“Holy Writ declares those of us wretches who think well of ourselves: ‘Dust and ashes,’ it says to them, ‘what has thou to glory in?’ And elsewhere: ‘God has made man like the shadow, of which who shall judge when, with the passing of the light, it shall have vanished away?’ In truth we are nothing.
Our powers are so far from conceiving the sublimity of God, that of the works of our creator those bear his stamp most clearly, and are most his, that we understand least. To Christians it is an occasion for belief to encounter something incredible. It is the more according to reason as it is contrary to human reason. If it were according to reason, it would no longer be a miracle; and if it were according to some example, it would no longer be singular. God is better known by not knowing, says Saint Augustine; and Tacitus, It is more holy and reverent to believe in the words of the gods than to know them.
And Plato thinks there is some sinful impiety in inquiring too curiously into God and the world, and the first causes of things. And it is difficult to discover the parent of the universe; and when once you have discovered him, it is sinful to reveal him to the vulgar, says Cicero.
We say indeed ‘power,’ ‘truth,’ ‘justice’; they are words that mean something great; but that something we neither see nor conceive at all. We say that God fears, that God is angry, that God loves, Marking in mortal words immortal things (Lucretius). These are all feelings and emotions that cannot be lodged in God in our sense, nor can we imagine them according to his. It is for God alone to know himself and to interpret his works,” – Montaigne, “Apology for Raymond Sebond,” The Complete Essays of Montaigne.
The Dish 