56.  It is the same with the other Mysteries, where moderate minds will ever find an explanation sufficient for belief, but never such as would be necessary for understanding.  A certain what it is ([Greek:  ti esti]) is enough for us, but the how ([Greek:  pos]) is beyond us, and is not necessary for us.  One may say concerning the explanations of Mysteries which are given out here and there, what the Queen of Sweden inscribed upon a medal concerning the crown she had abandoned, ’Non mi bisogna, e non mi basta.’  Nor have we any need either (as I have already observed) to prove the Mysteries a priori, or to give a reason for them; it suffices us that the thing is thus ([Greek:  to hoti]) even though we know not the why ([Greek:  to dioti]), which God has reserved for himself.  These lines, written on that theme by Joseph Scaliger, are beautiful and renowned: 

Ne curiosus quaere causas omnium, Quaecumque libris vis Prophetarum indidit Afflata caelo, plena veraci Deo: Nec operta sacri supparo silentii Irrumpere aude, sed pudenter praeteri. [Page 105] Nescire velle, quae Magister optimus Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est.

M. Bayle, who quotes them (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol.  III, p. 1055), holds the likely opinion that Scaliger made them upon the disputes between Arminius and Gomarus.  I think M. Bayle repeated them from memory, for he put sacrata instead of afflata.  But it is apparently the printer’s fault that prudenter stands in place of pudenter (that is, modestly) which the metre requires.

57.  Nothing can be more judicious than the warning these lines contain; and M. Bayle is right in saying (p. 729) that those who claim that the behaviour of God with respect to sin and the consequences of sin contains nothing but what they can account for, deliver themselves up to the mercy of their adversary.  But he is not right in combining here two very different things, ‘to account for a thing’, and ’to uphold it against objections’; as he does when he presently adds:  ’They are obliged to follow him [their adversary] everywhere whither he shall wish to lead them, and it would be to retire ignominiously and ask for quarter, if they were to admit that our intelligence is too weak to remove completely all the objections advanced by a philosopher.’

58.  It seems here that, according to M. Bayle, ‘accounting for’ comes short of ‘answering objections’, since he threatens one who should undertake the first with the resulting obligation to pass on to the second.  But it is quite the opposite:  he who maintains a thesis (the respondens) is not bound to account for it, but he is bound to meet the objections of an opponent.  A defendant in law is not bound (as a general rule) to prove his right or to produce his title to possession; but he is obliged to reply to the arguments of the plaintiff.