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for having transported all the vices and follies of earth into heaven. Plato, who has thus justly reproached him, has not hesitated to call him a blasphemer; while we, a hundred times more thoughtless, hardy, and blaspheming than this Greek, who did not understand conventinal language, devoutly accuse God of a thing of which we have never accused the worst of men.

It is said that the king of Morocco, Muley Ismael, had five hundred children. What would you say, if a marabout of Mount Atlas related to you that the wise and good Muley Ismael, dining with his family, at the close of the repast, spoke thus?—

I am Muley Ismael, who have begotten you for my glory, for I am very glorious. I love you very tenderly, I shelter you as a hen covers her chickens; I have decreed that one of my youngest children shall have the kingdom of Tafilet, and that another shall possess Morocco; and for my other dear children, to the number of four hundred and ninety-eight, I order that one half shall be tortured, and the other burnt, for I am the Lord Muley Ismael. You would assuredly take the marabout for the greatest fool that Africa ever produced; but if three or four thousand marabouts, well entertained at your expense, were to repeat to you the same story, what would you do? would you not be tempted to make them fast upon bread and water until they recovered their senses?

You will allege that my indignation is reasonable enough against the supra-lapsarians, who believe that the king of Morocco only begot these five hundred children for his glory; and that he had always the intention to torture and burn them, except two, who were destined to reign.

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But I am wrong, you say, against the infralapsarians, who avow that it was not the first intention of Muley Ismael to cause his children to perish; but, that having foreseen that they would be of no use, he thought that should be

them by torting as a good father in getting rid of

and fire.

Ah, supralapsarians, infralapsarians, free-gracians, sufficers, efficacians, jansenists, and molinists, become

men, and no longer trouble the earth with such absurd and abominable fooleries.

SECTION IV.

Holy consultors of modern Rome, illustrious and infallible theologians, no one has more respect for your divine decisions than myself; but if Paulus Emilius, Scipio, Cato, Cicero, Cæsar, Titus, Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius revisited that Rome to which they formerly did such credit, you must confess that they would be a little astonished at your decisions on grace. What would

they say if they heard speak of healthful grace according to St. Thomas, and medicinal grace according to Cajetan; of exterior and interior grace, of free, sanctifying, co-operating, actual, habitual, and efficacious. grace, which is sometimes inefficacious; of the sufficing which sometimes does not suffice, of the versatile and congruous; would they really comprehend it more than and I? you

What need would these poor people have of your instructions? I fancy I hear them say :

Reverend fathers, you are terrible genii; we foolishly thought that the eternal being never conducted himself by particular laws like vile human beings, but by general laws, eternal like himself. No one among

us ever imagined that God was like a senseless master, who gives an estate to one slave and refuses food to another; who orders one with a broken arm to knead a loaf, and a cripple to be his courier.

All is grace on the part of God; he has given to the globe we inhabit the grace of form; to the trees, the grace of making them grow; to animals, that of feeding them; but will you say, because one wolf finds in his road a lamb for his supper, while another is dying with hunger, that God had given the first wolf a particular grace? Is it a preventive grace to cause one oak to grow in preference to another, in which sap is wanting? If throughout nature all being is submitted to general laws, how can a single species of animals avoid conforming to them?

Why should the absolute master of all be more

VOL. III.

2 M

occupied in directing the interior of a single man than in conducting the remainder of entire nature. By what caprice would he change something in the heart of a Courlander or a Biscayan, while he changes nothing in the general laws which he has imposed upon all the

stars.

What a pity to suppose that he is continually making, defacing, and renewing our sentiments! And what audacity in us to believe ourselves excepted from all beings. And further, is it not only for those who confess that these changes are imagined? A Savoyard, a Bergamask, on Monday, will have the grace to have a mass said for twelve sous; on Tuesday he will go to the tavern and have no grace; on Wednesday he will have a co-operating grace which will conduct him to confession, but he will not have the efficacious grace of perfect contrition; on Thursday there will be a sufficing grace which will not suffice, as has been already said. God will labour in the head of this Bergamask-sometimes strongly, sometimes weakly, while the rest of the earth will no way concern him! He will not deign to meddle with the interior of the Indians and Chinese! If you possess a grain of reason, reverend fathers, do you not find this system prodigiously ridiculous?

Poor miserable man! behold this oak which rears its head to the clouds, and this reed which bends at its feet; you do not say that efficacious grace has been given to the oak, and withheld from the reed. Raise your eyes to heaven; see the eternal Demiourgos creating millions of worlds, which gravitate towards one another by general and eternal laws. See the

same light reflected from the sun to Saturn, and from Saturn to us; and in this grant of so many stars, urged onward in their rapid course; in this general obedience of all nature, dare to believe, if you can, that God is occupied in giving a versatile grace to sister Theresa, or a concomitant one to sister Agnes.

Atom, to which another foolish atom has said, that the Eternal has particular laws for some atoms of thy neighbourhood; that he gives his grace to that one and refuses it to this; that such as had not grace yesterday

God

shall have it to-morrow ;--repeat not this folly. has made the universe, and creates not new winds to remove a few straws in one corner of the universe. Theologians are like the combatants in Homer, who believed that the gods were sometimes armed for and sometimes against them. Was not Homer considered a poet, he would be deemed a blasphemer.

It is Marcus Aurelius that speaks and not I; for God, who inspires you, has given me grace to believe all that you say, all that you have said, and all that you will say.

GRAVE-GRAVITY.

GRAVE, in its moral meaning, always corresponds with its physical one; it expresses something of weight: thus, we say-a person, an author, or a maxim of weight, for a grave person, author, or maxim. The grave is to the serious what the lively is to the agreeable. It is one degree more of the same thing, and that degree a considerable one. A man may be serious by temperament, and even from want of ideas. He is grave, either from a sense of decorum, or from having ideas of depth and importance, which induce gravity. There is a difference between being grave and being a grave man. It is a fault to be unseasonably grave. He who is grave in society is seldom much sought for; but a grave man is one who acquires influence and authority more by his real wisdom than his external carriage.

Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem
Conspexere, silent, adrestisque auribus adstant.
VIRGIL'S Eneid, book i. 151.

If then some grave and pious man appear,
They hush their noise, and lend a listening ear.

DRYDEN.

A decorous air should be always preserved, but a grave air is becoming only in the function of some high and important office, as for example, in council. When gravity consists, as is frequently the case, only in the exterior carriage, frivolous remarks are delivered with a pompous solemnity, exciting at once ridicule and

aversion. We do not easily pardon those who wish to impose upon us by this air of consequence and selfsufficiency.

The duke of Rochefoucauld said, "Gravity is a mysteriousness of body assumed in order to conceal defects of mind."* Without investigating whether the phrase "mysteriousness of body" is natural and judicious, it is sufficient to observe that the remark is applicable to all who affect gravity, but not to those who merely exhibit a gravity suitable to the office they hold, the place where they are, or the business in which they are engaged.

A grave author is one whose opinions relate to matters obviously disputable. We never apply the term to one who has written on subjects which admit no doubt or controversy. It would be ridiculous to call Euclid and Archimedes grave authors.

Gravity is applicable to style. Livy and de Thou have written with gravity. The same observation cannot with propriety be applied to Tacitus, whose object was brevity, and who has displayed malignity; still less can it be applied to cardinal de Retz, who sometimes infuses into his writings a misplaced gaiety, and sometimes even forgets decency.

The grave style declines all sallies of wit or pleasantry if it sometimes reaches the sublime, if on any particular occasion it is pathetic, it speedily returns to the didactic wisdom and noble simplicity which habitually characterise it: it possesses strength without daring. Its greatest difficulty is to avoid monotony.

A grave affair (affaire), a grave case (cas), is used rather concerning a criminal than a civil process. A grave disease implies danger.

GREAT-GREATNESS.

Of the Meaning of these Words.

GREAT is one of those words which are most frequently used in a moral sense, and with the least con

*Shaftesbury, still better, calls "gravity of the essence of imposture."

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