“Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.” “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 them, bless, and heal them; that this would be effected by hating self, and by following Him through suffering and death on the cross.” “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, dearth, despair.”
“Christianity is strange. It bids man recognize that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would make him terribly abject.” “The knowledge of God without that of man’s misery causes pride. The knowledge of man's misery without that of God causes despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course, because in Him we find both God and our misery.”
“We know God only by Jesus Christ. Without this mediator, all communion with God is taken away; through Jesus Christ we know God. All those who have claimed to know God, and to prove Him without Jesus Christ, have had only weak proofs. But in proof of Jesus Christ we have the prophecies, which are solid and palpable proofs. And these prophecies, being accomplished and proved true by the event, mark the certainty of those truths and, therefore the divinity of Christ. In Him then, and through Him, we know God.” “There are two ways of proving the truths of our religion; one by the power of reason, the other by the authority of him who speaks.”
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