have caused them to infer the other. The sages
who have said there is only one God have been persecuted, the Jews were
hated, and still more the Christians. They have seen by the light of nature
that if there be a true religion on earth, the course of all things must
tend to it as to a centre.
The whole course of things must have for its object the establishment and
the greatness of religion. Men must have within them feelings suited to what
religion teaches us. And, finally, religion must so be the object and the
centre to which all things tend that whoever knows the principles of
religion can give an explanation both of the whole nature of man in
particular and of the whole course of the world in general.
And on this ground they take occasion to revile the Christian religion,
because they misunderstand it. They imagine that it consists simply in the
worship of a God considered as great, powerful, and eternal; which is
strictly deism, almost as far removed from the Christian religion as
atheism, which is its exact opposite. And thence they conclude that this
religion is not true, because they do not see that all things concur to the
establishment of this point, that God does not manifest Himself to men with
all the evidence which He could show.
But let them conclude what they will against deism, they will conclude
nothing against the Christian religion, which properly consists in the
mystery of the Redeemer, who, uniting in Himself the two natures, human and
divine, has redeemed men from the corruption of sin in order to reconcile
them in His divine person to God.
The Christian religion, then, teaches
.
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