Page:Blaise Pascal works.djvu/221

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PERPETUITY
213

false in the course of time. It is not so with contemporaneous writers.

There is a great difference between a book which an individual writes, and publishes to a nation, and a book which itself creates a nation. We cannot doubt that the book is as old as the people.


629

Josephus hides the shame of his nation.

Moses does not hide his own shame.

Quis mihi det ut omnes prophetent?[1]

He was weary of the multitude.


630

The sincerity of the Jews.—Maccabees, after they had no more prophets; the Masorah, since Jesus Christ.

This book will be a testimony for you.

Defective and final letters.

Sincere against their honour, and dying for it; this has no example in the world, and no root in nature.


631

Sincerity of the Jews.—They preserve lovingly and carefully the book in which Moses declares that they have been all their life ungrateful to God, and that he knows they will be still more so after his death; but that he calls heaven and earth to witness against them, and that he has [taught] them enough.

He declares that God, being angry with them, shall at last scatter them among all the nations of the earth; that as they have offended Him by worshipping gods who were not their God, so He will provoke them by calling a people who are not His people; that He desires that all His words be preserved for ever, and that His book be placed in the Ark of the Covenant to serve for ever as a witness against them.

Isaiah says the same thing, xxx.

  1. Numbers, xi. 29.