Chapter 26

§ 1.

It is better and more profitable, to be simple and scantily learned, and by love to approach unto God, than while we seem full of learning and experience,¹ to be found blasphemers against our own Lord, inventing another God and Father. And therefore Paul cried out, Knowledge puffeth up, but Charity edifieth: not as blaming the true knowledge of God, otherwise he would be accusing himself in the first place: but because he knew that certain persons lifted up on pretence of knowledge, were falling away from the Love of God, and therefore thought themselves perfect, while they were bringing in an imperfect Creator; cutting off the arrogance they felt from this same knowledge, he saith, Knowledge puffeth up, but Charity edifieth. Now, there can be no greater “puffing up” than this, for a man to think himself better and more perfect than Him Who made and framed him, and gave him the breath of life, and granted him this very thing, To be. Better then is it, as I said before, for one to know nothing at all, no not so much as one single cause why any of the things that are made was made, but to believe God, and so that they should abide in love²;—than to be puffed up by that kind of knowledge, and fall from love which quickens the man;³ better, to search out nothing for knowledge,⁴ save Jesus Christ the Son of God, Who was crucified for us, than by subtle questionings and frivolous talk to fall into impiety⁵.

§ 2.

For what if any one, somewhat elated by these efforts, upon the Lord’s having said,⁶ The very hairs of your head are all numbered, chose curiously to enquire into the number of hairs in each man’s head, and seek out the cause why one has so many hairs, another so many; all not having them alike, but this or that number being found by many thousands above former thousands,⁷ because some men’s heads are greater, others less; and some have always thick heads of hair, others thin, and others again very few hairs; and what if those, who think they have found out the number of men’s hairs, should endeavour to bring the same to bear in attestation of the particular school, which themselves have devised? Or again, should any one, because of this saying in the Gospel,⁸ Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father’s will, want to reckon up the sparrows which are taken every day, or in every place, and to search out the cause why yesterday it was so many, and the day before so many, and to day again so many, which were taken; and should he connect the numbers of the sparrows with his own argument; doth he not altogether deceive himself, and urge those who agree with him into great madness; men being always eager in such things to be thought to have discovered something beyond their teachers?

§ 3.

And what if any one should ask us, “Whether the whole number of all things which have been made, and which are made, is known unto God, and whether by His Providence each one of these numbers received the quantity which properly belongs to it?” and upon our allowing and acknowledging that not one of all the things which have been, and are made, or shall ever be so, escapes the knowledge of God, but that by His Providence each one of them doth and did receive both its form, and order, and number, and quantity; and that nothing at all was or is made vainly or at random, but with great fitness and high consciousness, and there is something admirable and truly divine, in the reason which can both distinguish such things, and set forth their proper causes:—what if he, receiving from us the aforesaid testimony and consent, should proceed so far, as to reckon up the sand, and the pebbles of the earth, yea, also the waves of the sea and the stars of Heaven, and to devise ways of accounting for the number supposed to be found?—shall not such a person be justly affirmed by all who have sense, to be labouring in vain, as a doting and irrational person? And the more entirely beyond all others he is taken up with the aforesaid questions, and the more he thinks he is discovering beyond others, calling the rest unskilful, and untaught, and unspiritual⁹, for not receiving the fruit of his so vain labour, so much the more frantic and senseless is he, like one thunder struck, in nought yielding to God; rather by the knowledge which he thinks he has acquired, he changes¹⁰ perhaps even his God, and darts forth his own opinion beyond the greatness of his Maker.