Quesnel: Moral Reflections on the Gospels Vol 1

124 ST. MATTHEW.
"31. So the devils besought him, saying, If
thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd
of swine."
The sinner thinks he has injustice done him,
when he is restrained from hurting his neighbour.
He will not see the end of his sins. He imitates
the devil, and does what hes in his power to be at
no loss as to wickedness, by never leaving one sin
but for another. Since the devil can do nothing
but by God's permission, and as the executioner of
his justice, it is this adorable justice which he ought
to fear, and more yet sin, without which justice is
inactive.
" 32. And he said unto them. Go. And when
they were come out, they went into the herd of
swine; and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran
violently down a steep place into the sea, and per-
ished in the waters. 33. And they that kept them
fled, and went their ways into the city, and told
every thing, and what was befallen to the possessed
af the devils."
God hears not the devil and certain sinners, but
only so far as he hears his own justice. Here is an
emblem of the final impenitence, into which the
habitually impure more commonly fall than other
sinners. Christ permits the devils to do that in the
swine^ which he did not permit them to do in the
possessed, on purpose to show us what rage they
would exercise upon us, if God left them at liberty.
How many are the divine favours and benefits, which
we do not consider, and which we know only in general
1 God looks upon temporal riches as of little
or no value. He suffers them ta be lost, sometimes