prehend. 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;
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