So I do not fall into the sophism refuted by St. Paul, when he
forbids the vase to say to the potter: Why hast thou made me
thus? I do not blame the author of things for having made me an
inharmonious creature, an incoherent assemblage; I could exist
only in such a condition. I content myself with crying out to
him: Why do you deceive me? Why, by your silence, have you
unchained egoism within me? Why have you submitted me to the
torture of universal doubt by the bitter illusion of the
antagonistic ideas which you have put in my mind? Doubt of
truth, doubt of justice, doubt of my conscience and my liberty,
doubt of yourself, O God! and, as a result of this doubt,
necessity of war with myself and with my neighbor! That, supreme
Father, is what you have done for our happiness and your glory;
such, from the beginning, have been your will and your
government; such the bread, kneaded in blood and tears, upon
which you have fed us. The sins which we ask you to forgive, you
caused us to commit; the traps from which we implore you to
deliver us, you set for us; and the Satan who besets us is
yourself.
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