the works they accomplish, the space they fill, their very names, are no less limited. Human words can define them; they can be assigned a certain character and reduced to a certain species. But the Divine Substance cannot be defined nor comprehended under any species, nor can it be confined to any place, nor can any name express it. Though nameless, therefore, as St. Denis says, it yet has all possible names, since it possesses in itself all the perfections expressed by these names.
As limited beings, therefore, creatures can be comprehended; but the divine essence, being infinite, is beyond the reach of any created understanding. For that which is limitless, says Aristotle, can only be grasped by an infinite understanding. As a man on the shore beholds the sea, yet cannot measure its depth or vastness, so the blessed spirits and all the elect contemplate God, yet cannot fathom the abyss of His greatness nor measure the duration of His eternity. For this reason also God is represented "seated upon the cherubim,"[1] who, though filled with treasures of divine wisdom, continue beneath His majesty and power, which it is not given them to grasp or understand.
This is what David teaches when he tells us that God "made darkness His covert";[2] or, as the Apostle more clearly expresses it, He "inhabiteth light inaccessible."[3] The prophet calls this light darkness because it dazzles and blinds our human vision. Nothing is more re-
