Why should the absolute master of all be more occupied in directing the
interior of a single man than in conducting the remainder of entire
nature? By what caprice would He change something in the heart of a
Courlander or a Biscayan, while He changes nothing in the general laws
which He has imposed upon all the stars.
What a pity to suppose that He is continually making, defacing, and
renewing our sentiments! And what audacity in us to believe ourselves
excepted from all beings! And further, is it not only for those who
confess that these changes are imagined? A Savoyard, a Bergamask, on
Monday, will have the grace to have a mass said for twelve sous; on
Tuesday he will go to the tavern and have no grace; on Wednesday he will
have a co-operating grace, which will conduct him to confession, but he
will not have the efficacious grace of perfect contrition; on Thursday
there will be a sufficing grace which will not suffice, as has been
already said. God will labor in the head of this Bergamask--sometimes
strongly, sometimes weakly, while the rest of the earth will no way
concern Him! He will not deign to meddle with the interior of the
Indians and Chinese! If you possess a grain of reason, reverend fathers,
do you not find this system prodigiously ridiculous?
Poor, miserable man! behold this oak which rears its head to the clouds,
and this reed which bends at its feet; you do not say that efficacious
grace has been given to the oak and withheld from the reed. Raise your
eyes to heaven; see the eternal Demiourgos creating millions of worlds,
which gravitate towards one another by general and eternal laws. See the
same light reflected from the sun to Saturn, and from Saturn to us; and
in this grant of so many stars, urged onward in their rapid course; in
this general obedience of all nature, dare to believe, if you can, that
God is occupied in giving a versatile grace to Sister Theresa, or a
concomitant one to Sister Agnes.
Atom--to which another foolish atom has said that the Eternal has
particular laws for some atoms of thy neighborhood; that He gives His
grace to that one and refuses it to this; that such as had not grace
yesterday shall have it to-morrow--repeat not this folly. God has made
the universe, and creates not new winds to remove a few straws in one
corner of the universe. Theologians are like the combatants in Homer,
who believed that the gods were sometimes armed for and sometimes
against them. Had Homer not been considered a poet, he would be deemed a
blasphemer.
It is Marcus Aurelius who speaks, and not I; for God, who inspires you,
has given me grace to believe all that you say, all that you have said,
and all that you will say.
GRAVE--GRAVITY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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