without Jesus Christ; it
is communion without a mediator with the God whom they have known without a
mediator. Whereas those who have known God by a mediator know their own
wretchedness.

544. The God of the Christians is a God who makes the soul feel that He is
her only good, that her only rest is in Him, that her only delight is in
loving Him; and who makes her at the same time abhor the obstacles which
keep her back and prevent her from loving God with all her strength.
Self-love and lust, which hinder us, are unbearable to her. Thus God makes
her feel that she has this root of self-love which destroys her, and which
He alone can cure.

545. Jesus Christ did nothing but teach men that they loved themselves, that
they were slaves, blind, sick, wretched, and sinners; that He must deliver
them, enlighten, bless, and heal them; that this would be effected by hating
self, and by following Him through suffering and the death on the cross.

546. Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery; with Jesus Christ
man is free from vice and misery; in Him is all our virtue and all our
happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death,
despair.

547. We know God only by Jesus Christ. Without this mediator, all communion
with God is taken away; through Jesus Christ we know God. All those who have
claimed to know God, and to prove Him without Jesus Christ, have had only^M