Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers

The utmost of the best of our thoughts of the being of God is, that we can have no thoughts of it. Our knowledge of a being is but low, when it mounts no higher but only to know that we know it not.

2. There be some things of God, which he himself hath taught us to speak of, and to regulate our Expressions of them; but when we have so done, we see not the things themselves, we know them not: To believe and admire is all that we attain to. We profess (as we are taught,) that God is infinite, omnipotent, eternal; and we know what Disputes and Notions there are about Omnipresence, Immensity, Infiniteness and Eternity. We have (I say) words and notions about these things, but as to the things themselves, what do we know? What do we comprehend of ⟨p. 137⟩them? Can the Mind of Man do any more but swallow it self up in an infinite Abyss, which is as nothing; give it self up to what it cannot conceive, much less express? Is not our understanding brutish in the Contemplation of such things? and is as if it were not; yea the perfection of our understanding, is, not to understand, and to rest there: They are but the back parts of Eternity and Infiniteness that we have a glimpse of. What shall I say of the Trinity, or the Subsistence of distinct Persons in the same individual Essence; a Mystery by many denied, because by none understood; a Mystery whose every letter is mysterious.

2. There be some things of God, which he himself hath taught us to speak of, and to regulate our Expressions of them; but when we have so done, we see not the things themselves, we know them not: To believe and admire is all that we attain to. We profess (as we are taught,) that God is infinite, omnipotent, eternal; and we know what Disputes and Notions there are about Omnipresence, Immensity, Infiniteness and Eternity. We have (I say) words and notions about these things, but as to the things themselves, what do we know? What do we comprehend of ⟨p. 137⟩them? Can the Mind of Man do any more but swallow it self up in an infinite Abyss, which is as nothing; give it self up to what it cannot conceive, much less express? Is not our understanding brutish in the Contemplation of such things? and is as if it were not; yea the perfection of our understanding, is, not to understand, and to rest there: They are but the back parts of Eternity and Infiniteness that we have a glimpse of. What shall I say of the Trinity, or the Subsistence of distinct Persons in the same individual Essence; a Mystery by many denyed, because by none understood; a Mystery whose every letter is mysterious.