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 that one need not love God at all if one obeyed His other commands. God, he argued, wants us to love Him simply in order that we may obey His laws. If, then, we can obey Him without love, He would be unreasonable to insist upon a different motive. Queen Victoria, we may say, may demand obedience from her subjects, but she does not claim a legal right to their personal affection. That singular avowal rouses Pascal to one of those passages which score an indelible brand upon the adversary. The love of God was the great commandment, and the Jesuits have succeeded in explaining it away and paying God compliments for not enforcing so harsh a law.

Here we reach Pascal's fundamental point: To be good is to love God. The sinner's heart, then, must be changed; not the correct blood fee paid for a homicide. No mere external operation can avail to reconcile man to God. Then, we may infer, dipping a baby in water will not avert damnation? From that conclusion, which appears to be plausible, Pascal recoiled, though he saw the difficulty. We shall see his answer. Meanwhile, another perplexity follows. You demand a change of heart: but how can the heart be changed? Can a being change not only his conduct but himself?