rough
analogous qualities in the creature. Were it not that this doctrine has
been frequently denounced of late as an heretical novelty, we should
hardly have thought it necessary to cite authorities in proof of its
antiquity and catholicity. As it is, we will venture to produce a few
only out of many, selecting not always the most important, but those
which can be best exhibited _verbatim_ in a short extract.

CHRYSOSTOM.--_De Incompr. Dei Natura_, Hom. i. 3: "_That_ God is
everywhere, I know; and _that_ He is wholly everywhere, I know; but
the _how_, I know not: _that_ He is without beginning, ungenerated
and eternal, I know; but the _how_, I know not."

BASIL.--Ep. ccxxxiv.: "That God is, I know; but what is His essence
I hold to be above reason. How then am I saved? By faith; and faith
is competent to know that God is, not what He is."

GREGORY NAZIANZEN.--Orat. xxxiv.: "A theologian among the Greeks
[Plato] has said in his philosophy, that to conceive God is
difficult, to express Him is impossible. ... But I say that it is
impossible to express Him, and more impossible to conceive Him."
[Compare Patrick, _Works_, vol. iii., p. 39.]

CYRIL OF JERUSALEM.--Catech. vi. 2: "We declare not what God is,
but candidly confess that we know not accurately concerning Him.
For in those things which concern God, it is great knowledge to
confess our ignorance."

AUGUSTINE.--Enarr. in Psalm, lxxxv. 8: "God is ineffable; we more
easily say what He is not than what He is." Serm, cccxli.: "I call
God just, because in human words I find nothing better; for He is
beyond justice.... What then is worthily said of God? Some one,
perhaps, may reply and say, _that He is just._ But another, with
better understanding, may say that even this word is surpassed by
His excellence, and that even this is said of Him unworthily,
though it be said fittingly according to human capacity."

CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA.--_In Joann. Evang_., 1. ii., c. 5: "For those
things which are spoken concerning it [the Divine Nature] are not
spoken as they are in very truth, but as the tongue of man can
interpret, and as man can hear; for he who sees in an enigma also
speaks in an enigma."

DAMASCENUS.--_De Fide Orthod_., i. 4: "That God is, is manifest;
but what He is in His essence and nature is utterly
incomprehensible and unknown."

AQUINAS.--_Summa_, pars. i., qu. xiii., art. 1: "We cannot so n