Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: Poinsetta's

is our life, nor our death, nor
God, nor ourselves.
Thus without the Scripture, which has Jesus Christ alone for its object, we
know nothing, and see only darkness and confusion in the nature of God and
in our own nature.
549. It is not only impossible but useless to know God without Jesus Christ.
They have not departed from Him, but approached; they have not humbled
themselves, but...
Quo quisque optimus est, pessimus, si hoc ipsum, quod optimus est, adscribat
sibi.93
550. I love poverty because He loved it. I love riches because they afford
me the means of helping the very poor. I keep faith with everybody; I do not
render evil to those who wrong me, but I wish them a lot like mine, in which
I receive neither evil nor good from men. I try to be just, true, sincere,
and faithful to all men; I have a tender heart for those to whom God has
more closely united me; and whether I am alone, or seen of men, I do all my
actions in the sight of God, who must judge of them, and to whom I have
consecrated them all.
These are my sentiments; and every day of my life I bless my Redeemer, who
has implanted them in me, and who, of a man full of weakness, of miseries,
of lust, of pride, and of ambition, has made a man free from all these evils
by the power of His grace, to which all the glory of it is due, as of myself
I have only misery and error.
551. Dignior plagis quam osculis non timeo quia amo.[94]
552. The Sepulchre of

profoundly ignorant
of themselves; they are not sensible how blind they are; and how little
they can do towards bringing themselves to see spiritual things aright,
and towards putting forth gracious exercises in their own souls. They
are not sensible how remote they are from love to God, and other holy
dispositions, and how dead they are in sin. When they see unexpected
pollution in their own hearts, they go about to wash away their own
defilements, and make themselves clean; and they weary themselves in
vain, till God shows them that it is in vain, and that their help is not
where they have sought it.
But some persons continue wandering in such a kind of labyrinth, ten
times as long as others, before their own experience will convince them
of their insufficiency; and so it appears not to be their own experience
only, but the convincing influence of God's Holy Spirit with their
experience, that attains the effect. God has of late abundantly shown
that He does not need to wait to have men convinced by long and often
repeated fruitless trials; for in multitudes of instances He has made a
shorter work of it. He has so awakened and convinced persons'
consciences, and made them so sensible of their exceeding great
vileness, and given them such a sense of His wrath against sin, as has
quickly overcome all their vain self-confidence, and borne them down
into the dust before a holy and righteous God.
There have been some who have not had great terrors, but have had a very
quick work. Some of those who have not had so deep a conviction of these
things before their conversion, have much more of it afterwards. God has
appeared far from limiting Himself to any certain method in His
proceedings with sinners under legal convictions. In some instances, it
seems easy for our reasoning powers to discern the methods of divine
wisdom, in His dealings with the soul under awakenings; in othe