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Ecc_7:24 That which is far off, and exceeding deep, who can find it out?
Ver. 24. That which is far of and exceeding deep.] Not the minions of the muses, Mentemque habere queis bonam, et esse corculis datum est. {a} For though they should eviscerate themselves, like spiders, crack their sconces, or study themselves to death, yet can they not "understand all mysteries and all knowledge" {1Co_13:2} in natural things, how much less in supernatural! whereas weak sighted and sand blind persons, the more they strain their eyes to discern a thing perfectly, the less they see of it, as Vives hath observed. {b} It is utterly impossible for a mere naturalist, that cannot tell the form, the quintessence, that cannot enter into the depth of the flower, or the grass he treads on, to have the wit to enter into the deep things of God, "the mystery of Christ which was hid" {Eph_3:9-10} from angels till the discovery, and since that they are still students in it. David, though he saw further than his ancients, {Psa_119:99} yet he was still to seek of that which might be known. {Psa_119:96} Even as those great discoverers of the newly found lands in America, at their return were wont to confess, that there was still a plus ultra, something more beyond yet. Not only in innumerable other things am I very ignorant, saith Augustine, but also in the very Scriptures, multo plura nescio quam scio, {c} I am ignorant of many more things by odds than I yet understand. This present life is like the vale of Sciaessa, near unto the town called Patrae, of which Solinus saith, that it is famous for nothing but for its darksomeness, as being continually overcast with the shadows of nine hills that do surround it, so that the sun can hardly cast a beam of light into it. {d} Properemus ad coelestem Academiam, Let us hasten to the university of heaven, where the least child knows a thousand times more than the deepest doctor upon earth.
{a} Dousa.
{b} L. Vives in Aug. de Civ. Dei, lib. ii. c. 8.
{c} Aug., Epist.
{d} Poly. Hist., c. 12.