men who [101] stammeringly have endeavoured to suggest, as far as in them lay, the immobility and the sovereign and eternal efficacy of the understanding, of the will and of the power of God, through the infallibility of divine election and divine relation to all events.  Nothing of all that interferes with my surmise that there is some depth which is hidden from us.’  This passage of Cajetan is all the more notable since he was an author competent to reach the heart of the matter.

49.  Luther’s book against Erasmus is full of vigorous comments hostile to those who desire to submit revealed truths to the tribunal of our reason.  Calvin often speaks in the same tone, against the inquisitive daring of those who seek to penetrate into the counsels of God.  He declares in his treatise on predestination that God had just causes for damning some men, but causes unknown to us.  Finally M. Bayle quotes sundry modern writers who have spoken to the same effect (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, ch. 161 et seq.).

50.  But all these expressions and innumerable others like them do not prove that the objections opposed to faith are so insoluble as M. Bayle supposes.  It is true that the counsels of God are inscrutable, but there is no invincible objection which tends to the conclusion that they are unjust.  What appears injustice on the part of God, and foolishness in our faith, only appears so.  The famous passage of Tertullian (De Carne Christi), ’mortuus est Dei filius, credibile est, quia ineptum est; et sepultus revixit, certum est, quia impossibile’, is a sally that can only be meant to concern appearances of absurdity.  There are others like them in Luther’s book on Freewill in Bondage, as when he says (ch. 174):  ’Si placet tibi Deus indignos coronans, non debet displicere immeritos damnans.’  Which being reduced to more temperate phrasing, means:  If you approve that God give eternal glory to those who are not better than the rest, you should not disapprove that he abandon those who are not worse than the rest.  And to judge that he speaks only of appearances of injustice, one only has to weigh these words of the same author taken from the same book:  ’In all the rest’, he says, ’we recognize in God a supreme majesty; there is only justice that we dare to question:  and we will not believe provisionally [tantisper] that he is just, albeit he has promised us that the time shall come when his glory being revealed all men shall see clearly that he has been and that he is just.’

[102] 51.  It will be found also that when the Fathers entered into a discussion they did not simply reject reason.  And, in disputations with the pagans, they endeavour usually to show how paganism is contrary to reason, and how the Christian religion has the better of it on that side also.  Origen showed Celsus how reasonable Christianity is and why, notwithstanding, the majority of Christians should believe without examination.  Celsus had jeered at the behaviour of Christians, ‘who, willing’, he said, ’neither to listen to your reasons nor to give you any for what they believe, are content to say to you:  Examine not, only believe, or:  Your faith will save you; and they hold this as a maxim, that the wisdom of the world is an evil.’