Quesnel: Moral Reflections on the Gospels Vol 1

CHAPTER XIII.
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gift prepares us for another : he who, by a holy kind
of usury, improves them for his Master, enriches
himself.
" 13. Therefore speak I to them in parables
because they seeing, see not ; and hearing, they hear
not; neither do they understand.'^
Blindness is a punishment of sin, and the source
of a great many. Obscurity, which exercises the
faith, excites the desires, and increases the prayers
of true Christians, serves to punish the incredulity,
distaste, and slothfulness of others. In order to
profit by the word of God, it is necessary, before we
read or hear it, to beg of him the seeing eye and the
liearing ear ; namely, a heart which may understand
and love the truth.
" 14. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of
Esaias, which saith. By hearing ye shall hear, and
shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and
shall not perceive :"
Let us take warning from the blindness and hard-
ness of these wretches, for fear lest this prophecy
should again be fulfilled in us. God makes known
his judgments, that they may be avoided; but this
knowledge becomes an occasion of condemnation, if
men are not the better for it.
" 15. For this people's heart is waxed gross, and
their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have
closed ; lest at any time they should see with their
eyes, and hear with their ears, and should under-
stand with their heart, and should be converted, and
I should heal them."
An affection to worldly things, a forgetfulness of
divine, a disrelish of God's word, and a spirit of con-