He made them all:  but His greatest knowledge is in comprehending that He made not, that is, Himself.  And this is also the greatest knowledge in man.  For this do I honour my own profession, and embrace the counsel even of the devil himself:  had he read such a lecture in paradise, as he did at Delphos, we had better known ourselves; nor had we stood in fear to know him.  I know God is wise in all, wonderful in what we conceive, but far more in what we comprehend not; for we behold Him but asquint upon reflex or shadow; our understanding is dimmer than Moses’ eye; we are ignorant of the back parts or lower side of His divinity; therefore to pry into the maze of His counsels, is not only folly in man, but presumption even in angels; like us, they are His servants, not His senators; He holds no counsel, but that mystical one of the Trinity, wherein though there be three persons, there is but one mind that decrees without contradiction:  nor needs He any; His actions are not begot with deliberation, His wisdom naturally knows what is best; His intellect stands ready fraught with the superlative and purest ideas of goodness; consultation and election, which are two motions in us, make but one in Him; His action springing from His power, at the first touch of His will.  These are contemplations metaphysical:  my humble speculations have another method, and are content to trace and discover those expressions he hath left in His creatures, and the obvious effects of nature; there is no danger to profound these mysteries, no sanctum sanctorum in philosophy:  the world was made to be inhabited by beasts; but studied and contemplated by man:  it is the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this, the world is still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive, or say there was a world.  The wisdom of God receives small honour from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire His works; those highly magnify Him, whose judicious inquiry into His acts, and deliberate research into His creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration.  Therefore

   Search where thou wilt, and let thy reason go
   To ransom truth even to th’ abyss below;
   Rally the scattered causes:  and that line
   Which nature twists, be able to untwine;
   It is thy Maker’s will, for unto none,
   But unto reason can He e’er be known.

ON THE SPIRIT OF GOD