Be silent then, O rebellious and ungrateful creature ; you who this instant reflect on the gifts of God, remember that the very power of reflecting is his gift: when you would murmur at the deprivation of his graces, it is his grace that renders you attentive to the consideration of his favours. Far from murmuring at the author of all blessings, hasten to profit by those, he this instant bestows on you: open your heart, humble your weak judgment, and sacrifice your vain presumptuous reason. O thou vessel of clay, he who formed thee, has a right to break thee; yet far from doing so, lest he should be obliged to it, he threatens thee, out of mercy. I would then, O my God, for ever stifle all such reasonings as tempt me to doubt of thy goodness. I know that thou canst never be but good: I know also that thou hast made thy work like unto thyself, holy, just, and good: but thou hast not deprived man of the liberty of choosing good or evil: thou dost offer him the good; this is sufficient, and I am sure of this, without knowing exactly the manner: but the immutable idea which I have of thee, does not suffer me to doubt it, there can be no reason sufficiently strong, to make me suppose a defect in thee, with regard to any man, whose interior I know not, and is perhaps unknown to himself, for I have abundant reason to convince me, that thou wilt never condemn any man without rendering him inexcusable in his own eyes; this is enough to quiet my mind, and convince me that if I perish, I shall owe my destruction to myself, by resisting, like the Jews, that holy spirit which is the internal grace. O Father of mercy, I will no longer philosophize on thy grace, but silently abandon myself to it: it does all in man, it is by it that I act, and that I forbear, that I suffer, that I believe, that I hope, and that I love: if I obey its influences it will be all

in me, by it I shall effect all, it is it that moves the heart, but in the end the heart must be moved, and thou dost not save man without its co-operation. Therefore it is my business to work without delay, that I may not check that grace which impels me; all the good I have proceeds from it, all the evil from myself; when I do good it is grace that animates me; when I do evil it is because I resist it. God would not that I should know more than this, every thing else would only serve to nourish in me a vain curiosity. O my God, grant that I may always be in the number of those babes, to whom thou revealest these mysteries, that are hidden from the wise and prudent of the world.

Now, O great God, I no longer hesitate at this difficulty, that has so often perplexed my mind, whence comes it that God, so good, has created so many men that he suffers to be lost? Whence comes it that his own son was born and died, yet that his birth and death should be profitable to so few? It is, as I said before, because thou dost leave them in the use of their liberty: thou dost find thy glory in them by thy justice, as thou dost find it in good men by thy mercy: thou dost punish the wicked only because they are wicked in spite of thee, though they had wherewithal to make them good; and thou dost crown the good, only because they are become so by thy grace; thus I see in thee all is justice and goodness. I have already remarked, O eternal wisdom, why so many outward evils are suffered by thee, thy providence draws out of them the greatest good. Weak and ignorant men are offended at them; they lament as if thy cause was abandoned; they are tempted to think that thou seest not what passes. But let these blind and impatient men wait but a little; the

wicked that triumph now, shall not do so long: "for they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither even as the green herb:" Death will bring back all to order. Nothing provokes thee to hasten the destruction of thine enemies; thou art patient, as St Austin says, because thou art eternal; thou knowest the blow is coming that will dash them to pieces; thou holdest thine arm a long time suspended, because thou knowest the weight of it, and that thou art our father, who at the last strikes not but with regret, and out of necessity. Let impatient men then be offended; but as for me, I regard ages but as a minute, because I know ages are less than a minute before thee. That succession of time which we call the duration of the world, is but a scene that disappears, a figure that passes away and vanishes. A little while, O man, who as yet sees nothing; a little while and you shall see what God is preparing; you shall see him with all his enemies under his feet: then the good and the evil shall be separated for ever. In the mean time, all that happens to us, O my God, is thy doing, and for this purpose, that it may turn to our good. We shall, in eternity, by thy light, perceive that which we now desire, would prove fatal to us; and that which we wish to avoid, is essential to our happiness.

O deceitful pleasures, I will no longer call you by that name, since you have only served to make me wretched. O blessed cross, which God lays on me, and with which my weak nature thinks itself overburdened, though the blinded world regards you as an evil, you shall no more be such to me; may I rather be for ever dumb, than speak this accursed language of the world; thou O God, art my true God, it is thou that humblest me, that detachest me from the world, that makest me

feel my misery, and the vanity of all my earthly affections. Blessed be thou, O God of truth, who hast fastened me to the cross with thy son, to make me, like him, the everlasting object of thy love.

Let it not be said, that God does not minutely observe what passes among men; O ye blind that say this, ye know not what God is: as all that is, is only by the communication of his infinity; as all that has understanding has it only by the emanation of his sovereign reason, so all that acts, acts only by the impression of his supreme activity: it is he who does all in all, it is he that every moment of our lives, is the respiration of our breasts, the motion of our limbs, the light of our eyes, the understanding of our minds, and the soul of our souls; all that is in us, life, motion, thought, or will, comes by the impression of that eternal life, power, thought, and will. Wherever fire is, there it burns: we must extinguish it, that it may cease to burn, so active and devouring is it in its nature: thus in God all is action, life, and motion; he is, as the scripture says, "a consuming fire." Wherever he is, he does all; and as he is every where, he does all things, in all places. He makes, as we have seen, a perpetual and constantly renewed creation of bodies, and he is no less every moment a Creator of free and intelligent creatures; he gives them a reason, a will, and in different degrees a good will conformable to his own; for, as St. Paul says, "He worketh in us both to will and to do."

This is then what thou art, O my God, or at least what thou doest in thy works; for no man can approach that source of glory which dazzles our eyes, to comprehend all that thou art in thyself. But thou dost enable me to see and know clearly that thou art all in all, and that thou

makest use even of the evils and imperfections of thy creatures, to bring about what thou hast resolved upon. In the character of the vexatious and impertinent, thou dost torment the faithful soul, that is jealous of liberty in its occcupations, and consequently stands in need of being discomposed, that it may die to the pleasure of freedom and regularity in all its good works. It is thou, O my God, who makest use of slanderous tongues, to tear the reputation of the innocent, who have occasion to add to their innocence the sacrifice of their reputation, which was too dear to them. It is thou, that by the ill offices, and malicious subtleties of envious persons, dost overthrow the prosperity of such of thy servants, as still remain too much attached to that vain prosperity. It is thou that castest into the grave, those to whom life is a continual danger, and death a grace which places them in security. It is thou that dost make the death of these persons a very bitter remedy indeed, but a very salutary one to those who were attached to them by a too lively and tender friendship: thus the same stroke that takes one to save him, detaches the other and prepares him for death, by depriving him of those who were too dear to him. After this manner, O my God, thou dost mercifully shed bitterness on all that is not thee, that our hearts which are formed to love thee, and to live in thy love, may be constrained to return to thee, perceiving that all other support will certainly fail us.

My God, thou art all love, and consequently all jealousy: O jealous God, for so thou dost call thyself, a divided heart provokes thee, but a strayed heart excites thy compassion. Thou art infinite in all, in love, as in wisdom and power. When thou dost love, it is as God: thou dost shake the heavens and the earth, to save what.