ntrary words and sentences to produce their fruit in time.

So in morals He gives charity, which produces fruits contrary to lust.

579

Nature has some perfections to show that she is the image of God, and
some defects to show that she is only His image.

580

God prefers rather to incline the will than the intellect. Perfect
clearness would be of use to the intellect, and would harm the will. To
humble pride.

581

We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not
God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship; and
still less must we love or worship its opposite, namely, falsehood.

I can easily love total darkness; but if God keeps me in a state of
semi-darkness, such partial darkness displeases me, and, because I do
not see therein the advantage of total darkness, it is unpleasant to me.
This is a fault, and a sign that I make for myself an idol of darkness,
apart from the order of God. Now only His order must be worshipped.

582

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.

583

The world exists for the exercise of mercy and judgment, 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.

584

_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._

585

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 wretchedness without
knowing God.

586

This religion, so great in miracles, saints, blameless Fathers, learned
and great witnesses, martyrs, established kings as David, and Isaiah, a
pri