re
now no longer in the state in which I formed you. I created man holy,
innocent, perfect. I filled him with light and intelligence. I
communicated to him my glory and my wonders. The eye of man saw then the
majesty of God. He was not then in the darkness which blinds him, nor
subject to mortality and the woes which afflict him. But he has not been
able to sustain so great glory without falling into pride. He wanted to
make himself his own centre, and independent of my help. He withdrew
himself from my rule; and, on his making himself equal to me by the
desire of finding his happiness in himself, I abandoned him to himself.
And setting in revolt the creatures that were subject to him, I made
them his enemies; so that man is now become like the brutes, and so
estranged from me that there scarce remains to him a dim vision of his
Author. So far has all his knowledge been extinguished or disturbed! The
senses, independent of reason, and often the masters of reason, have led
him into pursuit of pleasure. All creatures either torment or tempt him,
and domineer over him, either subduing him by their strength, or
fascinating him by their charms, a tyranny more awful and more
imperious.

"Such is the state in which men now are. There remains to them some
feeble instinct of the happiness of their former state; and they are
plunged in the evils of their blindness and their lust, which have
become their second nature.

"From this principle which I disclose to you, you can recognise the
cause of those contradictions which have astonished all men, and have
divided them into parties holding so different views. Observe, now, all
the feelings of greatness and glory which the experience of so many woes
cannot stifle, and see if the cause of them must not be in another
nature."

_For Port-Royal to-morrow (Prosopopoea)._--"It is in vain, O men, that
you seek within yourselves the remedy for your ills. All your light can
only reach the knowledge that not in yourselves will you find truth or
good. The philosophers have promised you that, and have been unable to
do it. They neither know what is your true good, nor what is your true
state. How could they have given remedies for your ills, when they did
not even know them? Your chief maladies are pride, which takes you away
from God, and lust, which binds you to earth; and they have done nothing
else but cherish one or other of these diseases. If they gave you God as
an end, it was only t