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the happiest, the other the most wretched of men: | of the wise. "There is a God; seek not for happithe one knowing experimentally the vanity of thisness in creatures." Then every thing which alworld's pleasure; the other, the reality of its afflic- lures us towards the love of the creature, is evil,

tions.

59. The heathen spoke ill of Israel; and so also did the prophet—and so far from the Israelites having a right to say, "You speak as the heathen," it appears that one of his strongest arguments was drawn from the fact, that the heathen spake like him.

because it so far hinders us from serving God, if we know him; or from seeking him, if we do not.Now, we are full of concupiscence. Then we are full of evil. We must learn, then, to abhor ourselves, and all that would attach us to any other than God only.

66. When we would think of God, how many things we find which turn us away from him, and tempt us to think otherwise. All this is evil; yet it is innate.

67. That we are worthy of the love of others, is false. To wish for their love is unjust. Had we been born in a right state of mind, and with a due knowledge of ourselves and others, we should not have felt this wish. Yet we are born with it. We are then born unjust. Each one regards himself. That is contrary to all order. Each should regard the general good. This selfish bias is the source of all error, in war, in government, and in economy, &c.

60. God does not propose that we should submit to believe him contrary to our reason, or that he should make us the subjects of a mere tyrannical authority. At the same time, he does not profess to give us reasons for every thing he does. And to reconcile these contrarieties, he is pleased to exhibit to us clear and convincing proofs of what he is, and to establish his authority with us, by miracles and proofs which we cannot honestly reject; so that subsequently, we may believe without hesitation, the mysteries which he teaches, when we perceive that we have no other ground for rejecting them, but that we are not able of ourselves, to ascertain whether they are so as they appear or not. If the members of each national and civil com61. Mankind is divided into three classes of per-munity should seek the good of the whole body, sons; those who have found out God, and are serv- these communities themselves, should seek the good ing him; those who are occupied in seeking after of that whole body of which they are members. God, and have not yet found him; and those who have not only not found God, but are not seeking him. The first are wise and happy; the last are foolish and unhappy; the middle class are wise, and yet unhappy.

62. Men frequently mistake their imagination for their heart, and believe that they are converted as soon as they begin to think of turning to God.

He who does not hate in himself that self-love, and that propensity which leads him to exalt himself above all others, must be blind indeed; for nothing is more directly contrary to truth and justice. For it is false that we deserve this exaltation; and to attain it, is both unjust and impossible; for every one seeks it. This disposition with which we are born, is manifestly unjust-an evil from which we cannot, but from which we ought, to free ourselves.

Reason acts so tardily, and on the ground of so many different views and principles, which she requires to have always before her, that she is con- Yet, no other religion but the Christian has continually becoming drowsy and inert, or going ac-demned this as a sin, or shown that we are born tively astray for want of seeing the whole case at with it; and that we ought to resist it, or suggested once. It is just the reverse with feeling; it acts at a means of cure. once, and is ever ready for action. It were well then, after our reason has ascertained what is truth, to endeavor to feel it, and to associate our faith with the affections of the heart; for without this it will ever be wavering and uncertain.

68. There is in man an internal war between his reason and his passions. He might have enjoyed some little repose, had he been gifted with reason, without the passions, or with passions independently of reason. But, possessed as he is of both, he cannot but be in a state of conflict, for he cannot make peace with the one, without being at war with the

The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing. We find this in a thousand instances. It is the heart which feels God, and not the reason-other. ing powers. And this is faith made perfect:-God realized by feeling in the heart.

63. It is an essential feature of the character of God, that his justice is infinite, as well as his mercy. Yet certainly his justice and severity towards the impenitent, is less surprising than his mercy towards the elect.

64. Man is evidently made for thinking. Thought is all his dignity, and all his worth. To think rightly, is the whole of his duty; and the true order of thought, is to begin with himself, with his author, and his end. Yet on what do men in general think? Never on these things: but how to obtain pleasure, wealth, or fame; how to become kings, without considering what it is to be a king, or even to be a man.

Human thought is in its nature wonderful. To make it contemptible, it must have some strange defects; and yet it has such, that nothing appears more ridiculous. How exalted in its nature? How degraded in its misuse.

65. If there is a God, we ought to love him-net his creatures. The reasonings of the wicked in the Book of Wisdom, are founded on their persuasion, that there is no God. They say, Grant this, and our delight shall be in the creature. But, had they known that there is a God, they would have drawn a different conclusion; and that is the conclusion

If it is an unnatural blindness to live without inquiry as to what we really are; it is surely a far more fearful state, to live in sin, while we acknowledge God. The greater part of men, are the subjects of one or other of these states of blindness.

69. It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!

However bright they make the comedy of life appear before, the last act is always stained with blood. The earth is laid upon our head, and there it lies for ever.

70. When God had created the heavens and the earth, which could feel no happiness in their own existence, it pleased him to create also a race of beings who should feel this, and they should constitute a compound body of thinking members. All men are members of this body; and in order to their happiness, it was requisite that their individual and private will be conformed to the general will, by which the whole body is regulated. Yet it often happens, that one man thinks himself an independent whole; and that, losing sight of the body with which he is associated, he believes that he depends only on himself, and wishes to be his own centre,

and his own circumference. But he finds himself | impiety that yet remains If our sensuality were in this state, like a member amputated from the not opposed to penitence, and our corruption to the body, and that having in himself no principle of divine purity, there would be nothing painful in it. life, he only wanders and becomes more confused We only suffer just in proportion as the evil which in the uncertainty of his own existence. But when, is natural to us, resists the supernatural agency of at length, a man begins rightly to know himself, he grace. We feel our heart rending under these op is, as it were, returned to his senses; then he feels posing influences. But it were sadly unjust to at that he is not the body; he understands then that tribute this violence to God, who draws us to him he is only a member of the universal body, and that self, rather than to the world, which holds us back. to be a member, is to have no life, being, or motion, Our case is like that of an infant, whom its mother but by the spirit of the body, and for the body-that drags from the arms of robbers; and who, even in a member separated from the body to which he be- the agony of larceration, must love the fond and longs, has only a remnant and expiring existence; legitimate violence of her who struggles for its and that he ought not to love himself, but for the liberty, and can only detest the fierce and tyrannisake of the body, or rather that he should love only cal might of those who detain it so unjustly. The the whole body, because in loving that, he loves most cruel war that God can wage against men in himself, seeing that in it, for it, and by it, only has this life is, to leave them without that war which he any existence whatever. he has himself proclaimed. I am come, said Christ, to bring war; and to provide for this war, he says, I am come to bring fire and sword. Matt. x. 34. Luke xii. 49. Before this, the world lived in a false and delusive peace.

For the regulation of that love which we should feel towards ourselves, we should imagine ourselves a body composed of thinking members, for we are members one of another; and thus, consider how far each member should love itself.

The body loves the hand, and if the hand had a will of its own, it should love itself precisely in that degree, that the body loves it. Any measure of love that exceeds this, is unjust.

If the feet and the hands had a separate will, they would never be in their place, but in submitting it to the will of the whole body; to do otherwise, is insubordination and error. But in seeking exclusively the good of the whole body, they cannot but consult their individual interest.

The members of our body are not aware of the advantage of their union, of their admirable sympathy, and of the care that nature takes to infuse into them vitality, and make them grow and endure. If they could know this, and availed themselves of their knowledge, to retain in themselves the nourishment which they received, without distributing it to the other members, they would not only be unjust, but actually miserable-they would be hating, and not loving themselves: their happiness, as well as their duty, consisting in submission to the guidance of that all pervading soul, which loves them better than they can love themselves.

He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. I love myself, because I am a member of Jesus Christ. I love Jesus Christ, because he is the head of the body of which I am a member. All are in one; each one is in the other.

Concupiscence and compulsion are the sources of all our actions, purely human. Concupiscence gives rise to voluntary, and compulsion to involuntary

actions.

71. The Platonists, and even Epictetus and his followers maintained, that God only was worthy of love and admiration; yet they sought for themselves the love and admiration of men. They had no idea of their own corruption. If they feel themselves naturally led to love and adore him, and to seek in them their chief joy, they are welcome to account themselves good. But if they feel a natural aversion to this, if they have no manifest bias, but to wish to establish themselves in the good opinion of men; and that all their perfection comes to this, to lead men, without compulsion, to find happiness in loving them; then I say, that such perfection is horrible. What, have they known God, and have not desired exclusively that his creatures should love him? Have they wished that the affections of men should stop at themselves? Have they wished to be to men, the object of their deliberate preference for happiness?

72. It is true, that there is difficulty in the practice of piety. But this difficulty does not rise from the piety that is now begun within us, but from the

73. God looks at the interior. The church judges only by the exterior. God absolves as soon as he sees penitence in the heart. The church only when she sees it in our works. God makes a church, which is pure within, and which confounds, by its internal and spiritual sanctity, the impious superficial pretences of the self-sufficient and the Pharisee. And the church forms a company of men, whose outward manners are so pure, as to condemn the habits of the heathen. If there are within her border, hypocrites so well concealed, that she detects not their malignity, she permits their continuance, for though they are not received by God, whom they cannot deceive, they are received by men, whom they can. In such cases, however, the church is not outwardly dishonored, for their conduct has the semblance of holiness.

74. The law has not destroyed natural principle; it instructs nature. Grace has not abrogated the law; it enables us to fulfil it.

We make an idol even of truth itself; for truth, apart from charity, is not God. It is but his image, an idol that we ought neither to love nor worship; still less should we love and adore its contrary, which is falsehood.

75. All public amusements are full of danger to the Christian life; but amongst all those which the world has invented, none is more to be feared than sentimental comedy. It is a representation of the passions so natural and delicate, that it awakens them, and gives them fresh spring in the heart-especially the passion of love, and still more so, when it is exhibited as eminently chaste and virtuous. For the more innocent it is made to appear to innocent minds, the more are they laid open to its influence. The violence of it gratifies our self-love, which speedily desires to give rise to the same effects, which we have seen represented. In the mean while, also, conscience justifies itself by the honorable nature of those feelings which have been portrayed, so far as to calm the fears of a pure mind, and to suggest the idea that it can surely be no violation of purity to love with an affection so apparently rational. And thus, we leave the theatre with a heart teeming with the delights and the tendernesses of love; and with the understanding so persuaded of its innocence, that we are fully prepared to receive its first impressions, or rather to seek the opportunity of giving birth to them in the heart of another, that we may receive the same pleasures, and the same adulation which we saw so well depicted on the stage.

76. Licentious opinions are so far naturally pleasing to men, that it is strange that any should be displeased with them. But this is only when they

generally there is more in it belonging to others than to themselves.

81. Christian piety annihilates the egotism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it. 82. If my heart were as poor as my understand

have exceeded all moderate bounds. Besides, there are many people who perceive the truth, though they cannot act up to it. And there are few who do not know that the purity of religion is opposed to such lax opinions, and that it is folly to affirm, that an eternal reward awaits a life of licentious-ing, I should be happy, for I am thoroughly persuaded, that such poverty is a great means of sal

ness.

83. One thing I have observed, that let a man be ever so poor, he has always something to leave on his death bed.

77. I feared that I might have written erroneous-vation. ly, when I saw myself condemned; but the example of so many pious witnesses made me think differently. It is no longer allowable to write truth. The Inquisition is entirely corrupt or ignorant. It is better to obey God than man. I fear nothing.I I hope for nothing. The Port Royal feared. It was bad policy to separate the two, for when they feared the least, they made themselves feared the

most.

Silence is the bitterest persecution. But the saints have never held their peace. It is true that there should be a call to speak; but we are not to learn this from the decrees of the council, but from the necessity of speaking.

If my letters are condemned at Rome, that which I condemned in them, is condemned in heaven. The Inquisition, and the society of Jesuits, are the two scourges of the truth.

78. I was asked, first, if I repented of having written the Provincial Letters? I answered, That far from repenting, if I had it to do again, I would write them yet more strongly.

I was asked in the second place, why I named the authors from whom I extracted those abominable passages which I have cited? I answered, If I were in a town where there were a dozen fountains, and I knew for certain that one of them was poisoned, I should be under obligation to tell the world not to draw from that fountain; and, as it might be supposed, that this was a mere fancy on my part, I should be obliged to name him who had poisoned it, rather than expose a whole city to the risk of death.

I was asked, thirdly, why I adopted an agreeable, jocose, and entertaining style? I answered, If I had written dogmatically, none but the learned would have read my book; and they had no need of it, knowing how the matter stood, at least as well as I did. I conceived it therefore my duty to write, so that my letters might be read by women, and people in general, that they might know the danger of all those maxims and propositions which were then spread abroad, and admitted with so little hesitation.

Finally, I was asked If I had myself read all the books which I quoted? I answered, No. To do this, I had need have passed the greater part of my life in reading very bad books. But I have twice read Escobar throughout; and for the others, I got several of my friends to read them; but I have never used a single passage without having read it myself in the book quoted, without having examined the case in which it is brought forward, and without having read the preceding and subsequent context, that I might not run the risk of citing that for an answer, which was, in fact, an objection, which would have been very unjust and blameable.

79. The Arithmetical machine produces results which come nearer to thought, than any thing that brutes can do; but it does nothing that would, in the least, lead one to suppose that it has a will like them.

80. Some authors, speaking of their works, say, "My book, my commentary, my history." They betray their own vulgarity, who have just got a house over their heads, and have always, "My house," at their tongue's end. It were better to say, "Our book, our history, our commentary," &c. for

84. I love poverty, because Jesus Christ loved it. love wealth, because it gives the means of assisting the wretched. I wish to deal faithfully with all men. I render no evil to those who have done evil to me; but I wish them a condition similar to my own, in which they would not receive from the greater portion of men either good or evil. I aim to be always true, and just, and open towards all men. I have much tenderness of heart towards those whom God has more strictly united to me. Whether I am in secret, or in the sight of men, I have set before me in all my actions, the God who will judge them, and to whom I have consecrated them. These are my feelings; and I bless my Redeemer every day of my life, who has planted them in me; and who, from a man full of weakness, misery, lust, pride, and ambition, has formed one victorious over these evils by the power of that grace, to which I owe every thing, seeing that in myself there is nothing but misery and horror.

85. Disease is the natural state of Christians; for by its influence, we become what we should be at all times; we endure evil; we are deprived of all our goods, and of all the pleasures of sense; we are freed from the excitement of those passions which annoy us all through life; we live without ambition and without avarice, in the constant expectation of death. And is it not thus, that Christians should spend their days? And is it not real happiness to find ourselves placed by necessity in that state in which we ought to be, and that we have nothing to do, but humbly and peaceably submit to our lot. With this view, I ask for nothing else but to pray God that he would bestow this grace upon me.

86. It is strange that men have wished to dive into the principles of things, and to attain to universal knowledge; for surely it were impossible to cherish such a purpose, without a capacity, or the presumption of a capacity, as boundless as nature itself.

87. Nature has many perfections to show that it is an image of the Deity. It has defects, to show that it is but an image.

88. Men are so completely fools by necessity, that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly, who does not confess his foolishness.

89. Do away the doctrine of probability, and you please the world no longer. Give them the doctrine of probability, and you cannot but please them.

90. If that which is contingent were made certain, the zeal of the saints, for the practice of good works, would be useless.

91. It must be grace indeed that makes a man a saint. And who, even in his most doubtful mood, does not know what constitutes a saint, and what a natural man?

96. The smallest motion is of importance in na ture. The whole substance of the sea moves when we throw in a pebble. So in the life of grace, the most trifling action has a bearing in its consequences upon the whole. Every thing then is important.

97. Naturally men hate each other. Much use has been made of human corruption, to make it subserve the public good. But then, all this is but

deception; a false semblance of charity; really it is only hatred after all. This vile resource of human nature, this figmentum malum is only covered. It is not removed.

98. They, who say that man is too insignificant to be admitted to communion with God, had need be more than ordinarily great to know it assuredly. 99. It is unworthy of God to join himself to man in his miserable degradation; but it is not so to bring him forth from that misery.

100. Who ever heard such absurdities? sinners purified without penitence; just men made perfect without the grace of Christ; God without a controlling power over the human will; predestination without mystery; and a Redeemer without the certainty of salvation.

103. That Christianity is not the only religion, is no real objection to its being true. On the contrary, this is one of the means of proof that it is true.

104. In a state established as a republic, like Venice, it were a great sin to try to force a king upon them, and to rob the people of that liberty which God had given them. But in a state where monarchical power has been admitted, we cannot violate the respect due to the king, without a degree of sacrilege; for as the power that God has conferred on him, is not only a representation, but a participation of the power of God, we may not oppose it without resisting manifestly the ordinance of God. Moreover, as civil war, which is the consequence of such resistance, is one of the greatest evils that we can commit in violation of the love of our neighbor, we can never sufficiently magnify the greatness of the crime. The primitive Christians did not teach us revolt, but patience, when kings trampled upon their rights.

I am as far removed from the probability of this sin, as from assassination and robbery on the highway. There is nothing more contrary to my natural disposition, and to which I am less tempted.

105. Eloquence is the art of saying things in such a manner, that in the first place, those to whom we speak, may hear them without pain, and with pleasure; and, in the second, that they may feel interested in them, and be led by their own self-love, to a more willing reflection on them. It consists in the endeavor to establish a correspondence between the understanding and heart of those to whom we speak, on the one hand, and the thoughts and expressions of which, we make use on the other; an idea which supposes, at the outset, that we have well studied the human heart, to know all its recesses, and rightly to arrange the proportions of a discourse, calculated to meet it. We ought to put ourselves in the place of those to whom we speak, and try upon our own heart, the turn of thought which we give to a discourse, and thus ascertain if the one is adapted to the other, and if we can in this way acquire the conviction, that the hearer will be compelled to surrender to it. Our strength should be, in being simple and natural, neither inflating that which is little, nor lowering that which is really grand. It is not enough that the statement be beautiful. It should suit the subject, having nothing exuberant, nothing defective.

Eloquence is a pictural representation of thought; and hence those who, after having painted it, make additions to it, give us a fancy picture, but not a portrait.

106. The Holy Scripture is not a science of the understanding, but of the heart. It is intelligible only to those who have an honest and good heart. The veil that is upon the Scriptures, in the case of the Jews, is there also in the case of Christians. Charity is not only the end of the Holy Scriptures, but the entrance to them.

107. If we are to do nothing, but where we have

the advantage of certainty, then we should do nothing in religion; for religion is not a matter of certainty. But how many things we do uncertainly, as sea voyages, battles, &c. I say then, that we should do nothing at all, for nothing is certain. There is more of certainty in religion, than in the hope that we shall see the morrow; for it is not certain that we shall see the morrow. But it is certainly possible, that we may not see to-morrow.* And this cannot be affirmed of religion. It is not certain that religion is; but who will dare to say, that it is certainly possible that it is not? Now when we labor for to-morrow, and upon an uncertainty, reason justifies us.

108. The inventions of men progressively improve from age to age. The goodness and the wickedness of men in general remain the same.

109. A man must acquire a habit of more philosophic speculation and thought on what he sees, and form his judgment of things by that, while he speaks generally to others in more popular language.

111. Casual circumstances give rise to thoughts, and take them away again; there is no art of creating or preserving them.

112. You think that the church should not judge of the inward man, because this belongs only to God; nor of the outward man, because God judges of the heart; and thus, destroying all power of discriminating human character, you retain within the church the most dissolute of men, and men who so manifestly disgrace it, that even the synagogues of the Jews, and the sects of philosophers would have ejected them as worthless, and consigned them to abhorrence.

113. Whoever will, may now be made a priest, as in the days of Jeroboam.

114. The multitude which is not brought to act as unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude, is tyranny.

115. Men consult only the ear, for want of the heart.

116. We should be able to say in every dialogue or discourse, to those who are offended at it, "Of what can you complain?"

117. Children are alarmed at the face which they have themselves disguised; but how is it, that he who is so weak as an infant, is so bold in maturer years? Alas, his weakness has only changed its subject!

118. It is alike incomprehensible that God is, and that he is not; that the soul is in the body, and that we have no soul; that the world is, or is not created; that there is, or is not such a thing as original sir..

119. The statements of atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear, that the soul is material.

120. Unbelievers are the most credulous! They believe the miracles of Vespasian, that they may not believe the miracles of Moses.

ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESCARTES.

We may say generally, the world is made by figure and motion, for that is true; but to say what figure and motion, and to specify the composition of the machine, is perfectly ridiculous; for it is useless, questionable, and laborious. But, if it be all true, the whole of the philosophy is not worth an hour's thought.

* That is, we know of possible events by which this might be the case.

The thought 110, is not found in the MSS. but only in the edition of Condorcet, an authority cer tainly not to be followed.

CHAPTER XXII.

THOUGHTS ON DEATH, EXTRACTED FROM A LETTER OF
M. PASCAL, ON THE OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF

HIS FATHER.

I place in Jesus Christ, must occur also in all his members.

Let us consider life then as a sacrifice, and that the accidents of life make no impression on the Christian mind, but as they interrupt or carry on this sacrifice. Let us call nothing evil but that which constitutes the victim due to God a victim

examine death.

For this purpose we must have recourse to the person of Jesus Christ: for as God regards men only in the person of the Mediator, Jesus Christ, men also should only regard either others or them selves, mediately through him.

If we do not avail ourselves of this mediation, we shall find in ourselves nothing but real miseries or abominable evils; but if we learn to look at every thing through Jesus Christ, we shall always obtain comfort, satisfaction, and instruction.

WHEN we are in affliction, owing to the death of some friend whom we loved, or some other misfor-offered to the devil; but let us call that really good, tune that has happened to us, we ought not to seek which renders the victim due in Adam to the devil, for consolation in ourselves, nor in our fellow-creatures, nor in any created thing; we should seek it a victim sacrificed to God; and by this rule, let us in God only. And the reason is, that creatures are not the primary cause of those occurrences which we call evils. But that the providence of God being the true and sole cause of them, the arbiter and the sovereign, we ought, undoubtedly, to have recourse directly to their source, and ascend even to their origin, to obtain satisfactory alleviation. For, if we follow this precept, and consider this afflicting bereavement, not as the result of chance, nor as a fatal necessity of our nature; not as the sport of those elements and atoms of which man is formed, (for God has not abandoned his elect to the risk of caprice or chance,) but as the indispensable, inevitable, just, and holy result of a decree of the providence of God, to be executed in the fulness of time; and, in fact, that all which happens has been eternally present and pre-ordained in God; if, I say, by the teachings of grace we consider this casualty, not in itself, and independently of God, but viewed independently of self, and as in the will of God, and in the justice of his decree, and the order of his Providence; which is, in fact, the true cause, without which it could not have happened, by which alone it has happened, and happened in the precise manner in which it has; we should adore in humble silence the inaccessible elevation of his secrecy; we should venerate the holiness of his decrees; we should bless the course of his providence; and, uniting our will to the very will of God, we should desire with him, in him, and for him, those very things which he has wished in us, and for us, from all eternity.

2. There is no consolation but in truth. Unquestionably there is nothing in Socrates or Seneca which can soothe or comfort us on these occasions. They were under the error, which, in blinding the first man, blinded all the rest. They have all conceived death to be natural to man; and all the discourses that they have founded upon this false principle, are so vain and so wanting in solidity, that they have only served to show, by their utter uselessness, how very feeble man is, since the loftiest productions of the greatest minds are so mean and puerile.

Let us look at death then through Christ, and not without him. Without Christ it is horrible, detestable; it is the abhorrence of human nature. In Jesus Christ it is very different; it is lovely, holy, and the joy of the faithful. All trial is sweet in Jesus Christ, even death. He suffered and died to sanctify death and suffering; and as God and man, he has been all that is great and noble, and all that is abject, in order to consecrate in himself all things except sin, and to be the model of all conditions of life.

In order to know what death is, and what it is in Jesus Christ, we should ascertain what place it holds in his one eternal sacrifice; and with a view to this, observe, that the principal part of a sacrifice is the death of the victim. The offering and the consecration which precede it, are preliminary steps, but the actual sacrifice is death, in which the creature, by the surrender of its life, renders to God all the homage of which it is capable, making itself nothing before the eyes of His majesty, and adoring that Sovereign Being which exists essentially and alone. It is true that there is yet another step after the death of the victim, which is God's acceptance of the sacrifice, and which is referred to in the Scripture, as Gen. viii. 21. And God smelled a sweet savor. This certainly crowns the offering; but then this is more an act of God towards the creature, than of the creature to God; and does not therefore alter the fact that the last act of the creature is his death.

All this has been accomplished in Jesus Christ. When he came into the world he offered himself. It is not so with Jesus Christ; it is not so with So Heb. ix. 14. Through the eternal Spirit, he of the canonical Scriptures. The truth is set forth fered himself to God. When he cometh into the world, there and consolation is associated with it, as in-he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but fallibly as that truth itself is infallibly separated a body thou hast prepared me. Then, said I, Lo, I from error. Let us regard death then, by the light of that truth which the Holy Spirit teaches. We have there a most advantageous means of knowing that really and truly death is the penalty of sin, appointed to man as the desert of crime, and necessary to man for his escape from corruption: that it is the only means of delivering the soul from the motions of sin in the members, from which the saints are never entirely free, while they live in this world. We know that life, and the life of Christians especially, is a continued sacrifice, which can only be terminated by death. We know that Jesus Christ, when he came into this world, considered himself, and offered himself to God as a sacrifice, and as a real victim; that his birth, his life, his death, resurrection and ascension, and his sitting at the right hand of the Father, are but one and the same sacrifice. We know that what took

come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God; yea, thy law is within my heart. Heb. x. 5. Psalm xl. 7, 8. Here is his oblation; his sanctification followed immediately upon his oblation. This sacrifice continued through his whole life, and was completed by his death. So Luke xxiv. 26. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and entered into his glory. And again, Heb. v. In the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, he was heard in that he feared; and though he were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered. And God raised him from the dead, and caused his glory to rest upon him, (an event formerly prefigured by the fire from heaven, which fell upon the victims to burn and consume the body,) to quicken him to the life of glory. This is

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