it to us as a model wherein it exists infinite when he says: "Be ye also perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." Thus it is a very prejudicial and very common error among Christians, and even among those who make a profession of piety, to persuade themselves that there may be a degree of perfection in which they can be with assurance, and which it is not necessary to pass, since there is none at which it will not be wrong to stop, and from which we can only avoid falling by mounting still higher.
3
Letter from Pascal and His Sister Jacqueline to their Sister, Madame Perier
My dear Sister,
Your letter has recalled to us a misunderstanding of which we had lost recollection, so absolutely had it passed from us. The somewhat too diffuse explanations that we have received have brought to light the general and former subject of our complaints, and the satisfaction that we have given has softened the harshness which my father had conceived for them. We said what you had already said, without knowing that you had said it, and then we excused verbally what you had afterwards excused in writing, without knowing that you had done so; and we knew not what you had done until after we had acted ourselves; for as we have hidden nothing from my father, he has revealed every thing, and thus cured all our suspicions. You know how much such troubles disturb the peace of the family both within and without, and what need we have in these junctures of the warnings which you have given us a little too late.
We have some to give you on the subject of your own. The first is in respect to what you say, that we have instructed you as to what you should write to us. 1*. I do not remember to have spoken to you of it, so that this was a novelty to me; and, besides, even though this were true,
