n an Absolute Being, in whose
nature these conditions and relations, in some manner unknown to us,
disappear in a simple and indivisible unity.

[I] This will be found most distinctly stated in the context
of the extract from Beveridge, and in the citations from
St. Augustine given in his notes; to which may be added
the following from _De Trinitate_, vi. 7:--"Deus vero
multipliciter quidem dicitur magnus, bonus, sapiens,
beatus, verus, et quidquid aliud non indigne dici
videtur; sed eadem magnitudo ejus est quae sapientia,
non enim mole magnus est, sed virtute; et eadem bonitas
quae sapientia et magnitudo, et eadem veritas quae illa
omnia: et non est ibi aliud beatum esse et aliud magnum,
aut sapientem, aut verum, aut bonum esse, aut omnino
ipsum esse."

[J] Compare the remarkable words of Bishop Beveridge,
_l.c._, "And therefore, though I cannot apprehend His
mercy to Abel in the beginning of the world, and His
mercy to me now, but as two distinct expressions of His
mercy, yet as they are in God, they are but one and the
same act,--as they are in God, I say, who is not
measured by time, as our apprehensions of Him are, but
is Himself eternity; a centre without a circumference,
eternity without time."

The most important feature of this philosophical theology, and the one
which exhibits most clearly the practical difference between reason and
faith, is that, in dealing with theoretical difficulties, it does not
appeal to our knowledge, but to our ignorance: it does not profess to
offer a definite solution; it only tells us that we might find one if we
knew all. It does not profess, for example, to solve the apparent
contradiction between God's foreknowledge and man's free will; it does
not say, "This is the way in which God foreknows, and in this way His
foreknowledge is reconcileable with human freedom;" it only says, "The
contradiction is apparent, but need not be real. Freedom is incompatible
with God's foreknowledge, only on the supposition that God's
foreknowledge is like man's: if we knew exactly how the one differs from
the other, we might be able to see that what is incompatible with the one
is not so with the other. We cannot solve the difficulty, but we can
believe that there is a solution."

It is this open acknowledgment of our ignorance of the highest things
whic