o 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, and why, since his nature is capable of love
and knowledge, he believes that God cannot make Himself known and loved
by him. Doubtless he knows at least that he exists, and that he loves
something. Therefore, if he sees anything in the darkness wherein he is,
and if he finds some object of his love among the things on earth, why,
if God impart to him some ray of His essence, will he not be capable of
knowing and of loving Him in the manner in which it shall please Him to
communicate Himself to us? There must then be certainly an intolerable
presumption in arguments of this sort, although they seem found