profusion of unnecessary scruples and objections.

Here I could observe, HERMIPPUS, that PHILO was a little embarrassed and
confounded: But while he hesitated in delivering an answer, luckily for
him, DEMEA broke in upon the discourse, and saved his countenance.

Your instance, CLEANTHES, said he, drawn from books and language, being
familiar, has, I confess, so much more force on that account: but is
there not some danger too in this very circumstance; and may it not
render us presumptuous, by making us imagine we comprehend the Deity, and
have some adequate idea of his nature and attributes? When I read a
volume, I enter into the mind and intention of the author: I become him,
in a manner, for the instant; and have an immediate feeling and
conception of those ideas which revolved in his imagination while
employed in that composition. But so near an approach we never surely can
make to the Deity. His ways are not our ways. His attributes are perfect,
but incomprehensible. And this volume of nature contains a great and
inexplicable riddle, more than any intelligible discourse or reasoning.

The ancient PLATONISTS, you know, were the most religious and devout of
all the Pagan philosophers; yet many of them, particularly PLOTINUS,
expressly declare, that intellect or understanding is not to be ascribed
to the Deity; and that our most perfect worship of him consists, not in
acts of veneration, reverence, gratitude, or love; but in a certain
mysterious self-annihilation, or total extinction of all our faculties.
These ideas are, perhaps, too far stretched; but still it must be
acknowledged, that, by representing the Deity as so intelligible and
comprehensible, and so similar to a human mind, we are guilty of the
grossest and most narrow partiality, and make ourselves the model of the
whole universe.