the (maybe)daily bailey

“Without this divine knowledge, how could we help feeling either exalted or dejected? The Christian religion alone has been able to cure these twin vices, not by using one to expel the other according to worldly wisdom, but by expelling both through the simplicity of the gospel. For it teaches the righteous that they still bear the source of all corruption which exposes them throughout their lives to error, misery, death, and sin; and [yet] it cries out to the most ungodly that they are capable of the grace of the Redeemer. Thus, making those who it justifies to tremble, yet consoling those whom it condemns, it so nicely tempers fear with home through this dual capacity… Grace and sin! It causes infinitely more dejection than mere reason - but without despair, and infinitely more exaltation than natural pride - but without puffing us up.”

- Blaise Pascal, Pensées