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.
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.
[We must judge soberly of divine ordinances, my father.
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.
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.
_On the miracle._--As God has made no family more happy, let it also be the case that He find none more thankful.
_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 opinion in this Church. But in order to recognise what is true, one has only to look at what has always existed; for it is certain that truth has always existed, and that nothing false has always existed.
The history of the Church ought properly to be called the history of truth.
There is a pleasure in being in a ship beaten about by a storm, when we are sure that it will not founder. The persecutions which harass the Church are of this nature.