Quesnel: Moral Reflections on the Gospels Vol 1

CHAPTER II.
37
The ambitious man is cruel, and always ready to
sacrifice every thing, even Christ himself, to his pas-
sion. The world is more to be feared when it
flatters, than when it persecutes. It bestows life at
that very time when it thinks it takes it away. The
disgraces of the world contain in them great graces
for those who know how to distinguish and improve
them. Salvation given so freely to these infants,
teaches us that our own must necessarily be the gift
of God. Grace prevents all merit in those whose
will it disposes, as well as in these infants, who could
not possibly will any thing freely.
" 17. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken
by Jeremy the prophet, saying, 18. In Rama was
there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and
great mourning, Rachel weeping for Jier children,
and would not be comforted, because they are not."
Christ makes the cruelty of Herod subservient to
the publication of his birth, to the accomplishment
of his Father's designs, and to the sanctification of
his elect. He reduces within the order of his good-
ness, the greatest disorders of human wickedness.
We are often inconsiderately afflicted at that which
is the real happiness of those we love. To lament
the death of infants, is to lament their salvation. It
is, for the most part, a great gain to mothers thus to
lose their children in their infancy, who might other-
wise, perhaps, prove the occasion of their eternal
loss and damnation, by reason of the bad education
which they might give them, that idolatrous fondness
which they might have for them, and the ambition
and wicked methods which parents use to advance
them in the world. Happy the tears of such mo-