[Sire]

man who said it, but innumerable
men, and a whole nation expressly made for the purpose and prophesying for
four thousand years. This is a nation which is more ancient than every other
nation. Their books, scattered abroad, are four thousand years old.

The more I examine them, the more truths I find in them: an entire nation
foretell Him before His advent, and an entire nation worship Him after His
advent; what has preceded and what has followed; in short, people without
idols and kings, this synagogue which was foretold, and these wretches who
frequent it and who, being our enemies, are admirable witnesses of the truth
of these prophecies, wherein their wretchedness and even their blindness are
foretold.

I find this succession, this religion, wholly divine in its authority, in
its duration, in its perpetuity, in its morality, in its conduct, in its
doctrine, in its effects. The frightful darkness of the Jews was foretold.
Eris palpans in meridie.144 Dabitur liber scienti literas... et dicet: Non
possum legere.145 While the sceptre was still in the hands of the first
foreign usurper, there is the report of the coming of Jesus Christ.

So I hold out my arms to my Redeemer, who, having been foretold for four
thousand years, has come to suffer and to die for me on earth, at the time
and under all the circumstances foretold. By His grace, I await death in
peace, in the hope of being eternally united to Him. Yet I live with joy,
whether in the prosperity which it pleases Him to bestow upon me, or in the
adversity which He sends for my good, and which He has taught me to