ing; how then can you pretend to criticise the language of Divine Providence, which is much above your comprehension? How can you think or dare to ask whether all that God has done is done well and wisely? With reason therefore does the Apostle reprove you: “O man, who art thou that repliest against God,” or darest to examine His hidden decrees? “Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus?”[1]
Nor should they understand them. Did God perhaps consult you when He instituted His all-wise arrangements about yourself and all His creatures? It would be gross insolence and presumption for a subject to presume to investigate or to understand the reason of all the commands, prohibitions, and actions of his prince or king. You do not even tell your neighbor or fellow-citizen, your own equal, your private designs, or why you have made this or that arrangement in your household; and if he were to ask you about those things you would at once tell him to mind his own business, and remind him that you are master in your own house and can do therein what you please. Yet you are presumptuous enough to investigate the reasons which the great common Father of all has in dealing with His vast household, the world! And you expect Him to disclose all His secrets to you, and to explain why He has done so and not otherwise! Remember what you are; forget not that you are a mere mortal, and acknowledge humbly that the wisdom displayed by God in His works is altogether too high for you to understand it.
We cannot understand many natural things, much less the hidden decrees of God. Such was the reproof given by the angel to Esdras, who was trying in thought to investigate the hidden decrees of the Almighty: “Dost thou think to understand the way of the Most High?” said the angel. Poor mortal that thou art! “go and weigh for me the weight of fire, or measure for me the breath of the wind. If I were to ask thee how many dwellings there are in the depths of the sea, or how many veins there are over the firmament,”[2] wouldst thou answer me? Thou wouldst reply to me perhaps: I have never descended into the abyss, nor mounted up to the heights of heaven. Now I have only asked thee about the fire and wind, things of which thou hast daily experience. If thou canst not understand what thou seest and
- ↑ Numquid dicit figmentum ei qui se finxit: quid me fecisti sic?—Rom. ix. 20.
- ↑ Comprehendere cogitas viam Altissimi. Vade, pondera mihi ignis pondus, aut mensura mihi flatum venti. Si essem interrogans te, dicens: Quantæ habitationes sunt in corde maris, aut quantæ venæ sunt super firmamentum.—IV. Esdr. iv. 2, 5, 7.
