an _O altitudo_! 'Tis my
solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas
and riddles of the Trinity, incarnation, and resurrection. I can answer
all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd
resolution I learnt of Tertullian, _certum est quia impossibile est_.'
He rejoices that he was not an Israelite at the passage of the Red Sea,
or an early Christian in the days of miracles; for then his faith,
supported by his senses, would have had less merit. He loves to puzzle
and confound his understanding with the thoughts that pass the limits of
our intellectual powers: he rejoices in contemplating eternity, because
nobody can 'speak of it without a solecism,' and to plunge his
imagination into the abysses of the infinite. 'When I cannot satisfy my
reason,' he says, 'I love to recreate my fancy.' He recreates it by
soaring into the regions where the most daring metaphysical logic breaks
down beneath us, and delights in exposing his reason to the rude test of
believing both sides of a contradiction. Here, as everywhere, the
strangest freaks of fancy intrude themselves into his sublime
contemplations. A mystic, when abasing reason in the presence of faith,
may lose sight of earthly objects in the splendour of the beatific
vision. But Sir Thomas, even when he enters the holiest shrine, never
quite loses his grasp of the grotesque. Wonder, whether produced by the
sublime or the simply curious, has equal attraction for him. His mind is
distracted between the loftiest mysteries of Christianity and the
strangest conceits of Talmudists or schoolmen. Thus, for example, whilst
eloquently descanting on the submissiveness of his reason, he informs us
(obviously claiming credit for the sacrifice of his curiosity) that he
can read of the raising of Lazarus, and yet refrain from raising a 'law
case whether his heir might lawfully detain his inheritance bequeathed
unto him by his death, and he, though restored to life, have no plea or
title unto his former possessions.' Or we might take the inverse
transition from the absurd to the sublime, in his meditations upon hell.
He begins by inquiring whether the everlasting fire is the same with
that of our earth. 'Some of our chymicks,' it appears, 'facetiously
affirm that, at the last fire, all shall be crystallised and
reverberated into glass,' but, after playing for some time with this and
other strange fancies, he says in a loftier strain, though still