538

What difference in point of obedience is there between a soldier and a Carthusian monk?  For both are equally under obedience and dependent, both engaged in equally painful exercises.  But the soldier always hopes to command, and never attains this, for even captains and princes are ever slaves and dependants; still he ever hopes and ever works to attain this.  Whereas the Carthusian monk makes a vow to be always dependent.  So they do not differ in their perpetual thraldom, in which both of them always exist, but in the hope, which one always has, and the other never.

539

The hope which Christians have of possessing an infinite good is mingled with real enjoyment as well as with fear; for it is not as with those who should hope for a kingdom, of which they, being subjects, would have nothing; but they hope for holiness, for freedom from injustice, and they have something of this.

540

None is so happy as a true Christian, nor so reasonable, virtuous, or amiable.

541

The Christian religion alone makes man altogether lovable and happy. 
In honesty, we cannot perhaps be altogether lovable and happy.

542

Preface.—­The metaphysical proofs of God are so remote from the reasoning of men, and so complicated, that they make little impression; and if they should be of service to some, it would be only during the moment that they see such demonstration; but an hour afterwards they fear they have been mistaken.

Quod curiositate cognoverunt superbia amiserunt.[200]

This is the result of the knowledge of God obtained without Jesus Christ; it is communion without a mediator with the God whom they have known without a mediator.  Whereas those who have known God by a mediator know their own wretchedness.

543

The God of the Christians is a God who makes the soul feel that He is her only good, that her only rest is in Him, that her only delight is in loving Him; and who makes her at the same time abhor the obstacles which keep her back, and prevent her from loving God with all her strength.  Self-love and lust, which hinder us, are unbearable to her.  Thus God makes her feel that she has this root of self-love which destroys her, and which He alone can cure.

544

Jesus Christ did nothing but teach men that they loved themselves, that they were slaves, blind, sick, wretched, and sinners; that He must deliver them, enlighten, bless, and heal them; that this would be effected by hating self, and by following Him through suffering and the death on the cross.

545

Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery; with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery; in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness.  Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.

546