Page:Blaise Pascal works.djvu/180

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172
PASCAL'S THOUGHTS

liberabit vos." Responderunt: "Semen Abrahæ sumus, et nemini servimus unquam."

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.


520

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.


521

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.


522

The law imposed what it did not give. Grace gives what is imposes.


523

All faith consists in Jesus Christ and in Adam, and all morality in lust and in grace.


524

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.


525

The philosophers did not prescribe feelings suitable to the two states.