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224 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
more it is against humane reason. It it were according
unto reason, it were no more a wonder; and were
it to be matched, it were no more singular. Melius
scitur Deus nesciendo, ' God is better knowen by our
not knowing him/ saith S. Augustine: and Tacitus,
Sanctius est ac reverentius de actis deorum credere quam
scire : ¹ i It is a course of more holinesse and reverence
to hold beleefe than to have knowledge of Gods actions.'
And Plato deemes it to be a vice of impiety overcuriously
to enquire after God, after the world, and
after the first causes of things. Atque ilium quidem
parentem hujus universitatts mvenire, difficile; et quum
jam inveneris, indicare in vulgus, nefas: 2 'Both it is
difficult to finde out the father of this universe, and
when you have found him, it is unlawfull to reveale
Him to the vulgar/ saith Cicero. We easily pronounce
puissance, truth, and justice; they be words importing
some great matter, but that thing we neither see nor
conceive. We say that God feareth, that God will be
angry, and that God loveth.
Immortalia mortali sermone notantes,²
Who with tearmes of mortality
Note things of immortality.
They be all agitations and motions, which according
to our forme can have no place in God, nor we imagine
them according to his. It onely belongs to God to
know himselfe and interpret his owne workes ; and in
our tongues he doth it improperly, to descend and come
downe to us, that are and lie groveling on the ground.
How can wisdome (which is the choice betweene good
and evill) beseeme him, seeing no evill doth touch him ?
How reason and intelligence, which we use to come
from obscure to apparant things, seeing there is no
obscure thing in God? Justice, which distributeth
unto every man what belongs unto him, created for
the society and conversation of man, how is she in
1 TACITUS, Mor, German, ² CIC. de Univer, Fragm.
³ LUOR. 1. v. 122.