In my solitary and retired imagination, I remember I am not alone, and
therefore forget not to contemplate Him and His attributes who is ever
with me, especially those two mighty ones, His wisdom and eternity; with
the one I recreate, with the other I confound my understanding: for who
can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an
ecstasy? Time we may comprehend. It is but five days older than
ourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world; but to retire so
far back as to apprehend a beginning, to give such an infinite start
forwards as to conceive an end in an essence that we affirm hath neither
the one nor the other, it puts my reason to St. Paul's sanctuary. My
philosophy dares not say the angels can do it; God hath not made a
creature that can comprehend Him; it is a privilege of His own nature. 'I
am that I am,' was His own definition unto Moses; and it was a short one,
to confound mortality, that durst question God, or ask Him what He was;
indeed He only is; all others have been and shall be. But in eternity
there is no distinction of tenses; and therefore that terrible term,
predestination, which hath troubled so many weak heads to conceive, and
the wisest to explain, is in respect to God no prescious determination of
our estates to come, but a definitive blast of His will already
fulfilled, and at the instant that He first decreed it; for to His
eternity which is indivisible, and altogether, the last trump is already
sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed in Abraham's bosom.
That other attribute wherewith I recreate my devotion is His wisdom, in
which I am happy; and for the contemplation of this only, do not repent
me that I was bred in the way of study: the advantage I have of the
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
it was before the sixth day, when as yet there was not a creature that
could conceive, or say there was a world. The wisdom of God receives
small honour from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a
gross rusticity admire His works; those highly magnify Him, whose
judicious inquiry into His acts, and deliberate research into His
creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration. Therefore
Search where thou wilt, and let thy reason go
To ransom truth even to th' abyss below;
Rally the scattered causes: and that line
Which nature twists, be able to untwine;
It is thy Maker's will, for unto none,
But unto reason can He e'er be known.