HKB
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Often appears with: worship of one god · the nature and attributes of God · religious persecution and toleration · kingdom of god within · justice as a virtue · christian virtue
Usually: law or decree (1) · censure (1) · exhortation (1)
“And thus mercy is so far from authorising slackness, that it is on the contrary the quality which formally attacks it; so that instead of saying, "If there were no mercy in God we should have to make every kind of effort after virtue," we must say, on the contrary, "that it is because there is mercy in God, that we must make every kind of effort.” Blaise Pascal, Pascal's Pensées · insight
Pascal argues that Christian morality has distinctive laws: hate self and seek the truly lovable being, worship the Universal Being as the sole source and end, and reject religions that omit this.
494 The true religion must teach greatness and misery; must lead to the esteem and contempt of self, to love and to hate. 495 If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God. 496 Experience makes us see an enormous difference between piety and goodness. 497 _Against those who, trusting to the mercy of God, live hee…