Re: Explain This

our religion.

God being thus hidden, every religion which does not affirm that God is
hidden is not true; and every religion which does not give the reason of it
is not instructive. Our religion does all this: Vere tu es Deus
absconditus.[102]

586. If there were no obscurity, man would not be sensible of his
corruption; if there were no light, man would not hope for a remedy. Thus,
it is not only fair, but advantageous to us, that God be partly hidden and
partly revealed; since it is equally dangerous to man to know God without
knowing his own wretchedness, and to know his own wretchedness without
knowing God.

587. This religion, so great in miracles, saints, blameless Fathers, learned
and great witnesses, martyrs, established kings as David, and Isaiah, a
prince of the blood, and so great in science, after having displayed all her
miracles and all her wisdom, rejects all this, and declares that she has
neither wisdom nor signs, but only the cross and foolishness.

For those, who, by these signs and that wisdom, have deserved your belief,
and who have proved to you their character, declare to you that nothing of
all this can change you, and render you capable of knowing and loving God,
but the power of the foolishness of the cross without wisdom and signs, and
not the signs without this power. Thus our religion is foolish in respect to
the effective cause and wise in respect to the wisdom which prepares it.

588. Our religion is wise and foolish. Wise, because it is the most learned
and the most founded on miracles, prophecies, etc. Foolish, because it is
not all this which makes us belong to it. This makes us, indeed, condemn