of the Messiah, and the truth of the Messiah was recognised by the
religion of the Jews which was the figure of it.
Among the Jews the truth was only prefigured. In heaven it is
revealed.
In the Church it is hidden, yet recognised by its correspondence with
the type.
The type was made according to the truth, and the truth is recognised
according to the type.
Saint Paul says himself that people would forbid to marry, and he
himself speaks to the Corinthians, in a way which is a trap. For if
a prophet had said the one, and Saint Paul had afterwards said the
other, he would have been accused.
_Typical._--Make all things like unto the pattern which was showed
thee in the mount. On which Saint Paul says that the Jews shadowed
forth heavenly things.
_Typical._ The key of the cipher. _Veri adoratores. Ecce agnus Dei
qui tollit peccata mundi._
_That the law was typical. Types._--The letter kills. All happened in
a figure. This is the cipher which Saint Paul gives us. Christ must
suffer. An humiliated God. Circumcision of the heart, a true fast, a
true sacrifice, a true temple. The prophets indicated that all these
must be spiritual.
Not the meat which perishes, but that which perishes not.
You shall be free indeed. Then the former liberty was only a type of
liberty.
I am the true bread from heaven.
_Particular types._-- A double law, double tables of the law, a
double temple, a double captivity.
The Synagogue did not perish because it was a type, but because it
was no more than a type it fell into servitude. The type subsisted
till the reality came, in order that the Church should be always
visible, either in the representation which promised it, or in the
substance.
In the time of the Messiah the people were divided. Those that were
spiritual embraced the Messiah, the carnal remained to serve as
witnesses of him.
_OF THE TRUE RELIGION AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS._
_For Port Royal. The Beginning, after having explained the
incomprehensibility._--Since the greatness and the vileness of man
are so evident, it is necessary that the true religion should declare
both that there is in man some great principle of greatness, and a
great principle of vileness.
It must therefore explain these astonishing contradictions.
In order to make man happy, it must show him that there is a God;
that we ought to love him; that our true happiness is to be in him,
our sole evil to be separated from him; it must recognise that we
are full of darkness which hinders us from knowing and loving him;
and that thus, as our duties oblige us to love God, and our lusts
turn us from him, we are full of injustice. It must explain to us
our opposition to God and to our own good; it must teach us the
remedies for these infirmities, and the means of obtaining them. We
must therefore examine all the religions of the world from this point
of view, and see if there be any other than the Christian which is
sufficient for this end.
Shall it be that of the philosophers, who proposed as the only good
the good which is in ourselves? Is this the true good? Have they
found a remedy for our evils? Is the pride of man cured by equalling
him with God? Have those who would level us to the brutes, or the
Mahomedans who present us with pleasures of the world as the sole
good, even in eternity, found any remedy for our lusts? What religion
then will teach us to cure our pride and our lust? What religion will
teach us our good, our duty, the infirmity which turns us from it,
the cause of this infirmity, the remedies which can cure it, and the
means of obtaining those remedies? All other religions have failed,
let us see what the wisdom of God can do.
"Look neither for truth," she says, "nor consolation from men. I am
she who framed you, and who alone can teach you what you are. But
you are not now in the state in which I framed you. I created man
holy, innocent, perfect; I filled him with light and intelligence;
I communicated to him my glory and my wondrous acts. The eye of man
beheld then the majesty of God; he was not then in the darkness which
blinds him, nor subject to death and the miseries which afflict him.
But he could not bear so great a glory without falling into pride.
He would make himself his own centre, and independent of my aid. He
withdrew himself from my rule; and when he made himself equal to me
by the desire of finding his happiness in himself, I gave him over to
self. Then setting in revolt the creatures that were subject to him,
I made them his enemies; so that man is now become like the beasts,
and removed from me until there scarce remains to him a confused ray
of his Creator, so far has all his knowledge become extinguished or
disturbed. His senses, never the servants, and often the masters of
reason, have carried him astray in pursuit of pleasure. All creatures
either torment or tempt him; and have dominion over him, either as
they subdue him by their strength, or as they melt him by their
charms, a tyranny more terrible and more imperious.
"Such is the present state of man. There remains to him some feeble
instinct of the happiness of his primitive nature, and he is plunged
in the misery of his blindness and his lusts, which have become his
second nature.
"From this principle which I have here laid open to you, you may
discern the cause of those contradictions which, while they astonish
all men, have divided them among such various opinions. Now mark all
the movements of greatness and glory which the trials of so many
miseries are unable to stifle, and see if the cause of them must not
be in another nature...."
_For Port Royal to-morrow. Prosopopæa._--"It is in vain, O men, that
you seek from yourselves the remedy for your miseries. All your
light can only enable you to know that not in yourselves will you
find truth or good. The Philosophers promised you these, but gave
them not. They neither apprehend what is your true good nor what
is....
"How could they then apply remedies to your diseases, since they did
not even know them? Your chief maladies are pride, which alienates
you from God, and lust, which binds you down to earth; and they do
nought else but nourish one or the other of these disorders. If they
presented God as your end it was only done to gratify your pride; by
making you think that you are by nature like him and conformed to
him. Those who saw the extravagance of such an assertion did but set
you on an opposite precipice, by tempting you to believe that your
nature was of a piece with that of the beasts, and by inclining you
to seek your good in the lusts which are shared by brutes. This is
not the way to cure you of your unrighteousness, which these sages
never knew. I alone can teach you who you are....
"If you are united to God it is by grace, not by nature.
"If you are abased it is by penitence, not by nature. So this twofold
capacity....
"You are not in the state wherein you were created.
"These two states being presented to you, you cannot but recognise
them.
"Follow your own movements, observe yourselves, and see if you do not
trace the lively characters of these two natures.
"Could so many contradictions be found in a subject that was simple?"
I do not mean that you should submit your belief to me without
reason, neither do I aim at your subjection by tyranny. I do not
aim at giving you a reason for everything. And to reconcile these
contradictions, I wish to make you see by convincing proofs, those
divine tokens in me, which will assure you who I am and will verify
my authority by wonders and proofs which you cannot reject; so that
you may then have a reasonable belief in what I teach you, when you
find no other ground for refusing it, but that you cannot know of
yourselves whether it is true or not.
The true nature of man, his true good, true virtue and true religion
are things of which the knowledge is inseparable.
_After having understood the whole nature of man._--That a religion
may be true, it must show knowledge of our nature. It must know its
greatness and meanness, and the cause of both. What religion but the
Christian has shown this knowledge?
The true religion teaches our duties; our weaknesses, pride and lust;
and the remedies, humility and mortification.
The true religion must teach greatness and misery; must lead to the
esteem and despising of self; to love and to hate.
The note of true religion must be that it obliges man to love his
God. This is very right, and yet no other religion than ours has thus
commanded; ours has done so. It must also be cognizant of man's lust
and weakness, ours is so. It must have applied remedies for these
defects; one is prayer. No other religion has asked of God the power
to love and obey him.
If there be one only origin of all things, there must be one only
end of all things; all by him, all for him. The true religion then
must teach us to adore him only, and to love him only. But since we
find ourselves unable to adore what we know not, or to love aught but
ourselves, the same religion which instructs us in these duties must
instruct us also of this inability, and teach us also the remedies
for it. It teaches us that by one man all was lost, and the bond
broken between God and us, and that by one man the bond has been
repaired.
We are born so contrary to this love of God, and it is so necessary
that we must be born sinful, or God would be unjust.
Every religion is false which as to its faith does not adore one God
as origin of all things, and as to its morals does not love one sole
God as the object of all things.
In every religion we must be sincere, true heathens, true Jews, true
Christians.
_THE EXCELLENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION._
When I see the blindness and the misery of man, when I survey the
whole dumb Universe, and man without light, left to himself, and
lost, as it were, in this corner of the Universe, not knowing who
has placed him here, what he has come to do, what will become of
him when he dies, and incapable of any knowledge whatever, I fall
into terror like that of a man who, having been carried in his sleep
to an island desert and terrible, should awake ignorant of his
whereabouts and with no means of escape; and thereupon I wonder how
those in so miserable a state do not fall into despair. I see other
persons around me, of like nature, I ask them if they are better
informed than I am, and they say they are not; and thereupon these
miserable wanderers, having looked around them, and seen some objects
pleasing to them, have given and attached themselves to these. As
for me, I cannot attach myself to them, and considering how strongly
appearances show that there is something else than what is visible
to me, I have sought to discover whether this God have not left some
impress of himself.
I see many contrary religions, and consequently all false but one.
Each wishes to be believed on its own authority, and menaces the
unbeliever, but I do not therefore believe them. Every one can say
the same, and every one can call himself a prophet. But I see the
Christian religion fulfilling prophecy, and that is what every one
can not do.
Without this divine knowledge what could men do but either uplift
themselves by that inward conviction of their past greatness
still remaining to them, or be cast down in view of their present
infirmity? For, not seeing the whole truth, they could not attain
to perfect virtue. Some considering nature as incorrupt, others as
incurable, they could not escape either pride or idleness, the two
sources of all vice; since they cannot but either abandon themselves
to it by cowardice, or escape it by pride. For if they were aware
of the excellency of man, they were ignorant of his corruption, so
that they very easily avoided idleness, but only to fall into pride.
And if they recognized the infirmity of nature, they knew not its
dignity, so that though they might easily avoid presumption, it was
only to plunge into despair.
Thence come the various sects of the Stoics and Epicureans, the
Dogmatists, Academicians, etc. The Christian religion alone has
been able to cure these two distempers, not so as to drive out the
one by the other according to the wisdom of the world, but so as to
expel them both by the simplicity of the Gospel. For it teaches the
righteous that it lifts them even to a participation of the divine
nature; that in this exalted state they still bear within them the
fountain of all corruption, which renders them during their whole
life subject to error and misery, to death and sin; and at the same
time it proclaims to the most wicked that they can receive the grace
of their Redeemer. Thus making those tremble whom it justifies, and
consoling those whom it condemns, religion so justly tempers fear
with hope by means of that double capacity of grace and of sin which
is common to all, that it abases infinitely more than reason alone,
yet without despair; and exalts infinitely higher than natural pride,
yet without puffing up: hereby proving that alone being exempt
from error and vice, it alone has the office of instructing and of
reforming men.
Who then can withhold credence and adoration to so divine a light?
For it is clearer than day that we feel within ourselves indelible
characters of goodness; and it is equally true that we experience
every hour the effects of our deplorable condition. This chaos then,
this monstrous confusion, does but proclaim the truth of these two
states, with a voice so powerful that it cannot be resisted.
The Philosophers never prescribed feelings proper to these two
states.
They inspired motions of simple greatness, and that is not the state
of man.
They inspired motions of simple vileness, and that is not the state
of man.
There must be motions of abasement, yet not from nature, but from
penitence, not to rest in them, but to go onward to greatness. There
must be motions of greatness, not from merit, but from grace, and
after having passed through abasement.
This double nature of man is so evident, that there are those who
have imagined us to have two souls.
One single subject seemed to them incapable of so great and sudden
variations from unmeasured pride to an horrible dejection of spirit.
All these contradictions which seemed to have taken me further from
the knowledge of religion, are what most rapidly led me into truth.
Did we not know ourselves full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness,
misery and injustice, we were indeed blind. And if knowing this we
did not desire deliverance, what could be said of a man.... What then
can we feel but esteem for that Religion which is so well acquainted
with the defects of man, and desire for the truth of a religion which
promises remedies so precious.
The corruption of reason is shown by the number of differing and
extravagant customs; it was necessary that truth should come in order
that man should no longer live in himself.
_Incomprehensible._--Not all that is incomprehensible is therefore
non existent. Infinite number. An infinite space equal to a finite.
_It is incredible that God should unite himself to us._--This
consideration is drawn only from the view of our vileness. But if it
be sincere, follow it as far as I have done, and recognise that we
are in fact so vile as to make us by ourselves incapable of knowing
whether his mercy may not render us capable of him. For I would
know how this animal, who is aware of his weakness, has the right
to measure the mercy of God and set to it bounds suggested by his
fancy. He knows so little what God is that he does not even know
what himself is, and troubled with the view of his own state, boldly
declares that God cannot render man capable of communion with him.
But I would ask if God demands aught else from him than to know him
and to love him, and why, since man is by nature capable of love and
knowledge, he believes that God cannot make himself known and loved
by him. He certainly knows at least that he is, and that he loves
something. Therefore if he see anything in his darkness, and if
among the things of earth he find any subject of his love, why, if
God impart to him some ray of his essence, should he not be capable
of knowing and of loving him in the manner in which it shall please
him to communicate himself to us? There must be then an intolerable
arrogance in these sort of arguments, though they seem founded on
apparent humility, which is neither sincere nor reasonable, unless it
makes us confess that not knowing of ourselves what we are, we can
learn it from God alone.
For myself, I declare that so soon as the Christian religion reveals
the principle that human nature is corrupt and fallen from God, my
eyes are opened to see everywhere the characters of this truth: for
nature is such that she everywhere indicates, both within man and
without him, a God whom he has lost and a corrupt nature.
Whatever may be said, it must be conceded that the Christian religion
has something astonishing in it. Perhaps someone will say: "This
is because you were born in it." It may be: then I stiffen myself
against it by this very reason, for fear this prejudice should bias
me; but although I am born in it I cannot but find it so.
The whole course of things must have for its object the establishment
and the grandeur of Religion: that there should be implanted in men
sentiments conformable to its precepts, and in a word, that it
should be so completely the aim and the centre to which all things
tend, that whoever understands its principles can give an explanation
as of human nature in particular, so in general of the whole order of
the world.
Our religion is wise and foolish. Wise, because it is the most
learned, and the most founded on miracles, prophecies, etc. Foolish,
because it is not all this which causes us to belong to it; this
makes us indeed condemn those who are not of it, but is not the cause
of belief in those who are. It is the cross that makes them believe,
_ne evacuata sit crux_. And thus Saint Paul, who came with wisdom
and signs, says that he came neither with wisdom nor with signs, for
he came to convert. But those who come only to convince may say that
they come with wisdom and with signs.
That religion, great as she is in miracles, with holy and blameless
Fathers, learned and great witnesses, with martyrs and kings, as
David, and Isaiah, a prince of the blood; great as she is in science,
after having displayed all her miracles and all her wisdom, rejects
it all, and says she has neither wisdom nor signs, but only the cross
and foolishness.
For those, who by these signs and that wisdom have deserved your
belief, and who have proved to you their character, declare to you
that nothing of all this can change you, and render you capable of
knowing and loving God, but the power of the foolishness of the cross
without wisdom and signs, and not the signs without this power. Thus
our Religion is foolish when we consider the effective cause, wise
when we consider the wisdom which has prepared it.
How strange is Christianity! It enjoins man to acknowledge himself
vile, even abominable, and enjoins him to aspire to be like God.
Without such a counterpoise, this elevation would make him horribly
vain, or that vileness would make him terribly abject
Misery counsels despair, pride counsels presumption.
The incarnation shows man the greatness of his misery by the
greatness of the remedy of which he stood in need.
Not a vileness such as renders us incapable of good, nor a holiness
exempt from evil.
No doctrine is more suited to man than this; for it teaches him his
double capacity of receiving and losing grace, because of the double
peril to which he is always exposed, of despair and of pride.
No other religion has enjoined hate of self. No other religion
then can be pleasing to those who hate themselves, and who seek a
Being wholly to be loved. And these, if they had never heard of the
religion of an humiliated God, would embrace it at once.
No other has recognised that man is of all creatures the most
excellent. Some, having apprehended the reality of his excellence,
have blamed as mean and ungrateful the low opinion which men
naturally have of themselves, and others, well aware how real is this
vileness, have treated with haughty ridicule those sentiments of
greatness which are no less natural to man.
"Lift your eyes to God," say these, "see him in whose image you are,
who has made you to worship him. You can make yourselves like unto
him; wisdom will equal you to him if you will follow it." But others
say: "Bend your eyes to the earth, poor worm that you are, and look
upon the brutes your comrades." What then will man become? Will he
equal God or the brutes? What an awful gulf! What then shall we be?
Who does not see from all this that man has gone astray, that he has
fallen from his place, that he seeks it with disquiet, that he cannot
regain it? And who shall direct him, since the greatest men have not
availed?
What men could scarcely know by their greatest light, this Religion
has taught to babes.
Other religions, as those of heathendom, are more popular since they
consist only in externals, but they have no effect on the educated. A
purely intellectual religion would be more adapted to the educated,
but it would be of no use to the people. The Christian religion alone
is fitted for all, being composed of externals and internals. It
elevates the people to interior acts, it abases the proud to external
rites, and it is not complete without both, for the people must
understand the spirit which is in the letter, and the educated must
submit their spirit to the letter.
Philosophers have consecrated vices in attributing them to God
himself, Christians have consecrated virtues.
_OF ORIGINAL SIN._
There are two truths of faith equally sure: the one, that man in the
state of creation, or in that of grace, is raised above all nature,
is made like unto God and is a sharer in divinity; the other, that
in the state of corruption and sin, he has fallen from the higher
state and is made like unto the beasts. These two propositions are
equally firm and certain. The Scripture declares it plainly, as when
it says in certain places: _Deliciæ meæ, esse cum filiis hominum.
Effundam spiritum meum super omnem carnem. Dii estis, etc._; and when
it says in others: _Omnis caro fænum. Homo comparatus est jumentis
insipientibus, et similis factus est illis. Dixi in corde meo de
filiis hominum, ut probaret eos Deus et ostenderet similes esse
bestiis, etc._
The wicked, who abandon themselves blindly to their passions, without
the knowledge of God, and without taking the trouble to seek him,
themselves confirm this foundation of the faith which they attack,
that the nature of man is corrupt. And the Jews, who so obstinately
assail the Christian religion, again confirm that other foundation of
the same faith which they assail, namely, that Jesus Christ is the
true Messiah, who has come to redeem men, and deliver them from the
corruption and misery in which they were, as much by the condition
in which we see them at this day, and which was foretold by the
prophets, as by these same prophecies which they possess and keep so
inviolably as the tokens whereby the Messiah is to be recognised.
I would ask them if it is not true that they themselves confirm this
foundation of the faith they assail, which is that the nature of man
is corrupt.
Marton sees indeed that nature is corrupt, and that men are opposed
to honourable conduct, but he knows not why they cannot fly higher.
The meaning of the words _good_ and _evil_.
Original sin is foolishness to men, but it is admitted to be so. This
doctrine must not then be reproached with want of reason, since I
admit that it has no reason. But this foolishness is wiser than all
the wisdom of men, _sapientius est hominibus_. For without this how
can we say what man is? His whole state depends on this imperceptible
point, and how should it be perceived by his reason, since it is a
thing against reason, and since reason, far from finding it out by
her own ways, revolts from it when it is offered her?
There is nothing on earth which does not show either human misery or
divine mercy; either the weakness of man without God, or the power of
man with God.
Thus the whole universe teaches man, either that he is corrupt,
or that he is redeemed; every thing teaches him his greatness or
his misery; the abandonment by God is shown in the heathen, the
protection of God is shown in the Jews.