serve us; as in
nature walls can kill us, and stairs can kill us, if we do not walk
circumspectly.

The least movement affects all nature; the entire sea changes because of
a rock. Thus in grace, the least action affects everything by its
consequences; therefore everything is important.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and
future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of
all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

506

Let God not impute to us our sins, that is to say, all the consequences
and results of our sins, which are dreadful, even those of the smallest
faults, if we wish to follow them out mercilessly!

507

The spirit of grace; the hardness of the heart; external circumstances.

508

Grace is indeed needed to turn a man into a saint; and he who doubts it
does not know what a saint or a man is.

509

_Philosophers._--A fine thing to cry to a man who does not know himself,
that he should come of himself to God! And a fine thing to say so to a
man who does know himself!

510

Man is not worthy of God, but he is not incapable of being made worthy.

It is unworthy of God to unite Himself to wretched man; but it is not
unworthy of God to pull him out of his misery.

511

If we would say that man is too insignificant to deserve communion with
God, we must indeed be very great to judge of it.

512

It is, in peculiar phraseology, wholly the body of Jesus Christ, but it
cannot be said to be the whole body of Jesus Christ.[191] The union of
two things without change does not enable us to say that one becomes the
other; the soul thus being united to the body, the fire to the timber,
without change. But change is necessary to make the form of the one
become the form of the other; thus the union of the Word to man. Because
my body without my soul would not make the body of a man; therefore my
soul united to any matter whatsoever will make my body. It does not
distinguish the necessary condition from the sufficient condition; the
union is necessary, but not sufficient. The left arm is not the right.

Impenetrability is a property of matter.

Identity _de numers_ in regard to the same time requires the identity of
matter.

Thus if God united my soul to a body in China, the same body, _idem
numero_, would be in China.

The same river which runs there is _idem numero_ as that which runs at
the same time in China.