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583. The feeble-minded are people who know the truth, but only affirm it so
far as consistent with their own interest. But, apart from that, they
renounce it.
584. The world exists for the exercise of mercy and judgement, not as if men
were placed in it out of the hands of God, but as hostile to God; and to
them He grants by grace sufficient light, that they may return to Him, if
they desire to seek and follow Him; and also that they may be punished, if
they refuse to seek or follow Him.
585. That God has willed to hide Himself.--If there were only one religion,
God would indeed be manifest. The same would be the case if there were no
martyrs but in our religion.
God being thus hidden, every religion which does not affirm that God is
hidden is not true; and every religion which does not give the reason of it
is not instructive. Our religion does all this: Vere tu es Deus
absconditus.[102]
586. If there were no obscurity, man would not be sensible of his
corruption; if there were no light, man would not hope for a remedy. Thus,
it is not only fair, but advantageous to us, that God be partly hidden and
partly revealed; since it is equally dangerous to man to know God without
knowing his own wretchedness, and to know his own w
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testimony to be as nothing.
The quality of witnesses necessitates their existence always and everywhere;
and he, miserable creature, is alone.
597. Against Mahomet.--The Koran is not more of Mahomet than the Gospel is
of Saint Matthew, for it is cited by many authors from age to age. Even its
very enemies, Celsus and Porphyry, never denied it.
The Koran says Saint Matthew was an honest man. Therefore Mahomet was a
false prophet for calling honest men wicked, or for not agreeing with what
they have said of Jesus Christ.
598. It is not by that which is obscure in Mahomet, and which may be
interpreted in a mysterious sense, that I would have him judged, but by what
is clear, as his paradise and the rest. In that he is ridiculous. And since
what is clear is ridiculous, it is not right to take his obscurities for
mysteries.
It is not the same with the Scripture. I agree that there are in it
obscurities as strange as those of Mahomet; but there are admirably clear
passages, and the prophecies are manifestly fulfilled. The cases are,
therefore, not on a par. We must not confound and put on one level things
which only resemble each other in their obscurity, and not in the clearness,
which requires us to reverence the obscurities.
599. The difference between Jesus Christ and Mahomet.--Mahomet was not
foretold; Jesus Christ was foretold.
Mahomet slew; Jesus Christ caused His own to be slain.
Mahomet forbade reading; the Apostles ordered reading.
In fact, the two are so opposed that, if Mahomet took the way to succeed
from a worldly point of view, Jesus Christ, from the same point of view,
took the way to perish. And instead of concluding that, since Mahomet
succeeded, Jesus Christ might well have succeeded, we ought to say that,
since Mahomet succeeded, Jesus Christ should have failed.
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I do not need to defend religion, but you do not need to defend error and
injustice. Let God, out of His compassion, having no regard to the evil
which is in me, and having regard to the good which is in you, grant us all
grace that truth may not be overcome in my hands, and that falsehood...
922. Probable.--Let us see if we seek God sincerely, by comparison of the
things which we love. It is probable that this food will not poison me. It
is probable that I shall not lose my action by not prosecuting it...
923. It is not absolution only which remits sins by the sacrament of
penance, but contrition, which is not real if it does not seek the
sacrament.
924. People who do not keep their word, without faith, without honour,
without truth, deceitful in heart, deceitful in speech; for which that
amphibious animal in fable was once reproached, which held itself in a
doubtful position between the fish and the birds...
It is important to kings and princes to be considered pious;