Foreword

The following lines complete a sentence from the previous page: "...unworthy of having the things precisely necessary..."
unworthy of having the things precisely necessary, if their hearts did not greatly deceive them.

p Revelation 3: v. 17

But because they do not know this deceit of their hearts, they believe that all is well in their souls, p and that they are already regenerated when they merely have the desire to be so; as there are even many in this belief among the Children of God, to whom I address this Foreword joined to the letter written to a person who did not know the deceit of her own heart, so that they may become wise through the faults of another, and that they no longer let themselves be deceived by their own thoughts, believing themselves to have arrived at Christian perfection, which they do not possess: q for very few
q Jeremiah 17: v. 9, 10

people live in the world who know the Deceit of their hearts and the Malice and Ignorance of their Corrupted Nature, which is so burdened with vices and imperfections that she The author personifies "Nature" as a feminine entity, following the French gender la Nature, characterizing it as a deceptive force. could not entirely reveal them without a singular light from God, which makes one see the interior things hidden in the depths of the heart: seeing that without this Divine light, man commits all sorts of evils, r when he believes he is doing everything well, because from Corrupted Nature s no good can ever emerge—a fact that men do not recognize, because of the deceit of their hearts.
r Proverbs 16: v. 25

This is why I want to show the CHILDREN OF GOD the Corruption of their Nature before teaching them the practice of the Gospel life, which one cannot embrace before