Re: Re: don't even try to contemplate the passions later, restrict them alone
Hakeem Jbilou Al Nami
administer to your pride; they made you think that you are by nature like
Him and conformed to Him. And those who saw the absurdity of this claim put
you on another precipice, by making you understand that your nature was like
that of the brutes, and led you to seek your good in the lusts which are
shared by the animals. This is not the way to cure you of your
unrighteousness, which these wise men never knew. I alone can make you
understand who you are...."
Adam, Jesus Christ.
If you are united to God, it is by grace, not by nature. If you are humbled,
it is by penitence, not by nature.
Thus this double capacity...
You are not in the state of your creation.
As these two states are open, it is impossible for you not to recognise
them. Follow your own feelings, observe yourselves, and see if you do not
find the lively characteristics of these two natures. Could so many
contradictions be found in a simple subject?
Incomprehensible. Not all that is incomprehensible ceases to exist. Infinite
number. An infinite space equal to a finite.
Incredible that God should unite Himself to us. This consideration is drawn
only from the sight of our vileness. But if you are quite sincere over it,
follow it as far as I have done and recognise that we are indeed so vile
that we are incapable in ourselves of knowing if His mercy cannot make us
capable of Him. For I would know how this animal, who knows himself to be so
weak, has the right to measure the mercy of God and set limits to it,
suggested by his own fancy. He has so little knowledge of what God is that
he does not know what he himself is, and, completely disturbed at the sight
of his own state, dares to say that God cannot make him capable of communion
with Him.
But I would ask him if God demands anything else from him than the knowledge
and love of Him,
Hakeem Jbilou Al Nami
should we have faith? Is there a greater distance between infidelity and
faith than between faith and virtue?
Merit. This word is ambiguous.
Meruit habere Redemptorem.78
Meruit tam sacra membra tangere.79
Digno tam sacra membra tangere.80
Non sum dignus.81
Qui manducat indignus.82
Dignus est accipere.83
Dignare me.84
God is only bound according to His promises. He has promised to grant
justice to prayers; He has never promised prayer only to the children of
promise.
Saint Augustine has distinctly said that strength would be taken away from
the righteous. But it is by chance that he said it; for it might have
happened that the occasion of saying it did not present itself. But his
principles make us see that, when the occasion for it presented itself, it
was impossible that he should not say it, or that he should say anything to
the contrary. It is then rather that he was forced to say it, when the
occasion presented itself, than that he said it, when the occasion presented
itself, the one being of necessity, the other of chance. But the two are all
that we can ask.
514. "Work out your own salvation with fear."
Proofs of prayer. Petenti dabitur.[85]
Therefore it is in our power to ask. On the other hand, there is God. So it
is not in our power, since the obtaining of (the grace) to pray to Him is
not in our power. For since salvation is not in us, and the obtaining of
s
Hakeem Jbilou Al Nami
been the test of Christians, saints, innocents, and true believers.
A miracle among schismatics is not so much to be feared; for schism, which
is more obvious than a miracle, visibly indicates their error. But, when
there is no schism and error is in question, miracle decides.
Si non fecissem quae alius non fecit.214 The wretches who have obliged us to
speak of miracles.
Abraham and Gideon confirm faith by miracles.
Judith. God speaks at last in their greatest oppression.
If the cooling of love leaves the Church almost without believers, miracles
will rouse them. This is one of the last effects of grace.
If one miracle were wrought among the Jesuits!
When a miracle disappoints the expectation of those in whose presence it
happens, and there is a disproportion between the state of their faith and
the instrument of the miracle, it ought--then to induce them to change. But
with you it is otherwise. There would be as much reason in saying that, if
the Eucharist raised a dead man, it would be necessary for one to turn a
Calvinist rather than remain a Catholic. But when it crowns the expectation,
and those, who hoped that God would bless the remedies, see themselves
healed without remedies.
The ungodly.--No sign has ever happened on the part of the devil without a
stronger sign on the part of God, or even without it having been foretold
that such would happen.
852. Unjust persecutors of those whom God