A conscience that is only sluggish, may submit to truth when it happens to meet with it: but a conscience under the seductions of passion, will not s… - Alexandre Vinet

We feel the necessity of deceiving ourselves, of even grossly deceiving ourselves, and of believing, when we are doing wrong, that we are doing right. When we do not succeed in reaching such persuasion, merely by sounding our own reason and conscience, we look about for something or some person to aid us in the attempt.

The point of departure, the datum of the whole chapter, is this. "Man is made to know the truth: he desires it ardently, he searches for it; yet when he tries to seize it, he is so dazzled and confounded, that he gives occasion to dispute his possession of it. It is this that has given birth to the two sects of Pyrrhonists and Dogmatists, the former of whom have wished to take away from man all knowledge of the truth, the latter strive to assure him of it; but each with reasons so little truth-like, that they increase the confusion and embarrassment of man, as long as he has no other light than that which he finds in his own nature." p. 131

Perhaps the view of the harmony reestablished in a soul — I say in one only — by the doctrine of redemption, is the proof that Christianity is the remedy devised of God to put an end to our internal discordances. Perhaps, in a word, in these observations dwells a sufficient demonstration, a complete apology. But Pascal does not consider the demonstration as even commenced which he has in view, because that demonstration is calculated for the requirements of pure reason. He only believes that what he has said is fitted to dispose his hearers to listen with good-will, and even with a lively interest, to what he has still to say. p. 48