I love
to lose myself in a mystery, and to pursue my reason to an _O altitudo_!
'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved
enigmas and riddles of the Trinity, with incarnation and resurrection. I
can answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that
odd resolution I learned of Tertullian, _Certum est quia impossibile
est_. I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for
anything else is not faith but persuasion. I bless myself, and am
thankful that I never saw Christ nor His disciples. For then had my
faith been thrust upon me; nor should I have enjoyed that greater
blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not. They only had the
advantage of a noble and a bold faith who lived before the coming of
Christ; and who, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise
a belief and expect apparent impossibilities. And since I was of
understanding enough to know that we know nothing, my reason hath been
more pliable to the will of faith. I am now content to understand a
mystery in an easy and Platonic way, and without a demonstration and a
rigid definition; and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to
stoop unto the lure of faith.
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