecting that the same vices are common to both. They unite with the great just at the point where they unite with the multitude; for however elevated the former may be, they are still in contact with the rest of mankind at some points. They are not suspended in the air, and dissevered from all connection with the earth. If they are above us, it is because their heads are more elevated; their feet are as low as our own. They stand on the same level, they walk on the same earth, and by their lower extremities are as debased as our¬ selves, as children, or even as brutes. 403 XXXIV. It is the contest, and not the victory, which gives us pleasure. AVe like to see the com¬ bats of animals, but not the victor tearing the van¬ quished in pieces. We may ask, what object can there be excepting the victory? Yet when that is gained, our interest in the whole affair is lost. It is the same in games of hazard ; it is the same in the investigation of truth. We are pleased to wit¬ ness the collision of opinions, but not to contemplate truth when discovered; we behold it with pleasure only in a militant state. We are not interested by the things themselves, but by the search for them. And so there is pleasure in observing the conflict of two opposite passions ; but when one gains the mas¬ tery, it becomes brute violence. In dramatic repre¬ sentations, we turn away from scenes which are placid without uncertainty, wretched without hope, and full of passion without refinement. XXXV. Men are taught every thing excepting honesty; and yet nothing is deemed a greater insult than to suspect a person of a flaw in this point. So that men make the greatest pretensions to know the only thing which has never been taught them. XXXVI. How silly the attempt of Mon¬ taigne to delineate his own character! and that not o in an accidental manner, and contrary to his own fixed principles, a mistake to which every one is liable, but in accordance with his principles, and as his main and principal design! For to talk non¬ sense by accident, and without reflection, is common 404 enough: but to take pains to gossip, as he has done, is intolerable. XXXVII. To utter expressions of pity for the unfortunate, does not thwart any natural propensity: on the contrary, men are well pleased to give this proof of their humanity, and thus to acquire a re¬ putation for tenderness by bestowing what costs them nothing; but such benevolence is of little value. XXXVIII. Could it have been supposed, that a man might possess the friendship of the king of England, the king of Poland, and the queen of Sweden, and yet might find it difficult to obtain a retreat and an asylum? XXXIX. All objects that come under our no¬ tice have various qualities, and the mind has various inclinations: nothing is presented to the mind in a simple state, nor is the mind in a simple state when it examines any object; hence we sometimes laugh and cry at the same thing. XL. The powerful, the beautiful, the witty and the religious, form distinct classes, and each is con¬ fined within certain limits, beyond which it can exer¬ cise no control. Sometimes, however, they come into collision: the strong and the beautiful contend for the mastery; but most absurdly, for their supre¬ macy is of different kinds. Self-ignorance leads them to aim at universal dominion. But nothing can attain this, not even physical power, which has 405 no authority in the republic of letters, being only master of external actions. XL I. Ferox gens nullam esse vitam sine armis jmtat. Some men would rather die than live in a state of peace: others would lose their lives sooner than go to war. There is no sentiment of the hu¬ man mind, which, on some occasions, will not be held dearer than life, though the love of that is so strong and so natural. XLII. How difficult is it to submit a literary work to the judgment of another person, without biassing his mind by our very manner of doing it. If we drop some such expression as, 4 It seems to me very beautiful;’ or, 4 It is rather obscure,’ we either beguile his imagination into the same sentiment, or prompt him to adopt the contrary. It would be much better to say nothing, for then he would form his own judgment, or at least would judge accord¬ ing to the mood he happened to be in, and as affec¬ ted by circumstances, of which we were not the dis¬ posers. After all, our silence itself will produce some effect, and will be variously interpreted accord¬ ing to the humour we happen to be in; some con¬ jecture will be formed from our looks and the tones of our voice. So easy is it to remove the judgment from its proper basis, or rather so very slight and unstable is that basis ! XLIII. Montaigne’s opinion respecting custom is just; as soon as it is really such; and when we find it established, it ought to be followed, without 406 examining whether it is rational or not, provided it opposes neither natural right, nor the divine law. The multitude, it is true, follows custom under the belief of its justice, or they would soon abandon it: for men do not like to own subjection to any thing but reason and justice. Custom, without this no¬ tion, would be looked upon as tyranny; whereas the dominion of reason and justice is no more tyranny than that of pleasure. XLIV. The knowledge of external things, will never compensate, in times of affliction, for ignorance of what relates to our moral being: but moral wisdom will always compensate for ignorance of external things. XLV. Time puts an end to our sorrows and our quarrels, because our characters alter, and we become as it were different beings. Neither the offender nor the offended is the same person. It is like a nation with which all intercourse has been broken off, but renewed after a generation or two have passed away. They are still Frenchmen, but not the same individuals. i/ XL VI . What are the features of our condition? Inconstancy, weariness, disquietude. If any one wishes to be thoroughly acquainted with the vanity of man, he has only to consider the causes and ef¬ fects of love. The cause is unje ne sen’s quoi ,* and the effects are terrible. Thisy> ne sais quoi , such ■* Corneille. 407 a little thing that we can scarcely discern its exist¬ ence, shakes the earth, agitates princes, and armies, and the whole human race. If Cleopatra’s nose had been a few lines shorter, the state of the world would have been changed. XL VI I. It seems to me that Caesar was too old to set about amusing himself with the conquest of the world. This sort of amusement was suited to Alexander: he was a young man whose impetuosity it was almost impossible to restrain; but Caesar should have been too sedate for such an enterprise. XL VII I. Fickleness in our pleasures arises from a sense of the emptiness of those we have tried, and ignorance of the vanity of the rest. XLIX. Kings and princes sometimes divert themselves. If they were always on their thrones they would soon be tired of them. Grandeur must be laid aside in order to be felt. L. Whatever my state of mind may be, it is lit¬ tle influenced by the weather. The storm and the sunshine are within my own breast: the success or failure of my projects makes scarcely any difference. Sometimes I endeavour to rise superior to misfortune, and the glory of the attempt makes it pleasurable; while at other times, in the midst of prosperity, I am indifferent or disgusted. LI. While putting my thoughts on paper, they 408 sometimes escape me; but this reminds me of my weakness, which I am so apt to forget, and affords as much instruction as the thoughts could do that I have lost; for I aim above all things to know my own nothingness. LII. It is very striking to observe, that there are in the world men who have forsworn all the laws of God and nature, and yet observe others of their own making with the utmost scrupulosity: highway¬ men for example. LIII. ‘ Th is dog is mine says the child of a poor man: 4 this is my place in the sunshine:’ in such expressions we may detect the germ and image of a tyranny that would extend itself over the whole earth. LIV. 4 Have the goodness to excuse the remark, but your manners are awkward.’ Were it not for this apology, I would not have taken what you said as an affront. Let me tell you, nothing is so offen¬ sive as an apology. LV. People in general suppose, that Plato and Aristotle always appeared in full dress, with a grave and philosophic air. Instead of this, they were so¬ ciable beings, who could enjoy themselves with their friends like other people: and when they wrote their treatises on law and politics, it was to amuse and divert themselves, and formed the least philosophic and serious part of their lives. Their philosophical 409 character was shown much more in living without luxury and ostentation. LVI. Men are prone to indulge wishes of evil: not against the unfortunate, but against those whom they behold in the pride of wealth: we shall be mis¬ taken if we form a different opinion. Martial’s epigram on the one-eyed is worthless, because it suggests no consolation to those who are in that unfortunate situation, and serves only to dis¬ play the author’s wit: every thing of that sort is contemptible. Ambiiiosa recidet ornamenta . A writer should study to please men of benevolence and genuine tenderness, not the unkindly and mis¬ anthropic. LVII. I know not what to reply to compliments of this sort: 4 I have given you a great deal of trouble; I fear I shall fatigue you; I am afraid this will be tedious:’ — such speeches either embarrass or provoke me. LVI 1 1. A sincere friend is so valuable an acqui¬ sition, even for men of the highest rank, in order to guard their reputation and support their interests in their absence, that they should spare no pains to obtain one. But let them be very careful in their choice; for if they expend their efforts on a vain fool, he will be of no service, whatever he may say on their behalf, for no one will respect his opinion: he will be afraid to open his mouth for them, when he finds himself the weakest; and as his character S 23 410 possesses no independence, it will not be surprising if he should join the rest of the company in abusing them. LIX. Do you wish that men should speak well of you ? Do not say so. LX. Let not men ridicule those who are honoured on account of their official situation; but ask them¬ selves whether they love any one excepting for ad¬ ventitious qualities. All men naturally hate one another. I venture to assert, that if every thing were known which men say of each other, there would not be four friends in the whole world. To be convinced of this, only consider the quarrels pro¬ duced by talebearing. LXI. It is more easy to suffer death without thinking of it, than to think of it when in no dan¬ ger of suffering it. LXII. That a thing so visible as the vanity of the world should be so little apprehended, as to make the assertion, that it is folly to seek after its gran¬ deur, appear strange and striking, is truly astonish- ing. He who does not see the vanity of the world must be vain himself. And who does not see it, excepting young people who are taken up with di¬ versions, regardless of the future? But take away their diversions, and you see them pine away with listlessness; they then have a sense of their own 411 nothingness, without understanding it: for this is wretchedness indeed, to suffer intolerable sadness, as soon as we are forced to self-reflection, and have no object to divert our thoughts. LXIII. In all human things there is a mixture of truth and falsehood. Essentia! truth is different: it is purely and altogether true. The alloy of false¬ hood debases and destroys it. Nothing is true, un¬ derstanding by the term, unmixed truth. Murder is bad. Yes: for we know very well what is bad and false. But can any one say what is good? Celibacy? I say it is not good, for it would bring the world to an end. Is marriage good? No; continence is far better. Is it right never to put persons to death? No; for the disorders of society would be horrible, and the wicked would kill the good. But is it right to kill? No; for this would destroy nature. We possess neither what is true nor what is useful excepting partially and mixed with what is pernicious and false. LXIV. Evil may easily be met with, for its forms are infinite; but good is uniform. There is, how¬ ever, a certain kind of evil as difficult to find as what is generally called good: and men often mistake this particular evil for a good. Indeed it requires an extraordinary capacity to attain such evil. LXV. The ties which secure the regard of one class of men to another, are, generally speaking, ties of necessity; for a distinction of ranks is un- 412 avoidable. All men are ambitious of dominion, but only some possess the power. But the ties which secure the respect of individuals to one another, are ties of the imagination. LXVI. We are so unfortunate that we cannot take pleasure in any pursuit but on the condition of being chagrined if we are unsuccessful; which may be occasioned by a thousand accidents, and happens every hour. Whoever should discover the secret of enjoying a good without being affected by the contrary evil, will have gained a great point. LXVII. We must not forget our own nature; we are body as well as spiiit, and hence pure de¬ monstration is not the instrument of persuasion. How very few things are there demonstrable! Ar¬ guments act on strength to argument; it enlists the senses on its side, which imperceptibly carry the understanding along with them. Who can demonstrate that the sun will rise to-morrow, or that we shall die? yet what is more universally believed? Custom per¬ suades men of it; this it is which makes so many Turks and Pagans, this makes soldiers and artizans. It is true we must not appeal to custom when we are in quest of truth, but we must have recourse to it as soon as the understanding sees where the truth lies, that our minds may be thoroughly imbued with belief, of itself so volatile a thing; for to keep the arguments constantly before us would be endless trouble. We must acquire a more easy belief, and ly on the mind. Custom adds 413 such is that of custom, which, without violence, with¬ out art, without argument, produces belief, and so inclines all our faculties, that it costs us no effort to retain it. The two parts of our frame must act in unison; the mind convinced by those arguments which it suffices to have understood once in our lives, and the senses persuaded by habit, and not allowed to allure us in a contrary direction. 414 CHAPTER XXXL MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS ON PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE. I. In proportion to a man’s intelligence, a greater number of original characters will be observed in so¬ ciety. To common minds the various shades of mental constitution are imperceptible. II. It is possible to possess a sound understand¬ ing, but one which, at the same time, is limited in its range: for we meet with men, who, while they are quite at home on one class of subjects, discover a to¬ tal inaptitude for any other. Some can deduce con¬ sequences from a few principles, and others from many principles. For instance, there are those who are particularly versed in the properties of water, of which the principles are few, but their ramifications so minute, that the greatest penetration is requisite to trace them. Such persons are not likely to be eminent mathematicians, for the principles of Geo¬ metry are numerous, and the mind may be so con¬ structed, that it can thoroughly comprehend a few principles, while it is unable to explore a science of which the principles are numerous. Hence it appears that there are two sorts of intel¬ lect; one that can penetrate vigorously and deeply into the consequences of a given principle, and may be called the intellect of delicate discrimination; the 415 other that can comprehend a number of principles without confounding them, and is the geometiical intellect; the one is distinguished by quickness and correctness of tact; the other by comprehensiveness. The one may exist without the other, that is to say, the mind may be acute without comprehensiveness; or comprehensive without strength. There is a great difference between the geome¬ trical and the delicate intellect. The principles adapted to the former are palpable, but so remote from common use, that, through mere desuetude, it is difficult to turn our attention to them; but no sooner is this done, than they appear most obvious; and it would indicate unusual obtuseness of percep¬ tion, not to reason correctly on principles so exceed¬ ingly plain. But the principles adapted to a mind of nice dis¬ cernment, are those brought into action in the daily business of life. No effort, therefore, is necessary to give our attention to them ; they are before our eyes, and nothing is requisite on our part but clear perception : but that is indispensable; foi the princi¬ ples are so delicate and numerous, that it is almost impossible to prevent some escaping our notice. And the omission of any one principle leads into enoi ; so that in the first place, a very clear perception is needed to discern all of them; and then a logical ta¬ lent to apprehend their legitimate consequences. All geometricians would discriminate with nicety had they a clear view of the requisite principles; and men of nice discernment would be geometricians, if they could only fix their attention on the principles 416 of a science so foreign to their habits. The reason, then, why some men of delicate minds are not geo¬ metricians, is, that they are absolutely incapable of fixing their attention on the principles of Geometry; but the reason why Geometricians are not men of nice discernment, is, that they are too abstracted; having been used to the well-defined and palpable principles of Geometry, and not to draw any inferences till they have familiarized themselves with first principles, they are bewildered on subjects of which the princi¬ ples are too delicate to be so roughly handled. In¬ deed, the latter can scarcely be said to be the ob¬ jects of perception, but rather of feeling; and wherever this is wanting, it is a defect not to be supplied by instruction. To apprehend things so delicate and so numerous, requires a tact extremely delicate and correct; and, for the most part, an at¬ tempt to demonstrate them geometrically would be futile: the principles are held so differently, that it would be an endless and unprofitable labour. The mind must seize upon the object at once, without any process of reasoning, at least none formally such. It is therefore very unusual for geometricians to pos¬ sess this refined tact, or for persons who do possess it, to be geometricians: the former would treat mat¬ ters of feeling geometrically, to a degree perfectly ridiculous, commencing with definitions and so going on to principles, a mode of reasoning entirely un¬ suited to such topics. Not that the mind arrives at a conclusion without reasoning, but the process is silent and inartificial; the expression of it in words is beyond the power of any man, and the feeling it¬ self is possessed by very few. 417 Minds of delicate discernment, on the contrary, being used to decide at a glance, are so astonished when presented with propositions which must be incomprehensible, till they have learned a multitude of dry definitions and principles, and which they have never before seen in such guise, that they feel repelled and disgusted. From both these classes persons of obtuse and il¬ logical minds are excluded. Geometricians, who are geometricians and nothing else, reason correctly, provided every thing is set before them by way of definition and principles: but when they attempt subjects on which this cannot be done, their blunders are intolerable; for unless the principles are extremely palpable, they are sure to err. Those again who are possessed of delicate dis¬ crimination, but without a particle of mathematical talent, have not -the patience in matters of specula¬ tion and imagination, to descend to first principles which they never meet with in society and actual life. III. It often happens, that in order to prove cer¬ tain general truths, we take particular examples, the proofs of which rest upon the general truths; yet by the very use of them for this purpose, one effect is sure to follow, namely, that as we always suppose the difficulty to lie in the thing to be proved, these examples appear so much the clearer. Thus, when we wish to explain a general principle, we give the rule for a particular case; but if we wish to explain a particular case, we begin with the general principle. The thing to be proved always appears obscure, and 418 the medium of proof clear; for as soon as we set about proving any thing, our imagination is instantly filled with the notion of its obscurity; and, on the contrary, we suppose that what is employed to prove it must be clear, and therefore receive that without difficulty. IV. All our reasoning is reduced to yield to na¬ tural feeling. But fancy is both similar and con¬ trary to natural feeling; similar, because it does not reason, and contrary, because it is deceptive: it is therefore very difficult to distinguish between these two opposites. One man says, that'my natural feel¬ ing is fancy, and that his, fancy is natural feeling; and I, on my part, use the same language. A standard is wanted; reason offers one, but it may be turned in any direction; so that in fact there is none whatever. V. Those who form their judgment of things by fixed rules, are, in respect of others, like those who carry watches in respect of those who have none. One man says, { We have been here two hours;’ another says, 6 We have been here only three quar¬ ters of an hour.’ I take out my watch and say to the first, c You have been ill entertained it seems;’ and to the other, 6 Your time has passed away very agreeably, for we have been here exactly one hour and a half:’ as to the people that say my time has hung heavily on my hands, and that I guess its length by my feeling, I only smile at their remark; they are not aware all the while, that I judge by my watch. 419 VI. Some men speak well, who are very indiffer¬ ent writers. The reason is, that the place, the audience, and other circumstances, kindle their minds, and excite them to greater efforts than they could make without such a stimulus. VII. It is difficult to come at what is valuable in Montaigne. What is faulty, (I mean exclusive of his moral sentiments,) might have been corrected in a moment, had any one given him a hint that he was too fond of telling stories, and of talking about himself. VIII. It is a very bad practice to follow the ex¬ ception instead of the general rule. We should adhere rigidly to the latter, and keep clear of excep¬ tions. On the other hand, as it is certain that ex¬ ceptions will sometimes occur, we must temper our strictness by good sense, that we may know when to admit them. IX. There are persons who would not allow an author to write on subjects that have been already handled, because in that case (say they) he would write nothing new. But if the thoughts should not be new, yet their arrangement may be different. In playing at tennis the same ball is used, but one man can play it much better than another. It seems to me that with equal propriety they might find fault with a writer for employing the words already in use; as if the same thoughts, differently arranged, would not form substantially a new production, just as the same words, differently arranged, form new thoughts. 420 X. Men, in general, are more completely per¬ suaded by the suggestions of their own minds, than by reasons offered them by others. XI. It is natural for the intellect to believe, and for the will to love; so that these powers, when at a loss for real objects, fix on such as are false. XII. Those strained exertions to which the soul is sometimes impelled, produce no lasting effects. It oidy makes a leap and immediately descends to its former level. XIII. Man is neither an angel or a brute, but the misfortune is, that a being who aspires to be an angel, sinks into a brute. XIV. If we know a man’s ruling passion we make sure of pleasing him: and yet as every one has fancies contrary to his real interest, or even to what he deems to be such, the character of an indi¬ vidual often acquires a whimsical turn, which puts those persons out, who wish to ingratiate themselves with him. XV. A horse does not trouble itself about the admiration of its fellow. Perhaps some sort of emulation is excited at the course; but put them in the stable, and the clumsiest and most ill shaped, will not give up its oats to another. It is not so with human beings; no individual is content with his own advantages, but wishes to set himself off to the dis¬ paragement of others. 421 XVI. The moral sentiments may be injured in the same way as the intellectual powers; for both are affected by intercourse with our fellow men, and according as this varies, they are improved or dete¬ riorated. It is therefore of the utmost importance to know what society to select; but this knowledge can only be gained by having mixed with society without receiving a wrong bias. Here is a circle, from which happy are those who escape ! XVII. As long as we are ignorant of those parts of nature which are not absolutely necessary for our welfare, it is perhaps not to be regretted, that men should agree in their notions, though erroneous, since it allays the agitation of their minds. I may mention, as an example, the opinion that diseases and the changes of the seasons are affected by the moon. It is one of the chief maladies of our nature, to in¬ dulge a restless curiosity about things beyond the limits of our knowledge ; and I do not know whether it is -not a less evil, to be settled down in error respecting such objects, than to be perpetually dis¬ quieted by a useless curiosity. XVIII. If lightning struck the lowest, as well as the highest places, poets and others, whose reasonings consist of analogies and resemblances taken from na¬ tural phenomena, would be left without arguments. • % XIX. The intellect has a method of its own, that is, by principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one. We cannot prove that we 422 ought to be loved by formally explaining the causes of love ; this would be ridiculous. Jesus Christ and Saint Paul have employed the method of the heart, which is that of charity, much more than the method of the intellect; their great aim was not to illuminate the understanding, but to warm the heart; and so it was with Saint Augustine. This method consists principally in handling every topic that bears a relation to the main object, in such a manner as to render that more conspicuous. XX. There are some persons who would put all the world under a disguise. They never speak of the Icing , but always of the August Monarch ; you never hear them say Paris , but always the metropolis of the kingdom. There are some occasions when Paris should be simply called Paris , and at other times we may style it, the metropolis of the kingdom . XXI. When the same words recur in a composi¬ tion, and we find, on. attempting to make an altera¬ tion, that their removal would injure the work, they ought to be left; for this settles their propriety, and to substitute others would indicate nothing but an hy¬ percritical spirit, incapable of discerning the propriety of such repetitions sometimes : for no general rule can be o;iven. XXII. Those who throw their sentences into a certain form to make antitheses, are like persons who put in false windows for symmetry. They attend to the correctness, not of their thoughts, but of their figures. 423 XXIII. One language with respect to another, is a cipher, in which words are changed for words, and not letters for letters; and thus an unknown language is decipherable. XXIV. There is a model of the agreeable and beautiful, which consists in a certain relation between our nature (whatever that nature may be, strong or weak,) and the objects that excite pleasure. Every thing formed on this model pleases; a house, a song, an essay, verse or prose, women, birds, rivers, trees, apartments, or dress, &e. And every thing not formed on this model offends persons of good taste. XXV. As we speak of poetical beauty, we might with equal propriety speak also of geometrical or medical beauty. Yet these phrases are not in use, and for this reason, that we know very well what is the object of geometry, and of medicine, but we do not know wherein that power of pleasing consists, which is the object of poetry. We do not know what that natural model is, which we ought to imi¬ tate, and for want of this knowledge, a number of strange phrases have been invented, such as, the golden age , the wonder of the times , the fatal laurel , the beauteous star , &c. this jargon is called poetic beauty! But let any one imagine a female attired after this model, and what will he behold? a damsel be¬ dizened all over with mirrors and other finery, a sight which, so far from being graceful, will be extremely ridiculous; for what constitutes beauty in a woman is much better known than for what reason poetry 424 pleases us. Yet people who are no judges of female beauty, would perhaps admire our fine lady; in many villages she would be taken for the queen : and this is why some call sonnets written in this gairish style, village queens . XXVI. If a passion or impression be properly delineated, we immediately find the original in our own breasts, where it existed before, without our knowledge, and directly conceive an affection for the person who has pointed it out: we feel indebted to him, .not so much for presenting us with something new, as for making us better acquainted with our own stores: this community in knowledge necessarily excites our regard. XXVII. To be agreeable, as well as true, is es¬ sential to eloquence; but this very agreeableness ought to have truth for its basis. XXVIII. When people meet with a work writ¬ ten in a natural style, they are transported with de¬ light and wonder: for where they expected to meet with an author, they find a man. On the other hand, persons of good taste, who, judging by them¬ selves, expect on opening a book to find a man, are surprised to find only an author, plus poetice quam humane locutus est. None honour nature more than those who show that she can speak on all subjects, Theology itself not excepted. XXIX. The last thing we can settle in the composition of a work, is, how to begin it. 425 XXX. In discourse, (whether written or spoken,) it is ill-judged to digress from the topic in hand, un¬ less for the sake of relieving the mind; and this too only at proper seasons ; for unseasonable diversion is irksome: we are repelled and disgusted by it alto¬ gether: so difficult is it to retain any hold on the mind when it ceases to receive pleasure. Pleasure is the precious metal for which we barter away every thing. XXXI. How vain is the art of painting, which excites admiration by copies, of which we do not ad¬ mire the originals ! XXXII. The sense varies according to the words which express it; so that it receives dignity from words instead of giving it to them. XXXIII. Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling, never can comprehend subjects that re¬ quire a process of reasoning. They want to see through things at the first glance ; they are unused to the investigation of principles. Others, on the contrary, who are accustomed to ratiocination, can¬ not apprehend subjects of mere feeling: for instead of seeing things at a glance, they are busy in exa¬ mining principles. XXXIV. True eloquence despises what is often called eloquence: true morality despises what cur¬ rently passes for such: that is to say, the morality of sound reason despises the morality of fancy, which is without a standard. 426 XXXV. All the false beauties which we repre- hend in Cicero, have found plenty of admirers. XXXVI. To desp ise philosophy is to act the part of a true philosopher. XXXVII. Many people hear a sermon in the same manner as they hear vespers. XXXVIII. Rivers are us wherever we wish to go. moving roads which carry XXXIX. Two similar countenances, neither of which would make us smile if seen by itself, make us smile by their resemblance, when seen together. XL. Astrologers and Alchymists have some sound principles, but make a wrong use of them. Now the abuse of truths deserves to be punished as much as the introduction of falsehood. XLI. I cannot pardon Des Cartes. He would have been well pleased to have made no reference to the Deity, in his whole system of Philosophy: he therefore introduces him just to set the universe in motion by a touch of the finger, and after that has nothing more for a God to do. 427 CHAPTER XXXII. ON EPICTETUS AND MONTAIGNE. L No philosopher has shown himself better ac¬ quainted with the duties of man than Epictetus* The first lessons he taught, were, to consider the Deity as the supreme object of regard; to believe that he governs the universe with justice ; to submit to him with sincerity of heart; to obey him on all occasions as managing every thing with infinite wis¬ dom; and, by cultivating such a temper of mind, to stifle all complaints and murmurs, and prepare the spirit to endure with composure the most distressing events. 44 Never say, 4 I have lost something,’ say rather, 4 I have given it back;’ 4 my son is dead, I have given him back ;’ 4 my wife is dead, I have given her back’ — and so with your property and every thing else. 4 But I have been deprived of it,’ say you, 4 by a wicked man.’ What then ? he is only the in¬ strument in the hands of God, why should you com¬ plain if he should require that back again which he was pleased to lend you ? As long as he grants you the use of it, it is your duty to take care of it, as the property of another, just as a traveller would do at an inn.” 44 You ought not,” said Epictetus again, “ to wish that events should happen according to your pleasure; but it should be your pleasure that they happen as they actually do. Recollect,” he adds, 44 that you are an actor, and are to play your 428 part in the drama, as the master of the scenes chooses to appoint. If he appoints you a short piece, act it: if he gives you a long piece, act it: remain upon the stage just as long as he pleases; appear there a noble or a beggar^ as he sees fit. It is yours to sustain with propriety the character appointed, but to de¬ termine what that character shall be, belongs to another : by frequent meditation familiarize yourself with death and the evils that appear most intolerable: never conceive any thing base, and indulge no de¬ sires to excess.” Epictetus shows, in numberless instances, how man ought to act; he enjoins him to be humble, to con¬ ceal his good resolutions, especially when first form¬ ed, and to execute them in secret, and assures him, that nothing can spoil them so much as publicity. He reiterates again and again, that man’s main study and desire should be to know the will of God, and to obey it. v Such, and so just, were the views of this great philosopher, respecting the extent of human obliga¬ tion: happy would it have been for him had he been equally well acquainted with human weakness. But with this clear perception of the duty of man, he erred egregiously as to the ability of man. <£ God,” said he, <£ has given to every man the means of fulfil¬ ling his obligations; these means are always in our power: happiness must be sought for, only from things within our power, which are given by God for the very purpose. We must examine what there is at our own disposal. Property, life, and reputa¬ tion, are not in our power, and do not lead to God: 429 but the intellect cannot be forced to believe what it knows to be false, nor can the will be forced to love that which it knows will make it unhappy ; these two powers, then, are completely free, and by these alone we can attain to the perfection of our nature; by these we may know God, love, obey, and please him : by these we may subdue every vice, acquire every virtue, and render ourselves holy and fit companions for the Deity.” Th ese proud sentiments led him into other errors; as for instance, that the soul is a part of the divine essence; that pain and death are not evils; that suicide is lawful, and may be con¬ sidered, in cases of emergency, as a compliance with the call of God to leave this world, &c. II. Montaigne, born in a Christian country, made a profession of the Catholic Religion; in this- there was nothing remarkable: but as he determined to form a moral system on rational principles, without the lights of the Christian faith, it is a peculiarity which marks his speculations from the first, that he views man as entirely destitute of divine revelation. He proceeds to involve every thing in such universal and unmingled scepticism, as to doubt of his very doubts; his restless uncertainty returns back upon itself in a perpetual circle ; he shows himself equally hostile to those who say, that every thing is uncer¬ tain, and to those who affirm that some things are certain, for he would assert nothing positively. The essence of his opinions consists in a doubting that doubts of its own existence, and an ignorance that is ignorant even of itself. He expresses noth- 430 ing in positive terms; for to say that he doubted, would betray his main principle, by rendering it cer¬ tain at least that he doubted. As a formal assertion would be contrary to his professions, he is reduced to the necessity of explaining himself by interrogations: for instance, to avoid the assertion, I do not know, he says, How can I know ? He takes this phrase for his motto, placed under a pair of scales held by opposite weights in perfect equilibrium. In one word, he was a pure Pyrrhonist. All his discourses, all his Essays go upon this principle; and it is the only point which he pretends to have settled. He insensibly unsettles every thing that is considered most certain in society, not to establish the contrary, (for certainty is the only thing he cannot endure,) but merely to show, that appearances being equal on both sides, an unwavering belief is an impossibility. In this temper, he ridicules all attempts at cer¬ tainty in any thing; he opposes, for example, those persons who think of providing an effective remedy for law-suits, by the multiplicity and justice of the laws, as if they could cut up by the root those doubts which are the causes of litigation, as if they could form barriers which could stem the torrent of uncer¬ tainty and quell conjecture ! In reference to this he says, It would be as well to submit the decision of a cause to the frst person that happens to pass by as to a bench of judges. He seems perfectly un¬ ambitious of changing the established order of things; he is far from pretending that his opinion is better than that of any one else, but believes that all are bad. He only aims to prove the uncertainty of 431 received opinions; he maintains that the total ab¬ rogation of all law would do far more to lessen the number of disputes, than that huge mass of existing statutes, which, it seems to him, only serves to mul¬ tiply them; for difficulties increase in proportion as they are examined, and obscurities become more ob¬ scure by comments. The best method, he tells us, of understanding a discourse, is not to examine it, but to take it as it appears at first blush : for as soon as we begin to study it, its meaning will become ob¬ scure. On this plan, he decides at hazard on human ac¬ tions and the events of history, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another; he adopts, without hesi¬ tation, the first views of things, not keeping his thoughts within bounds, by the restraints of reason, which, according to him, is a very unsafe guide. Delighted with exhibiting, in his own person, the contradictions that exist in the mind of a free-thinker, it is all one to him whether he is successful or not in argument, since either case illustrates the weakness of human opinion; so that his universal scepticism has the advantage of being fortified equally by victory and defeat. From this position, fluctuating and un¬ settled as it is, he attacks, with resistless intrepidity, the heretics of his day, on their pretensions to be the only true interpreters of Scripture, and from this po¬ sition he explodes the horrid impiety of those who say that there is no God. He assails the Atheists particularly, in his apology for Raimonde de Sebonde, and asks them, abandoned as they voluntarily are to the light of nature, by rejecting all Revelation, by 432 what authority they pretend to judge of the Supreme Being, who, by the very definition of such a Being, must be infinite — they who do not really know the most insignificant object in nature! He asks them on what principles they take their stand, and presses for a reply. He examines all the arguments they can produce, and with an acuteness, for which he is remarkable, shows the weakness of such as they es¬ teem the clearest and most indubitable. He asks whether the soul can really know any thing? whether it can know itself? whether it is a substance or an accident? body or spirit? and what each of these existences is? and whether there is not something different from both of them? whether the soul can know its own body? whether it knows what matter is? whether it knows how it can reason if it be mat¬ ter? and how it can be united to a body, and feel what that suffers, if it be spiritual? When did the soul begin to exist? at tbe same time as the body or before ? will it perish with the body or not? does it never deceive itself? does it know when it mistakes, since the essence of a mistake consists in forgetful¬ ness? Again, he asks whether animals reason, think, or converse? who can decide what is the nature of time , space , extension , motion , unity ; things by which we are surrounded, and yet utterly inexplicable: what is health , sickness , deaths life , good and evil , justice , sin, terms which are constantly on our lips? Are there any principles of truth, and are those we believe, and which we call axioms or common notions , conformable to essential truth? Since we know only by Revelation that a Being perfectly good has given 4 S3 true principles of knowledge, having created us to know the truth, — who can tell, apart from this illu¬ mination, whether being the offspring of chance, our notions are simply uncertain, or whether created by a malevolent being, he has given us false notions in order to lead us astray? Thus he shows that God and truth are inseparable, and that according as the former does or does not exist, is faithful or decep¬ tive*, so must the latter be. Who can tell whether that common sense , which is generally taken as the touchstone of truth, was designed for this purpose by him who bestowed it? who can tell what is truth? and how can we be certain of possessing it, without knowing it? who indeed can tell what Being is, a term too general to be defined, since we must make use of it in attempting to explain it: when we say that it is such and such a thing? Now if we do not know what the soul is, or body , time , space , motion , truth , good , nor even beings nor can explain our ideas of them, how can we be certain that these ideas are uniform in all men? we have no other mark, but an uniformity in consequences, and this is not a con¬ stant sign of uniformity in principles, for these may be very different, and conduct nevertheless to the same conclusions : every one is aware that truth is often educed from falsehood. Lastly, Montaigne minutely examines thesciences: geometry for example; the uncertainty of which he attempts to show, in its axioms and undefined terms, such as extension and motion ; he points out in num¬ berless instances the defects of natural philosophy and medicine, and treats in the same manner, history, T 23 434 politics, morals, and jurisprudence. So that without * revelation, we must believe, according to him, that life is only a dream, from which we shall awake at death, and that as long as it lasts, we have actually as little perception of the principles of truth, as in the state we term sleep. In this manner,, he un¬ sparingly and rudely scrutinizes the qualifications of reason, bereft of supernatural aid: and having ren¬ dered it doubtful whether reason is itself reasonable, or whether brutes do not possess it either in a great¬ er or less degree than man, he brings it down from the proud station it assumed, and places it as by fa¬ vour, on a level with brutes, without allowing it to rise higher, till it has been taught by its Creator to what rank it really belongs: and more than this, he threatens, in case it murmurs, to reduce it still lower, which seemed to him no hard task. Instead of permitting it to indulge in airs of foolish vanity, he allows it merely to make an acknowledgment of its weakness. We are rejoiced to witness, in this author, the defeat of proud reason by its own weapons, and the punishment of that horrible discord between man and man, which has reduced the human race, from that union w it h God which they vainly strive to attain by the maxims of their feeble reason, to the condition of brutes: and we should have felt a cordial esteem for the minister of such signal retribution, if, as an humble disciple of the Church, and in accordance with the rules of morality, after so usefully humbling men, he had persuaded them not to provoke, by fresh transgres¬ sions, that Being who alone could deliver them from 435 those sins which without his aid they could not have known. But, on the contrary, the tone of his morals is perfectly Pagan. Let us give a sketch of it. Proceeding on this principle, that to mere hufnan reason every thing is uncertain, and taking into the account the length of time we may seek for truth and happiness, without making any progress towards tranquillity, he comes to the conclusion, that we should dismiss all care about these subjects, and without perplexing ourselves, lightly skim over them, for fear of being lost, by pressing too hard; that we should assume those views to be true and just which appear to be so, because if we attempt to grasp such volatile substances, they slip between our fingers and leave our hands empty. He would follow the evidence of the senses and common notions, because it would be doing violence to the mind to reject them; and since we are igno¬ rant of the truth, we could not tell whether we should gain any thing if we disbelieved them. He would also shun pain and death, because im¬ pelled by an instinct which he would not resist, for a similar reason. But he would not give full liberty to the natural emotions of fear, and dares not conclude that they are really caused by great evils, because there are emotions of pleasure which we accuse of beino- wrong; though nature, he says, asserts the con¬ trary. (( Thus there is nothing extravagant,” he goes on to say, “ in my conduct: I act like other people; and every thing which they do, under the foolish notion that they are following real good, I 436 do on another principle, which is, that the proba¬ bilities being the same on both sides, example and utility turn the scale.” He would follow the man¬ ners of his country, because they have the authority of custom: he mounts his horse, because his horse suffers him, but without knowing whether he has a right to do it; on the contrary, he does not pretend to determine whether the animal has not an ecjual right to make use of his services. He would put some restraint upon his passions, in order to avoid certain vices: for instance, he would preserve conju¬ gal fidelity on account of the pain which would ensue on its violation: utility and tranquillity being the constant rules of his actions. He disowns all ac¬ quaintance with that stoical virtue which his ima¬ gination depicted with a haughty mien, a savage countenance, its hair stiff and untrimmed, its brow wrinkled and covered with sweat, abhorring the sight of man, and seated in sullen silence, and in a pain¬ ful posture, upon the edge of a rock: a bugbear, says Montaigne, fit to frighten children; a trou¬ bled being that roams about after rest, but never finds it. The virtue he loved was simple, sociable, gay, sprightly, and playful: pursuing whatever took its fancy, it sported with accidents good or bad : it gently reposed on the lap of a tranquil indolence, while it showed mankind that the rest they were so anxiously seeking, was to be found only there ; and that, (to use one of his own expressions,) ignorance and incuriousness are two charming pillows for a sound head. 437 III. On reading Montaigne, and comparing him with Epictetus, we cannot resist the impression that certainly they were the two ablest defenders of the two most celebrated sects in the heathen world, and the only ones, among men destitute of the light of Revelation, that were in any degree consistent. In fact, what could men do, in the absence of Revelation, but follow one or other of these two systems? The first maintained there is a God, therefore he created man and must have made him for himself: he has created him such as he ought to be, in order to become just and happy. Man, therefore, can arrive at a knowledge of the truth, and has the capacity to rise to God the supreme good. The second system maintained, man cannot rise to God; his inclinations contradict the law of God, he is impelled to seek for happiness in visible objects, even the most degrading. Every thing, then, is uncertain, even the true good; and thus it seems we are reduced to be without any fixed standard of morals, or certainty in the sciences. It is very gratifying to observe, in these different trains of reasoning, that both parties caught a glimpse of the truth they attempted to discover. It is pleasing to observe in nature the desire she manifests to represent God in all his works, and in which, since they are his image, we cannot fail to discern some traces of him; but how much more interesting is it to observe in intelligent beings, the efforts they make to arrive at truth, and to notice how far they have been successful and where they have failed ! This is indeed the chief advantage to be derived from the speculations before us. 438 The source of the errors 'of Epictetus and the Stoics on the one hand, and of Montaigne and the Epicureans on the other, appears to consist, in not being aware that the present state of man differs from that of his creation. The one discerned some traces of his primitive grandeur, but being ignorant of his corruption, looked upon his nature as uninjured and in no need of a renovator, and thus was led to the very summit of pride. The others recognized his present misery, but ignorant of his primitive dignity, concluded that his nature was necessarily weak and beyond recovery; and so despaired of ever arriving at real good, and plunged themselves into extreme licentiousness. These two states of human nature, which must be known together, in order to appre¬ hend the whole truth, if they are known apart, ne¬ cessarily subject the mind to one of these two vices, pride or indolence; a thraldom which it is impossible for men to escape before they are in a state of grace : for if their disordered state does not issue in licen¬ tiousness, it displays itself by vanity, and they are al¬ ways slaves to the malignant passions to which, as Saint Augustine remarks, men sacrifice in various forms. The consequence of this imperfect knowledge of human nature has been, that those who knew the weakness of man, but not his obligations, degraded themselves by licentiousness; others who knew his obligations, but not his weakness, were puffed up with pride. It might perhaps be supposed, that by blending these two sects, a perfect system of morals might be formed; but instead of harmony, 439 the result of such an attempt would only be war and universal destruction; while one side dogmatised, and the other doubted; while one maintained the gran¬ deur of man, and the other exposed his weakness, union and conciliation would be impossible: they could neither stand alone on account of their defects, nor unite on account of their contradictions. IV. But these systems must be broken in pieces and destroyed, to make way for revealed truth. This it is which harmonizes the greatest contrarieties by an art which may well be called divine. Com¬ bining all that is true, dissipating all that is false, it determines with celestial wisdom, the point of union for principles that were totally irreconcilable in the schools of Philosophy. Nor is it difficult to find out the reason of this. The wise men of the world placed their contrarieties in the same subject ; it was the same nature to which one sect attributed strength, and another weakness, but revelation instructs us to place the strength and the weakness in different sub¬ jects; all the infirmity is our own, all the power is God’s. This, this, is the unthought-of and aston¬ ishing union, that none but God could reveal, be¬ cause none but God could produce it, being the ima^e and effect of the ineffable union of the two o natures in the one person of the God-man. It is thus that philosophy insensibly leads us to Theology, into which, indeed, we can scarcely avoid entering, whatever truth may be our immediate ob¬ ject; since it is the centre of all truths. And in the instance before us, it so admirably combines the 440 distinguishing tenets of two opposite systems, that we do not see how the partizans of either can refuse sub¬ mitting to its guidance. If they delight in contem¬ plating the power of man and the grandeur of his destiny, what can they imagine which will not infin¬ itely fall short of the promises of the gospel, which bestows blessings worthy of nothing less than the death of a God. And if they are disposed to con¬ template the weakness of human nature, their utmost conceptions can never equal the real impotence of sin, of which that death is the remedy. Each party will here find more than they could desire, and, above all, a perfect union of truths which neither could unite in a degree infinitely inferior. V. Christians in general have little occasion for the lessons of Philosophy. But Epictetus has an admirable talent for disquieting those who seek re¬ pose in external things; he compels them to acknow¬ ledge that they are blind and miserable slaves, and that they can escape the error and misery they so much dread, only by yielding themselves without re¬ serve to God. Montaigne again is incomparable for confoundingthe prideof thoseunbelievers who pretend that they possess real rectitude; and also for unde¬ ceiving those who are wedded to their own opinions, and who, without admitting the existence and per¬ fections of the Deity, expect to find incontrovertible truths in science. He so thoroughly convicts rea¬ son of its ignorance and its errors, that it will scarce¬ ly be disposed to reject mysteries on account of their supposed contradictions; its courage will be so 441 daunted, that it will be very far from wishing to judge whether mysteries are possible — a point that men in general are too fond of agitating. But Epic¬ tetus, while he disturbs our indolence, excites our pride, and will be injurious to those who are not per¬ suaded that real rectitude can be produced only by the Christian faith. On the other hand, Montaigne is absolutely pernicious to those who are inclined to impiety and vicious practices. For this reason, his statements ought to be guarded with great care and discretion, in reference to the situation and morals of those who read them. But the lessons of these two philosophers united, would perhaps be useful, because one would correct the faults of the other. It is true they could not communicate virtue, but they might render vice painful. Man would find himself acted upon by two opposite forces, of which, while one crushed his pride, the other would disturb his indolence, and he would be unable, by the re¬ sources of his own reason merely, to enjoy repose in either of these vices, or to escape altogether from both. 442 CHAPTER XXXIII. < * + ON THE CONDITION OF THE GREAT. I. To assist you in forming right views of your condition, let me suppose the following case: — The inhabitants of a certain island had lost their king, but while seeking for him, met a stranger lately shipwrecked on their coast, who in features and figure so strongly resembled their sovereign, that he was taken for him, and acknowledged as such by the whole nation. At first he knew not how to act; but, at last, resolved to make the best of his good fortune, consented to receive their hom¬ age, and assumed the title of king. Yet, as it was impossible for him to forget his former condition, he could not help reflecting, at the very time he was receiving the homage of the people, that he was not the king they had been seeking, and that the king¬ dom was not originally his own. There were, there¬ fore, two trains of thought constantly in his mind; one, by which he acted as king, and another by which he recognized his real state, and that it was only accident that placed him where he then was: the latter train he would keep in his own breast, while he would openly avow the former. He would re¬ gulate his conduct in society by the first, but bis opinion respecting himself by the latter. Now do not imagine that the possession of the riches you are heir to, is less fortuitous than the 443 election of this man to the throne. You had no personal claim, no natural right, any more than he; and it is by an infinite number of chances, not only that you are the son of a nobleman, but even that you exist. Your birth depended on a marriage, or rather on the marriages of all your ancestors. But on what did these marriages depend? On an acci¬ dental visit, on some trifling chat, or a thousand un¬ designed occurrences. You received your wealth, say you, from your ancestors? But were there not a thousand chances, whether your ancestors would ever obtain it, or that you would preserve it. A thousand other persons, of equal ability, either might not have acquired it, or have lost it after its acquisi¬ tion. You imagine that by the natural course of things it has passed from your ancestors to your¬ self. But this is false. The social arrangements by which it has been so conveyed, were founded simply on the will of those who made the laws, which indeed they might make for very good rea¬ sons, but certainly not because you had a natural right to the property. If they had thought fit to ordain that it should return to the state after the death of your forefathers, you would have had no right to complain. Thus all the title by which you possess your property, is not a title founded on na¬ ture, but on the arbitrary institutions of men. If, when making the laws, their fancy had taken a dif¬ ferent turn, you would have been poor; and had it not been, as I said before, for an accidental visit, or some occurrence equally fortuitous, you would never have been born in that high station, which, as the 444 law is established, puts you in possession of your property. I do not mean to say, that this wealth does not lawfully belong to you, and that another peison has a right to seize it; lor God, who is its real proprie¬ tor, has allowed civil society to make laws for pro¬ perty, and when the laws are established, it is un just to violate them. This makes some slight dif¬ ference between yourself and the man we have been speaking of, who owed his elevation only to the mistake of the people, an elevation God would not have authorized, but would have obliged him to re¬ nounce, while he does authorize the tenure of your property. But in one point you peifectly agree with him, namely, that your right is not founded on any personal qualification or merit, ^ our soul and body would, in themselves, have equally suited the rank of a cobbler or a duke; there is no natural con¬ nection which should attach them to one condition more than to another. But what are we to infer from this? That you ought, like the man we have been speaking of, to have a double train of thought; and if you assume before men the honours allotted to your rank, you ought less openly, but more tiuly, to acknowledge that naturally you are in no respect above them. If the view of your adventitious dis¬ tinctions elevates you, in your own apprehension, above the multitude, the consideration of the quali¬ ties common to you and to them, should humble you, and produce a sense of that perfect equality with all mankind which is your natural state. The people who admire you probably are not 44 5 aware of this. They imagine that there is real greatness in nobility, and look up to men in higher stations as to beings of a superior nature. I do not say you are obliged to undeceive them; but do not disgrace your elevation by treating them with insolence, and especially do not so far forget your¬ self as to suppose that you are essentially of a higher order than the meanest among them. What would you say of the man who was made king by the mis¬ take of the people, if he so completely forgot his natural condition, as to imagine that he deserved the kingdom, or that it belonged to him by right? You would only he amazed at his impertinence and folly. But is there less folly and less impertinence in men of rank, who live in utter forgetfulness of their natural state ? How important are right views on this subject ! For all the extravagancies, the violence, and the haughtiness of the great, proceed only from igno¬ rance of what they really are; it would be hardly possible, that if they considered themselves as per¬ sonally on an equality with the rest of mankind, and were fully persuaded that nothing in themselves de¬ served the advantages God had bestowed upon them above others, they should treat those below them with insolence. To do this they must forget them¬ selves, and believe, that they possess some intrinsic superiority, which is the very illusion I have been attempting to expose. II. It is highly desirable you should know what is due to you, that you may not require more from 446 men than is your right; for this would be palpably unjust, though very common among persons of your rank, for want of understanding the nature of their rights. There are in the world two kinds of greatness — ar¬ tificial greatness and natural greatness. Artificial greatness depends on the will of men who believe, and reasonably too, that certain ranks should be ho¬ noured, and forms of respect attached to them. High station and nobility are of this kind. In one country nobles are honoured, in another commoners ; in one, the eldest sons ; in another, the younger. Why is this? simply because men have so deter¬ mined it. Such things are matters of perfect indif¬ ference before they are established, but after their establishment it would be unjust to disturb them. Natural greatness is that which is independent of human opinion, because it consists in qualities of mind and body, which render their possessors essen¬ tially more valuable, as science, intelligence, genius, virtue, health, and strength. There is something due to each kind of greatness, hut as they are of different natures, we owe them different regards. To artificial greatness, we owe the artificial forms of respect, that is, certain external ceremonies, which should be accompanied, as we have shown, with an outward acknowledgment of the propriety of this arrangement, though we are not obliged to imagine there is any real personal quality deserving respect in the persons we thus honour. We kneel for instance, in the presence of a king : we must not offer to sit down in the chamber of a prince. It 447 would be folly and absurdity to refuse these marks of respect. But as for the respect which consists in esteem, it is due only to natural greatness; and, on the other hand, qualities inconsistent with natural greatness, merit our contempt and dislike. It is not necessary that because you are a duke, I should esteem you; but it is necessary that I should salute you. If you were a duke, and also a man of worth, I should pay you the respect due to both these kinds of greatness. I should not refuse the civilities that belong to you as duke; nor the esteem you deserve as a man of worth. But if you were a duke without being a man of worth, I would still do you justice; for while I rendered you the external homage attached by common consent to your rank, I should not fail to hold you in that contempt which the meanness of your character would deserve — such would be the just distribution of my respect. And injustice in reference to these subjects, consists in demanding personal esteem for artificial greatness, or the artificial forms of respect for natural greatness. Mr. B. is a better mathema¬ tician than myself, and for this reason, he would take precedence of me in company; I venture to say he is egregiously mistaken. A knowledge of geo¬ metry is a natural greatness ; it demands a superior degree of admiration, but society has not attached to it any superior external marks of respect. I may therefore take the precedence in society, and still esteem Mr. B. my superior as a mathematician. In the same manner, if because you are a duke and 448 a peer of the realm, you are not content that I am uncovered in your presence, but demand my esteem, I must beg you to show me the qualities which de¬ serve it. Do that, and you gain your wish, for it would be unjust to withhold it ; but if you cannot do that, your demand is unjust, and be assured I would never comply with it, were you the great¬ est potentate on earth. 3. I wish that you may know your true condi¬ tion, for it is that, which more than any thing else, persons of your station in life are ignorant of. What then, in your opinion, is it to be a person of rank? It is to be the master of many objects cov¬ eted by men, and thus to have the power of satisfy¬ ing the wants and desires of numbers. These wants and desires draw them round you, and ensure their attendance; otherwise they would scarcely look at you: but they hope, by their respect and officious¬ ness, to obtain some share of the good things they desire, and which they see are at your disposal. God is surrounded by beings full of charity, who seek from him the blessings of charity which are at his disposal; so that he may properly be styled the king of charity. In like manner you are surrounded by a small number of persons, over whom you reign in your own style. These persons are full of worldly de¬ sires. They ask of you the good things of this world. The love of worldly things attaches them to you. You are properly speaking, a king of worldly desires. Your kingdom is small in extent, 449 but as to the nature of your dominion, you are on a level with the greatest monarchs. They are like you, kings of worldly desires. These desires con¬ stitute their power, or rather the possession of things which are the objects of such desires. But being acquainted with your natural condition, use the instruments appropriate to it, and do not pretend to reign by any other way than that by which you were made king. It is not your own strength or natural power that has drawn around you so many persons. Do not presume, then, to rule them by force, nor treat them with harshness. Satisfy their just desires — relieve their necessities — make it your delight to do good — promote their advancement as far as lies in your power, and you will be a just prince of this world. But what I have just said, leads you but a little way; if you stop here, you will not secure your future felicity, though you will at least perish like an hon¬ ourable man, as far as relates to this world. There are people who take the road to hell, through avarice, brutality, violence, outrage, and blasphemy. The conduct I have advised you to pursue is undoubtedly more respectable; but it is enormous folly to expose oneself to damnation in any way: for this reason I entreat you not to stop here. You must despise worldly desires, and that kingdom to which they be¬ long, and aspire after the kingdom of charity, where all the subjects breathe only charity, and seek only the blessings of charity. Others, besides myself, will tell you what path to take; it is enough for me 450 to have deterred you from entering on those licen¬ tious courses, in which I see many persons of rank indulge themselves, for want of understanding their own nature. 451 NOTE REFERRED TO IN PAGE 225. Pascal alludes to the miracle said to have been wrought on the discovery, by Queen Helena, of the crosses of the Saviour and the two malefactors. The account may be found in Sulpitius Severus, Hist. Sacr. lib. II. cap. 34. Ejusdem reginse beneficio crux Domini turn reperta, &c. Helena, he informs us, hav¬ ing, by the assistance of a large body of soldiers and others, dis¬ covered three crosses, was much perplexed by what means to distinguish the cross of the Saviour from the other two. At last the expedient was adopted of placing a person, recently deceased, on each of them ; no effect was produced by two, but on touch¬ ing the third, the man was instantly restored to life, which in the opinion of all the beholders, decided the point. — Socrates, Hist. Ecc. lib. I. 17. and Theodoret, lib. I. 18. mention that a wo¬ man of rank was recovered from a dangerous illness by the ap¬ plication of the cross, but say nothing respecting the other mir¬ acle. Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. lib. II. cap. 1. mentions both mir¬ acles, and also that the inscription belonging to the cross was found, though not attached to it. Eusebius is totally silent on the subject. FINIS. Printed by W. Collins & Co. Glasgow. , - .. 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