Pensées — Blaise Pascal

Pensées

Blaise Pascal · Άδεια: Public domain · Πηγή

• _Philosophers._--A fine thing to cry to a man who does not know himself, that he should come of himself to God! And a fine thing to say so to a man who does know himself! SECTION VII · ¶1442
• Man is not worthy of God, but he is not incapable of being made worthy. SECTION VII · ¶1444
• It is unworthy of God to unite Himself to wretched man; but it is not unworthy of God to pull him out of his misery. SECTION VII · ¶1445
• If we would say that man is too insignificant to deserve communion with God, we must indeed be very great to judge of it. SECTION VII · ¶1447
• Impenetrability is a property of matter. SECTION VII · ¶1450
• Identity _de numers_ in regard to the same time requires the identity of matter. SECTION VII · ¶1451
• Thus if God united my soul to a body in China, the same body, _idem numero_, would be in China. SECTION VII · ¶1452
• The same river which runs there is _idem numero_ as that which runs at the same time in China. SECTION VII · ¶1453
• Why God has established prayer. SECTION VII · ¶1455
• 1. To communicate to His creatures the dignity of causality. 2. To teach us from whom our virtue comes. 3. To make us deserve other virtues by work. SECTION VII · ¶1456
• (But to keep His own pre-eminence, He grants prayer to whom He pleases.) SECTION VII · ¶1457
• Objection: But we believe that we hold prayer of ourselves. SECTION VII · ¶1458
• This is absurd; for since, though having faith, we cannot have virtues, how should we have faith? Is there a greater distance between infidelity and faith than between faith and virtue? SECTION VII · ¶1459
• _Merit._ This word is ambiguous. SECTION VII · ¶1460
• Meruit tam sacra membra tangere. SECTION VII · ¶1462
• Digno tam sacra membra tangere. SECTION VII · ¶1463
• God is only bound according to His promises. He has promised to grant justice to prayers; He has never promised prayer only to the children of promise. SECTION VII · ¶1468
• The elect will be ignorant of their virtues, and the outcast of the greatness of their sins: "Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered, thirsty?" etc.[195][196] SECTION VII · ¶1471
• Romans iii, 27. Boasting is excluded. By what law? Of works? nay, but by faith. Then faith is not within our power like the deeds of the law, and it is given to us in another way. SECTION VII · ¶1473
• Comfort yourselves. It is not from yourselves that you should expect grace; but, on the contrary, it is in expecting nothing from yourselves, that you must hope for it. SECTION VII · ¶1475
• Every condition, and even the martyrs, have to fear, according to Scripture. SECTION VII · ¶1477
• The greatest pain of purgatory is the uncertainty of the judgment. _Deus absconditus._ SECTION VII · ¶1478
• John viii. _Multi crediderunt in eum. Dicebat ergo Jesus: "Si manseritis_ ... VERE _mei discipuli eritis, et_ VERITAS LIBERABIT VOS." _Responderunt: "Semen Abrahæ sumus, et nemini servimus unquam."_ SECTION VII · ¶1480
• There is a great difference between disciples and true disciples. We recognise them by telling them that the truth will make them free; for if they answer that they are free, and that it is in their power to come out of slavery to the devil, they are indeed disciples, but not true disciples. SECTION VII · ¶1481
• The law has not destroyed nature, but has instructed it; grace has not destroyed the law, but has made it act. Faith received at baptism is the source of the whole life of Christians and of the converted. SECTION VII · ¶1483
• Grace will always be in the world, and nature also; so that the former is in some sort natural. And thus there will always be Pelagians, and always Catholics, and always strife; because the first birth makes the one, and the grace of the second birth the other. SECTION VII · ¶1485
• The law imposed what it did not give. Grace gives what is imposes. SECTION VII · ¶1487
• All faith consists in Jesus Christ and in Adam, and all morality in lust and in grace. SECTION VII · ¶1489
• There is no doctrine more appropriate to man than this, which teaches him his double capacity of receiving and of losing grace, because of the double peril to which he is exposed, of despair or of pride. SECTION VII · ¶1491
• The philosophers did not prescribe feelings suitable to the two states. SECTION VII · ¶1493
• They inspired feelings of pure greatness, and that is not man's state. SECTION VII · ¶1494
• They inspired feelings of pure littleness, and that is not man's state. SECTION VII · ¶1495
• There must be feelings of humility, not from nature, but from penitence, not to rest in them, but to go on to greatness. There must be feelings of greatness, not from merit, but from grace, and after having passed through humiliation. SECTION VII · ¶1496
• Misery induces despair, pride induces presumption. The Incarnation shows man the greatness of his misery by the greatness of the remedy which he required. SECTION VII · ¶1498
• The knowledge of God without that of man's misery causes pride. The knowledge of man's misery without that of God causes despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course, because in Him we find both God and our misery. SECTION VII · ¶1500
• Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair. SECTION VII · ¶1502
• ... Not a degradation which renders us incapable of good, nor a holiness exempt from evil. SECTION VII · ¶1504
• A person told me one day that on coming from confession he felt great joy and confidence. Another told me that he remained in fear. Whereupon I thought that these two together would make one good man, and that each was wanting in that he had not the feeling of the other. The same often happens in other things. SECTION VII · ¶1506
• He who knows the will of his master will be beaten with more blows, because of the power he has by his knowledge. _Qui justus est, justificetur adhuc_,[197] because of the power he has by justice. From him who has received most, will the greatest reckoning be demanded, because of the power he has by this help. SECTION VII · ¶1508
• Scripture has provided passages of consolation and of warning for all conditions. SECTION VII · ¶1510

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