Now the subject of God is more hard to come
at, cf. Petav. de Deo,
iii., c. 7. in proportion as it is more perfect than any
other, and is open to more objections, and the solutions of them are
more laborious. For every objection, however small, stops and
hinders the course of our argument, and cuts off its further advance,
just like men who suddenly check with the rein the horses in full
career, and turn them right round by the unexpected shock. Thus
Solomon, who was the wisest of all men, 1 Kings iii. 12.
whether before him or in his own time, to whom God gave breadth of
heart, and a flood of contemplation, more abundant than the sand, even
he, the more he entered into the depth, the more dizzy he became, and
declared the furthest point of wisdom to be the discovery of how very
far off she was from him. Ecc. vii. 23. Paul also
tries to arrive at, I will not say the nature of God, for this he knew
was utterly impossible, but only the judgments of God; and since he
finds no way out, and no halting place in the ascent, and moreover,
since the earnest searching of his mind after knowledge does not end in
any definite conclusion, because some fresh unattained point is being
continually disclosed to him (O marvel, that I have a like experience),
he closes his discourse with astonishment, and calls this the riches of
God, Rom. xi. 23. and the depth, and confesses the
unsearchableness of the judgments of God, in almost the very words of
David, who at one time calls God’s judgments the great deep whose
foundations cannot be reached by measure or sense; Ps. xxxvi. 7. and at another says that His knowledge of
him and of his own constitution was marvellous, Ib. cxxxix.
6.
and had attained greater strength than was in his own power or
grasp.