things,) these are found everywhere, and at all times. Yet, as they are only the creatures of fancy, there is no stability in them, but they are constantly liable to vicissitude, &c.*

XXI.

The Ecclesiastes shows us that man without God is in ignorance of all things, and hopelessly unhappy. Unhappiness consists in the possession of desires, without the power to fulfil them. Now man wishes for happiness and truth; yet can he neither know wherein they consist, nor be without the desire for such knowledge. He is not able even to doubt.

XXII. We can walk safely in the light of these heavenly luminaries, and after having

(Erased.)

Without this divine knowledge, what has man been able to achieve, except either to plume himself upon the consciousness of his original greatness, or to be humbled in the contemplation of his present degradation? Absolute truth being unknown to men, they have been unable to attain to perfect virtue. One class regarding nature as uncorrupted, another as incurable, they have been alternately the victims of pride or sensuality, the sources of all vice; and into which the

The imperfect way in which this passage is jotted down in the MS., shows that it was intended to be no more than a mere rough note.

Here we find the following passage erased:-" In this powerlessness to ascertain perfect truth, if they perceive the dignity of our condition, they are ignorant of its corruption; or if they know its weakness, they are unacquainted with its excellencies: and, according as they follow the one or the other of these views, which exhibit human nature as either unfallen or incurable, they bolster themselves up in pride, or plunge into despair."

latter inevitably tends to plunge them, while the former is powerless for their extrication. If, on the one hand, they possessed some knowledge of man's excellencies, they were ignorant of his corruption; they might be raised above voluptuousness, but it was only to fall into vainglory.* On the other hand, if they acknowledged the infirmity of human nature, they had no consciousness of its dignity; and while they escaped the seductions of vanity, they plunged into despair.

Hence arose the various sects of Stoics and Epicureans, of Dogmatists and Academicians, &c. The Christian religion alone discovered the remedy for those evils; not in setting the one against the other by the wisdom of this world, but in overthrowing them all through the simplicity of the Gospel. It is this which, while elevating the just to a participation of the Divine nature itself, reveals to them that, in this exalted state, they bear yet within them the seeds of that corruption, which, throughout the whole of their earthly existence, renders them the subjects of error, misery, sin, and death; and this also proclaims to the most debased of the human race, that it is yet in their power to become partakers of their Redeemer's grace. Inspiring the holy with salutary fears, and extending its hopes to the most sinful, the Gospel so mildly tempers fears with encouragement, and holds the scales so evenly between grace and sin, that the soul is far more effectually abased-yet without abandoning herself to despair-than she could have been by any efforts of mere human reason; while she is infi

* Orig. "superbe." This, in the St. Germain copy, is displaced, in Arnauld's handwriting, by the word "orgueil."

nitely more elevated, although without unwholesome inflation, than she could have been by the pride of nature-plainly showing that, unalloyed by error and corruption, these sacred principles alone can correct and purify the evils of the fallen nature of man.

Who then can withhold his belief in this celestial revelation, and his adoration of its ineffable mysteries? Can we not perceive in ourselves, as traced by the bright beams of the noon-day sun, the ineffaceable characters of our pristine excellence? And do we not equally feel, with bitter force, the effects of our fall and ruin? What is it, then, that from amidst this fearful confusion and chaos, we hear proclaimed to us with a voice of irresistible conviction, but the irrefragable truth of these two co-existent states of humanity? *

* The partiality of an Editor may, perhaps, be forgiven, for pausing for a moment to remark the exquisite beauty and force of these concluding paragraphs. (Transl.)

CHAPTER II.

CHARACTERISTICS

OF

TRUE RELIGION.

EDITORIAL NOTICE.

WE consider that we are making as near an approach as possible to Pascal's plan,-which, however, especially in its details, is difficult to trace,-in collecting here, under a distinct chapter, the various fragments in which the author unfolds what he deems to be the Characteristics of a true religion.

Pascal made his profound knowledge of man, by means of which he had so thoroughly analysed the system of philosophy, equally subservient to his investigation of revealed religion. He had demonstrated that the schemes of the philosophers were unsatisfactory and fallacious, possessing nothing with which to fill the wants of man's spirit, or answer the just demands of human reason. He now proceeds to show, on the one hand, that a true religion ought to be in perfect agreement with our nature; should be able perfectly to search into and explain its mysteries; and, further, ought to teach man, not only the knowledge, but the love of the Deity;—and, on the other, that the Christian religion is the only system which fulfils this two-fold vocation: that is to say, that it accomplishes everything to which the philosophical systems, and all other schemes of religion, have proved themselves to be incompetent. (French Editor.)