Blaise Pascal

Man does not know what rank he should occupy. He has obviously gone astray and fallen from his true place, lacking the power to find it again. He looks for it everywhere anxiously and unsuccessfully, in impenetrable darkness.

A cipher has two meanings. ...the more so if we find obvious contradictions in the literal meaning? The prophets have clearly said... that their meaning would not be understood, and that it was veiled.

Contradictions.— ...The eternal law—changed. The eternal covenant—a new covenant. Good laws—bad precepts.

Whoever wants to know man's vanity fully has only to consider the causes and effects of love. The cause is a something I know not what. Corneille. And the effects are frightening. This something I know not what, so insignificant that we cannot recognize it, disturbs the whole earth, princes, armies, the entire world. Cleopatra's nose: had it been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed.

Types.—When once this secret is disclosed, it is impossible not to see it. Let us read the Old Testament in this light, and let us see if the sacrifices were real; if the fatherhood of Abraham was the true cause of the friendship of God; and if the promised land was the true place of rest. No. They are therefore types. Let us in the same way examine all those ordained ceremonies, all those commandments which are not of charity, and we shall see that they are types. All these sacrifices and ceremonies were then either types or nonsense. Now these are things too clear, and too lofty, to be thought nonsense.

It is glorious to see with the eyes of faith the history of Herod and Cæser.

I see other persons around me of a like nature. I ask them if they are better informed than I am. They tell me that they are not. And thereupon these wretched and lost beings, having looked around them, and seen some pleasing objects, have given and attached themselves to them. For my own part, I have not been able to attach myself to them, and, considering how strongly it appears that there is something else than what I see, I have examined whether this God has not left a sign of Himself.

Types.—The letter kills. All happened in types. Here is the cipher which Saint Paul gives us. Christ must suffer. An humiliated God. Circumcision of the heart, true fasting, true sacrifice, a true temple. The prophets have shown that all these must be spiritual. Not the meat which perishes, but that which does not perish. "Ye shall be free indeed." Then the other freedom was only a type of freedom. "I am the true bread from Heaven."

Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.

What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial.

Typical.—The key of the cipher. Veri adoratores.—Ecce agnus Dei qui tollit peccata mundi.

It was foretold that, in the time of the Messiah, He should come to establish a new covenant, which should make them forget the escape from Egypt (Jer. xxiii, 5; Is. xliii, 10); that He should place His law not in externals, but in the heart; that He should put His fear, which had only been from without, in the midst of the heart. Who does not see the Christian law in all this?