Though, as we have seen, the contemplative state is not the ultimate happiness of man, yet the knowledge of God is essential to salvation Tr. in Ps. cxxxi. 6, ‘The supreme achievement of Christ was to render man, instructed in the knowledge of God, worthy to be God’s dwelling-place;’ cf. ib. § 23.; man, created in God’s image, is by nature capable of, and intended for, such knowledge, and Christ came to impart it, the necessary condition on the side of humanity being purity of mind Tr. in Ps.cxviii, Aleph., § 1., and the result the elevation of man to the life of God. Hilary does not shrink from the emphatic language of the Alexandrian school, which spoke of the ‘deification’ of man; God, he says, was born to be man, in order that man might be born to be God Trin. x. 7.. If this end is to be attained, obviously what is accepted as knowledge must be true; hence the supreme wickedness of heresy, which destroys the future of mankind by palming upon them error for truth; the greater their dexterity the greater, because the more deliberate, their crime. And Hilary was obviously convinced that his opponents had conceived this nefarious purpose. It is not in the language of mere conventional polemics, but in all sincerity, that he repeatedly describes them as liars who cannot possibly be ignorant of the facts which they misrepresent, inventors of sophistical arguments and falsifiers of the text of Scripture, conscious that their doom is sealed, and endeavouring to divert their minds from the thought of future misery by involving others in their own destruction Cf. Tr. in Ps. cxix. 10; Trin. v. 1, 26, vi. 46 ff., viii. 37, &c., &c.. He fully recognises the ability and philosophical learning displayed by them; it only makes their case the worse, and, after all, is merely folly. But it increases the difficulties of the defenders of the Faith. For though man can and must know God, Who, for His part, has revealed Himself, our knowledge ought to consist in a simple acceptance of the precise terms of Scripture. The utmost humility is necessary; error begins when men grow inquisitive. Our capacity for knowledge, as Hilary is never tired of insisting, is so limited that we ought to be content to believe without defining the terms of our belief. For weak as intellect is, language, the instrument which it must employ, is still less adequate to so great a task Trin. iv. 2, xi. 44.. Heresy has insisted upon definition, and the true belief is compelled to follow suit Trin. ii. 2, in vitium vitio coaretamur alieno.. Here again, in the heretical abuse of technical terms and of logical processes, we find a reason for the almost ostentatious simplicity of diction which we often find in Hilary’s pages. He evidently believed that it was possible for us to apprehend revealed truth and to profit fully by it, without paraphrase or other explanation. In the case of one great doctrine, as we shall see, no necessities of controversy compelled him to develope his belief; if he had had his way, the Faith should never have been stated in ampler terms than ‘I believe in the Holy Ghost.’