“Without divine knowledge,” he says, “what have men been able to do save to exalt themselves in the consciousness of their original greatness, or abase themselves in the view of their present weakness? Unable to see the whole truth, they have never attained to perfect virtue. One class considering nature as incorrupt, another as irreparable, they have been alternately the victims of pride or sensuality—the two sources of all vice. . . . If, in one case, they recognised man’s excellence, they ignored his corruption; and so, in escaping indulgence, they lost themselves in pride. In the other case, in acknowledging his weakness they ignored his dignity, and, while escaping vanity, plunged into despair. Hence the diverse sects of Stoics and Epicureans, of Dogmatists and Academicians, etc. The Christian religion alone can reconcile these discrepancies and cure both evils, not by expelling the one by the other, according to the wisdom of this world, but by expelling both the one and the other by the simplicity of the Gospel. For it teaches the just that while it elevates them even to be partakers of the divine nature, they still carry with them in this lofty state the source of all their corruption, making them during life subjects of error, misery, death, and sin. At the same time, it proclaims to the most impious that they are capable of becoming partakers of a Redeemer’s grace. By thus warning those whom it justifies, and consoling those whom it condemns, it tempers with just measure fear and hope, through the twofold capacity in all of grace and sin; so that it abases infinitely more than reason, yet without producing despair, and exalts infinitely more than natural pride, yet without puffing up,—plainly showing that it alone is exempt from all error and wrong, and possesses the power at once of instructing and correcting men. Who, then, can withhold his belief in this revelation, or refuse to adore its celestial light? For is it not more clear than day that we feel in ourselves the ineffaceable traces of divine excellence? And it is equally clear that we experience every hour the effects of our fall and ruin. What, then, comes to us from all this chaos and wild confusion, in a voice of irresistible conviction, but the irrefragable truth of both those sides of humanity?” {199}