Gregory Nazianzen.—Orat. xxxiv.: “A theologian among the Greeks [Plato] has said in his philosophy, that to conceive God is difficult, to express Him is impossible. ... But I say that it is impossible to express Him, and more impossible to conceive Him.” [Compare Patrick, Works, vol. iii., p. 39.]
Cyril of Jerusalem.—Catech. vi. 2: “We declare not what God is, but candidly confess that we know not accurately concerning Him. For in those things which concern God, it is great knowledge to confess our ignorance.”
Augustine.—Enarr. in Psalm, lxxxv. 8: “God is ineffable; we more easily say what He is not than what He is.” Serm, cccxli.: “I call God just, because in human words I find nothing better; for He is beyond justice.... What then is worthily said of God? Some one, perhaps, may reply and say, that He is just. But another, with better understanding, may say that even this word is surpassed by His excellence, and that even this is said of Him unworthily, though it be said fittingly according to human capacity.”
Cyril of Alexandria.—In Joann. Evang., 1. ii., c. 5: “For those things which are spoken concerning it [the Divine Nature] are not spoken as they are in very truth, but as the tongue of man can interpret, and as man can hear; for he who sees in an enigma also speaks in an enigma.”
Damascenus.—De Fide Orthod., i. 4: “That God is, is manifest; but what He is in His essence and nature is utterly incomprehensible and unknown.”
Aquinas.—Summa, pars. i., qu. xiii., art. 1: “We cannot so name God that the name which denotes Him shall express the Divine Essence as it is, in the same way as the name man expresses in its signification the essence of man as it is.” Ibid., art. 5: “When the name wise is said of a man, it in a manner describes and comprehends the thing signified: not so, however, when it is said of God; but it leaves the thing signified as uncomprehended and exceeding the signification of the name. Whence it is evident that this name wise is not said in the same manner of God and of man. The same is the case with other names; whence no name can be predicated univocally of God and of creatures; yet they are not predicated merely equivocally.... We must say, then, that such names are said of God and of creatures according to analogy, that is, proportion.”
Hooker.—Ecc. Pol., I., ii. 2.—“Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of His name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him.”
Usher.—Body of Divinity, p. 45, Ed. 1645: “Neither is it [the wisdom of God] communicated to any creature, neither can be; for it is unconceivable, as the very essence of God Himself is unconceivable, and unspeakable as it is.”
Leighton.—Theol. Lect. XXI., Works, vol. iv., p. 327, Ed. 1830: “Though in the schools they distinguish the Divine attributes or excellences, and that by no means improperly, into communicable and incommunicable; yet we ought so to guard this distinction, as always to remember that those which are called communicable, when applied to God, are not only to be understood in a manner incommunicable and quite peculiar to Himself, but also, that in Him they are in reality infinitely different [in the original, aliud omnino, immensum aliud] from those virtues, or rather, in a matter where the disparity of the subjects is so very great, those shadows of virtues that go under the same name, either in men or angels.”
Pearson.—Minor Theol. Works, vol. i., p. 13: “God in Himself is an absolute being, without any relation to creatures, for He was from eternity without any creature, and could, had He willed, be to eternity without creature. But God cannot naturally be known by us otherwise than by relation to creatures, as, for example, under the aspect of dominion, or of cause, or in some other relation.”[H]