Re: Seo , Search Engine Optimizer , Seo Search engine Optimization , search engine optimization services, SEO Consulting
Se0 Guy
them; but we will follow the thoughts of our hearts"; and they have said,
"We will be as the other nations."
904. They make a rule of exception.
Have the men of old given absolution before penance? Do this as exceptional.
But of the exception you make a rule without exception, so that you do not
even want the rule to be exceptional.
905. On confessions and absolutions without signs of regret.
God regards only the inward; the Church judges only by the outward. God
absolves as soon as He sees penitence in the heart; the Church when she sees
it in works. God will make a Church pure within, which confounds, by its
inward and entirely spiritual holiness, the inward impiety of proud sages
and Pharisees; and the Church will make an assembly of men whose external
manners are so pure as to confound the manners of the heathen. If there are
hypocrites among them, but so well disguised that she does not discover
their venom, she tolerates them; for, though they are not accepted of God,
whom they cannot deceive, they are of men, whom they do deceive. And thus
she is not dishonoured by their conduct, which appears holy. But you want
the Church to judge neither of the inward, because that belongs to God
alone, nor of the outward, because God dwells only upon the inward; and
thus, taking away from her all choice of men, you retain in the Church the
most dissolute and those who dishonour her so greatly that the synagogues of
the Jews and sects of philosophers would have banished them as unworthy and
have abhorred them as impious.
906. The easiest conditions to live in according to the world are the most
difficult to live in according to God, and vice versa. Nothing is so
difficult according to the world as the religious life; nothing is easier
than to live it according to God. Nothing is easier, according to the world,
than to live in high office and great wealth; nothing is m
Se0 Guy
the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see
nothing but infinites on all sides, which surround me as an atom and as a
shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is
that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I
cannot escape.
"As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that,
in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilation or into the
hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall
be for ever assigned. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty.
And from all this I conclude that I ought to spend all the days of my life
without caring to inquire into what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find
some solution to my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor take a step
to seek it; and after treating with scorn those who are concerned with this
care, I will go without foresight and without fear to try the great event,
and let myself be led carelessly to death, uncertain of the eternity of my
future state."
Who would desire to have for a friend a man who talks in this fashion? Who
would choose him out from others to tell him of his affairs? Who would have
recourse to him in affliction? And indeed to what use in life could one put
him?
In truth, it is the glory of religion to have for enemies men so
unreasonable; and their opposition to it is so little dangerous that it
serves, on the contrary, to establish its truths. For the Christian faith
goes mainly to establish these two facts: the corruption of na