y try to elucidate that which God
willed to keep hidden; that his will cannot but be just; that many men,
having tried to explain this incomprehensible depth, have fallen into vain
imaginations and opinions full of error and bewilderment.

48. The Schoolmen have spoken in like manner. M. Bayle quotes a beautiful
passage from Cardinal Cajetan (Part I, _Summ._, qu. 22, art. 4) to this
effect: 'Our mind', he says, 'rests not upon the evidence of known truth
but upon the impenetrable depth of hidden truth. And as St. Gregory says:
He who believes touching the Divinity only that which he can gauge with his
mind belittles the idea of God. Yet I do not surmise that it is necessary
to deny any of the things which we know, or which we see as appertaining to
the immutability, the actuality, the certainty, the universality, etc., of
God: but I think that there is here some secret, either in regard to the
relation which exists between God and the event, or in respect of what
connects the event itself with his prevision. Thus, reflecting that the
understanding of our soul is the eye of the owl, I find the soul's repose
only in ignorance. For it is better both for the Catholic Faith and for
Philosophic Faith to confess our blindness, than to affirm as evident what
does not afford our mind the contentment which self-evidence gives. I do
not accuse of presumption, on that account, all the learned men who [101]
stammeringly have endeavoured to suggest, as far as in them lay, the
immobility and the sovereign and eternal efficacy of the understanding, of
the will and of the power of God, through the infallibility of divine
election and divine relation to all events. Nothing of all that interferes
with my surmise that there is some depth which is hidden from us.' This
passage of Cajetan is all the more notable since he was an author competent
to reach the heart of the matter.

49. Luther's book against Erasmus is full of vigorous comments hostile to
those who desire to submit revealed truths to the tribunal of our reason.
Calvin often speaks in the same tone, against the inquisitive daring of
those who seek to penetrate into the counsels of God. He declares in his
treatise on predestination that God had just causes for damning some men,
but causes unknown to us. Finally M. Bayle quotes sundry modern writers who
have spoken to the same effect (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_,
ch. 161 et seq.).

50. But all these expressions and