in the darkness which blinds him, nor subject to mortality and the woes which afflict him.  But he has not been able to sustain so great glory without falling into pride.  He wanted to make himself his own centre, and independent of my help.  He withdrew himself from my rule; and, on his making himself equal to me by the desire of finding his happiness in himself, I abandoned him to himself.  And setting in revolt the creatures that were subject to him, I made them his enemies; so that man is now become like the brutes, and so estranged from me that there scarce remains to him a dim vision of his Author.  So far has all his knowledge been extinguished or disturbed!  The senses, independent of reason, and often the masters of reason, have led him into pursuit of pleasure.  All creatures either torment or tempt him, and domineer over him, either subduing him by their strength, or fascinating him by their charms, a tyranny more awful and more imperious.

“Such is the state in which men now are.  There remains to them some feeble instinct of the happiness of their former state; and they are plunged in the evils of their blindness and their lust, which have become their second nature.

“From this principle which I disclose to you, you can recognise the cause of those contradictions which have astonished all men, and have divided them into parties holding so different views.  Observe, now, all the feelings of greatness and glory which the experience of so many woes cannot stifle, and see if the cause of them must not be in another nature.”

For Port-Royal to-morrow (Prosopopoea).—­“It is in vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the remedy for your ills.  All your light can only reach the knowledge that not in yourselves will you find truth or good.  The philosophers have promised you that, and have been unable to do it.  They neither know what is your true good, nor what is your true state.  How could they have given remedies for your ills, when they did not even know them?  Your chief maladies are pride, which takes you away from God, and lust, which binds you to earth; and they have done nothing else but cherish one or other of these diseases.  If they gave you God as an end, it was only to administer to your pride; they made you think that you are by nature like Him, and conformed to Him.  And those who saw the absurdity of this claim put you on another precipice, by making you understand that your nature was like that of the brutes, and led you to seek your good in the lusts which are shared by the animals.  This is not the way to cure you of your unrighteousness, which these wise men never knew.  I alone can make you understand who you are....”

Adam, Jesus Christ.

If you are united to God, it is by grace, not by nature.  If you are humbled, it is by penitence, not by nature.

Thus this double capacity ...

You are not in the state of your creation.