(Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol.  III, p. 725).  But he takes pains especially to pile up many authorities one upon the other, in order to show that theologians of all parties reject the use of reason just as he does, and that they call attention to such gleams of reason as oppose religion only that they may sacrifice them to faith by a mere [100] repudiation, answering nothing but the conclusion of the argument that is brought against them.  He begins with the New Testament.  Jesus Christ was content to say:  ‘Follow Me’ (Luke v. 27; ix. 59).  The Apostles said:  ‘Believe, and thou shalt be saved’ (Acts xvi. 3).  St. Paul acknowledges that his ‘doctrine is obscure’ (1 Cor. xiii. 12), that ’one can comprehend nothing therein’ unless God impart a spiritual discernment, and without that it only passes for foolishness (1 Cor. ii. 14).  He exhorts the faithful ‘to beware of philosophy’ (Col. ii. 8) and to avoid disputations in that science, which had caused many persons to lose faith.

47.  As for the Fathers of the Church, M. Bayle refers us to the collection of passages from them against the use of philosophy and of reason which M. de Launoy made (De Varia Aristotelis Fortuna, cap. 2) and especially to the passages from St. Augustine collected by M. Arnauld (against Mallet), which state:  that the judgements of God are inscrutable; that they are not any the less just for that they are unknown to us; that it is a deep abyss, which one cannot fathom without running the risk of falling down the precipice; that one cannot without temerity try to elucidate that which God willed to keep hidden; that his will cannot but be just; that many men, having tried to explain this incomprehensible depth, have fallen into vain imaginations and opinions full of error and bewilderment.

48.  The Schoolmen have spoken in like manner.  M. Bayle quotes a beautiful passage from Cardinal Cajetan (Part I, Summ., qu. 22, art. 4) to this effect:  ‘Our mind’, he says, ’rests not upon the evidence of known truth but upon the impenetrable depth of hidden truth.  And as St. Gregory says:  He who believes touching the Divinity only that which he can gauge with his mind belittles the idea of God.  Yet I do not surmise that it is necessary to deny any of the things which we know, or which we see as appertaining to the immutability, the actuality, the certainty, the universality, etc., of God:  but I think that there is here some secret, either in regard to the relation which exists between God and the event, or in respect of what connects the event itself with his prevision.  Thus, reflecting that the understanding of our soul is the eye of the owl, I find the soul’s repose only in ignorance.  For it is better both for the Catholic Faith and for Philosophic Faith to confess our blindness, than to affirm as evident what does not afford our mind the contentment which self-evidence gives.  I do not accuse of presumption, on that account, all the learned