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alone makes man altogether lovable and happy. In
honesty, we cannot perhaps be altogether lovable and happy.

543. Preface.--The metaphysical proofs of God are so remote from the
reasoning of men, and so complicated, that they make little impression; and
if they should be of service to some, it would be only during the moment
that they see such demonstration; but an hour afterwards they fear they have
been mistaken.

Quod curiositate cognoverunt superbia amiserunt.91

This is the result of the knowledge of God obtained without Jesus Christ; it
is communion without a mediator with the God whom they have known without a
mediator. Whereas those who have known God by a mediator know their own
wretchedness.

544. The God of the Christians is a God who makes the soul feel that He is
her only good, that her only rest is in Him, that her only delight is in
loving Him; and who makes her at the same time abhor the obstacles which
keep her back and prevent her from loving God with all her strength.
Self-love and lust, which hinder us, are unbearable to her. Thus God makes
her feel that she has this root of self-love which destroys her, and which
He alone can cure.

545. Jesus Christ did nothing but teach men that they loved themselves, that
they were slaves, blind, sick, wretched, and sinners; that He must deliver
them, enlighten, bless, and heal them; that this would be effected by hating
self, and by following Him through suffering and the death on the cross.

546. Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery; with Jesus Christ
man is free from vice and misery; in Him is all our virtue and all our
happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death,