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| The True Doctrine of God the Creator. The Heretics Pretended to a Knowledge of the Divine Being, Opposed to and Subversive of Revelation. God's Nature and Ways Past Human Discovery. Adam's Heresy.
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Chapter II.—The True
Doctrine of God the Creator. The Heretics Pretended to a Knowledge of
the Divine Being, Opposed to and Subversive of Revelation. God’s
Nature and Ways Past Human Discovery. Adam’s Heresy.
We have now, then, cleared our way to the
contemplation of the Almighty God, the Lord and Maker of the universe.
His greatness, as I think, is shown in this, that from the beginning He
made Himself known: He never hid Himself, but always shone out
brightly, even before the time of Romulus, to say nothing of that of
Tiberius; with the exception indeed that the heretics, and they alone,
know Him not, although they take such pains about Him. They on this
account suppose that another god must be assumed to exist, because they
are more able to censure than deny Him whose existence is so evident,
deriving all their thoughts about God from the deductions of sense;
just as if some blind man, or a man of imperfect vision,2700
| 2700 Fluitantibus
oculis. | chose to assume some other sun of milder and
healthier ray, because he sees not that which is the object of
sight.2701
| 2701 Quem videat non
videt. | There is, O
man, but one sun which
rules2702
this world and even when you think otherwise
of him, he is best and useful; and although to you he may seem too
fierce and baneful, or else, it may be, too sordid and corrupt, he yet
is true to the laws of his own existence. Unable as you are to see
through those laws, you would be equally impotent to bear the rays of
any other sun, were there one, however great and good. Now, you whose
sight is defective2703
in respect of the
inferior god, what is your view of the sublimer One? Really you are too
lenient2704
to your weakness;
and set not yourself to the proof2705
| 2705 In periculum
extenderis. | of things,
holding God to be certainly, undoubtedly, and therefore sufficiently
known, the very moment you have discovered Him to exist, though you
know Him not except on the side where He has willed His proofs to lie.
But you do not even deny God intelligently,2706
you treat of Him ignorantly;2707
nay, you accuse Him
with a semblance of intelligence,2708
whom if you
did but know Him, you would never accuse, nay, never treat of.2709
You give Him His name indeed, but you deny
the essential truth of that name, that is, the greatness which is
called God; not acknowledging it to be such as, were it possible for it
to have been known to man in every respect,2710
would not be greatness. Isaiah even so early, with the clearness of an
apostle, foreseeing the thoughts of heretical hearts, asked, “Who
hath known the mind of the Lord? For who hath been His counsellor? With
whom took He counsel?…or who taught Him knowledge, and showed to
Him the way of understanding?”2711
With whom the
apostle agreeing exclaims, “Oh the depth of the riches both of
the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments,
and His ways past finding out!”2712
“His judgments unsearchable,” as being those of God the
Judge; and “His ways past finding out,” as comprising an
understanding and knowledge which no man has ever shown to Him, except
it may be those critics of the Divine Being, who say, God ought not to
have been this,2713
| 2713 Sic non debuit
Deus. This perhaps may mean, God ought not to have done
this, etc. | and He ought rather
to have been that; as if any one knew what is in God, except the Spirit
of God.2714
Moreover, having
the spirit of the world, and “in the wisdom of God by wisdom
knowing not God,”2715
they seem to
themselves to be wiser2716
than God; because,
as the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, so also the wisdom
of God is folly in the world’s esteem. We, however, know that
“the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of
God is stronger than men.”2717
Accordingly,
God is then especially great, when He is small2718
to
man; then especially good, when not good in man’s judgment; then
especially unique, when He seems to man to be two or more. Now,
if from the very first “the natural man, not receiving the things
of the Spirit of God,”2719
has deemed
God’s law to be foolishness, and has therefore neglected to
observe it; and as a further consequence, by his not having faith,
“even that which he seemeth to have hath been taken from
him”2720
—such as the
grace of paradise and the friendship of God, by means of which he might
have known all things of God, if he had continued in his
obedience—what wonder is it, if he,2721
| 2721 That is, the natural
man, the ψυχικός. |
reduced to his material nature, and banished to the toil of tilling the
ground, has in his very labour, downcast and earth-gravitating as it
was, handed on that earth-derived spirit of the world to his entire
race, wholly natural2722
and heretical as it
is, and not receiving the things which belong to God? Or who will
hesitate to declare the great sin of Adam to have been heresy, when he
committed it by the choice2723
| 2723 Electionem. By this
word our author translates the Greek αἵρεσις. Comp. De
Præscr. Her. 6, p. 245, supra. | of his own will
rather than of God’s? Except that Adam never said to his
fig-tree, Why hast thou made me thus? He confessed that he was led
astray; and he did not conceal the seducer. He was a very rude
heretic. He was disobedient; but yet he did not blaspheme his Creator,
nor blame that Author of his being, Whom from the beginning of his life
he had found to be so good and excellent, and Whom he had
perhaps2724
made his own judge
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