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,*<13> we had
better known ourselves; nor had we stood in fear to


* [Greek omitted] "Nosce teipsum."
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's
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 contradic-
tion. Nor needs he any; his actions are not begot
with deliberation; his wisdom naturally knows what's
best: his intellect stands ready fraught with the super-
lative and purest ideas of goodness, consultations, and
election, which are two motions in us, make but one in
him: his actions springing from his power at the first