Pascal's Pensées eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 370 pages of information about Pascal's Pensées.

Pascal's Pensées eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 370 pages of information about Pascal's Pensées.

Two supernatural foundations of our wholly supernatural religion; one visible, the other invisible; miracles with grace, miracles without grace.

The synagogue, which had been treated with love as a type of the Church, and with hatred, because it was only the type, has been restored, being on the point of falling when it was well with God, and thus a type.

Miracles prove the power which God has over hearts, by that which He exercises over bodies.

The Church has never approved a miracle among heretics.

Miracles a support of religion:  they have been the test of Jews; they have been the test of Christians, saints, innocents, and true believers.

A miracle among schismatics is not so much to be feared; for schism, which is more obvious than a miracle, visibly indicates their error.  But when there is no schism, and error is in question, miracle decides.

Si non fecissem quae alius non fecit. The wretches who have obliged us to speak of miracles.

Abraham and Gideon confirm faith by miracles.

Judith.  God speaks at last in their greatest oppression.

If the cooling of love leaves the Church almost without believers, miracles will rouse them.  This is one of the last effects of grace.

If one miracle were wrought among the Jesuits!

When a miracle disappoints the expectation of those in whose presence it happens, and there is a disproportion between the state of their faith and the instrument of the miracle, it ought then to induce them to change.  But with you it is otherwise.  There would be as much reason in saying that, if the Eucharist raised a dead man, it would be necessary for one to turn a Calvinist rather than remain a Catholic.  But when it crowns the expectation, and those, who hoped that God would bless the remedies, see themselves healed without remedies ...

The ungodly.—­No sign has ever happened on the part of the devil without a stronger sign on the part of God, or even without it having been foretold that such would happen.

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Unjust persecutors of those whom God visibly protects.  If they reproach you with your excesses, “they speak as the heretics.”  If they say that the grace of Jesus Christ distinguishes us, “they are heretics.”  If they do miracles, “it is the mark of their heresy.”

Ezekiel.—­They say:  These are the people of God who speak thus.

It is said, “Believe in the Church";[358] but it is not said, “Believe in miracles”; because the last is natural, and not the first.  The one had need of a precept, not the other.  Hezekiah.

The synagogue was only a type, and thus it did not perish; and it was only a type, and so it is decayed.  It was a type which contained the truth, and thus it has lasted until it no longer contained the truth.

My reverend father, all this happened in types.  Other religions perish; this one perishes not.

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Project Gutenberg
Pascal's Pensées from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.