healed without remedies ...

_The ungodly._--No sign has ever happened on the part of the devil
without a stronger sign on the part of God, or even without it having
been foretold that such would happen.

851

Unjust persecutors of those whom God visibly protects. If they reproach
you with your excesses, "they speak as the heretics." If they say that
the grace of Jesus Christ distinguishes us, "they are heretics." If they
do miracles, "it is the mark of their heresy."

Ezekiel.--They say: These are the people of God who speak thus.

It is said, "Believe in the Church";[358] but it is not said, "Believe
in miracles"; because the last is natural, and not the first. The one
had need of a precept, not the other. Hezekiah.

The synagogue was only a type, and thus it did not perish; and it was
only a type, and so it is decayed. It was a type which contained the
truth, and thus it has lasted until it no longer contained the truth.

My reverend father, all this happened in types. Other religions perish;
this one perishes not.

Miracles are more important than you think. They have served for the
foundation, and will serve for the continuation of the Church till
Antichrist, till the end.

The two witnesses.

In the Old Testament and the New, miracles are performed in connection
with types. Salvation, or a useless thing, if not to show that we must
submit to the Scriptures: type of the sacrament.

852

[We must judge soberly of divine ordinances, my father.

Saint Paul in the isle of Malta.]

853

The hardness of the Jesuits, then, surpasses that of the Jews, since
those refused to believe Jesus Christ innocent only because they doubted
if His miracles were of God. Whereas the Jesuits, though unable to doubt
that the miracles of Port-Royal are of God, do not cease to doubt still
the innocence of that house.

854

I suppose that men believe miracles. You corrupt religion either in
favour of your friends, or against your enemies. You arrange it at your
will.

855

_On the miracle._--As God has made no family more happy, let it also be
the case that He find none more thankful.

SECTION XIV

APPENDIX: POLEMICAL FRAGMENTS

856

_Clearness, obscurity._--There would be too great darkness, if truth had
not visible signs. This is a wonderful one, that it has always been
preserved in one Church and one visible assembly [of men]. There would
be too great clearness, if there were only one opi