speak the things which we have seen and heard." [1] This spirit should be excited within us by these admirable words of St. Paul:
"I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation, to every one that believeth;" [2] sentiments which derive additional force from these words of the same Apostle: " With the heart we believe unto justice; but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." [3]
Christian philosophy superior to human wisdom."In God"] From these words we may learn, how exalted are the dignity and excellence of Christian philosophy, and what a debt of gratitude we owe to the divine goodness; we to whom it is given at once to soar on the wings of faith to the knowledge of a being surpassing in excellence and in whom all our desires should be concentrated. For in this, Christian philosophy and human wisdom differ much; that guided solely by the light of nature, and having made gradual advances by reasoning on sensible objects and effects, human wisdom, after long and laborious investigation, at length reaches with difficulty the contemplation of the invisible things of God, discovers and under stands the first cause and author of all things; whilst on the contrary Christian philosophy so enlightens and enlarges the human mind, that at once and without difficulty it pierces the heavens, and illumined with the splendours of the divinity contemplates first the eternal source of light, and in its radiance all created things; so that with the Apostle we experience with the most exquisite pleasure, "and believing rejoice with joy unspeakable," [4] that "we have been called out of darkness into his admirable light." [5] Justly, therefore, do the faithful profess first to believe in God; whose majesty, with the prophet Jeremiah, we declare "incomprehensible," [6] for, as the Apostle says, "He dwells in light inaccessible, which no man hath seen or can see:" [7] and speaking to Moses, he himself said "No man shall see my face and live." [8] The mind, to be capable of rising to the contemplation of the Deity, whom nothing approaches in sublimity, must be entirely disengaged from the senses; and this the natural condition of man in the present life renders impossible.
Human reason, however, capable of obtaining a knowledge of God from his works."God," however, "left not himself without testimony; doing good from heaven; giving rains and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." [9] Hence it is that philosophers conceived no mean idea of the Divinity; ascribed to him nothing? corporeal, nothing gross, nothing compound; considered him the perfection and fulness of all good; from whom, as from an eternal, inexhaustible fountain of goodness and benignity, flows every perfect gift to all creatures; called him the wise, the author of truth, the loving, the just, the most beneficent; gave him, also, many other appellations expressive of supreme and absolute perfection; and said that his immensity filled every place, and his omnipotence extended to every thing. This the Sacred Scriptures more clearly express, and more fully develope, as in the
