vulgar, with the content and happiness I conceive therein, is an ample
recompense for all my endeavours, in what part of knowledge soever,
Wisdom is His most beauteous attribute; no man can attain unto it: yet
Solomon pleased God when he desired it. He is wise, because He knows all
things; and He knoweth all things, because He made them all: but His
greatest knowledge is in comprehending that He made not, that is,
Himself. And this is also the greatest knowledge in man. For this do I
honour my own profession, and embrace the counsel even of the devil
himself: had he read such a lecture in paradise, as he did at Delphos, we
had better known ourselves; nor had we stood in fear to know him. I know
God is wise in all, wonderful in what we conceive, but far more in what
we comprehend not; for we behold Him but asquint upon reflex or shadow;
our understanding is dimmer than Moses' eye; we are ignorant of the back
parts or lower side of His divinity; therefore to pry into the maze of
His counsels, is not only folly in man, but presumption even in angels;
like us, they are His servants, not His senators; He holds no counsel,
but that mystical one of the Trinity, wherein though there be three
persons, there is but one mind that decrees without contradiction: nor
needs He any; His actions are not begot with deliberation, His wisdom
naturally knows what is best; His intellect stands ready fraught with the
superlative and purest ideas of goodness; consultation and election,
which are two motions in us, make but one in Him; His action springing
from His power, at the first touch of His will. These are contemplations
metaphysical: my humble speculations have another method, and are content
to trace and discover those expressions he hath left in His creatures,
and the obvious effects of nature; there is no danger to profound these
mysteries, no _sanctum sanctorum_ in philosophy: the world was made to be
inhabited by beasts; but studied and contemplated by man: it is the debt
of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being
beasts; without this, the world is still as though it had not been, or as