with them. God would not have concealed them from thee if He had wished thee to know them.”
Hence it is great presumption to pry into them. In royal courts what is debated on in privy council is kept secret most religiously, and no one is allowed to hear a syllable of it; it is in fact considered treasonable to try to find out any of those secrets. Majolinus writes of a merchant who on one occasion gave vent to his curiosity merely by saying: oh, how I should like to see the council chamber of the Turkish sovereign. These few words, being carried to the authorities, cost the unfortunate merchant his life. And what would be done to a stable-boy who should dare to enter the bed-chamber of his king, or even to tamper with his seneschal in order to find out state secrets? He would be sentenced to death as a traitor of the worst kind, and would be quartered alive. Now if it is such a crime in the eyes of men to meddle with the secrets of earthly potentates, which after all cannot always be kept so private that they are not somehow or other brought to light, how deserving of punishment must not that curiosity be which inspires a poor, miserable mortal with the audacity to enter with his fault-finding and murmuring into the council-chamber of the great Monarch of heaven, there to pry into hidden decrees of Providence that God does not wish any man to know?
We must humbly acknowledge our ignorance in this respect. Therefore we must in this respect humbly acknowledge with Salvianus: “I can always and with reason say that I know not the secret, and the divine decrees are hidden from me.”[1] Hence if any dispensation of Providence seems strange to me, and I begin to doubt of its justice, I cannot think anything more reason able than: I know not the secret; I do not understand the divine decrees. And if any one asks me why God has ordained or permitted this or that; why the wicked man is rich, the good man poor and despised; why the poor laborer has many children, the mighty prince none; I can give no better answer than to say: I know not; the decrees of God are beyond my understanding; nor do I now wish to know them, since God is not pleased that I should do so. Nor is this ignorance unbecoming even to the most learned and the wisest of men; for it is necessary to know what we can and ought to know, but it is presumption and folly to seek to find out what is beyond our ken. Livia, the wife of Octavianus Augustus, being asked how she gained the favor of
- ↑ Possum constanter et rationabiliter dicere: nescio secretum, et consilium divinitatis ignoro.
