The answer of our prayers is secured by the fact that in rejecting them God would in a certain sense deny His own nature.

The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.

Can true repentance exist without faith? By no means. But although they cannot be separated, they ought to be distinguished.

Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.

As by the revolt of the first man, the image of God could be effaced from his mind and soul, so there is nothing strange in His shedding some rays of grace on the reprobate, and afterwards allowing these to be extinguished.

For it is better, with closed eyes, to follow God as our guide, than, by relying on our own prudence, to wander through those circuitous paths which it devises for us.

We shall never be clothed with the righteousness of Christ except we first know assuredly that we have no righteousness of our own.