For the same reason, he is infinite beatitude, since beatitude simply expresses the repose and complacency of intelligence and will in their adequate object and is identical with love.
God is an ocean of boundless, unfathomable good and perfection, to whom everything must be attributed that can increase our mental conception of his infinite being. We can go on indefinitely, explicating this conception, and every proposition we can make which contains the statement of anything positive and intelligible, is self-evident; requiring no separate proof, but merely verification as truly identifying something with the idea of being. "We shall say much and yet shall want words; but the sum of our words is, HE IS ALL." [Footnote 96] Nevertheless, our reason is not brought face to face with God by any direct intuition or vision of his intimate, personal essence. Every word, every conception, every thought expressing the most complete and vivid act of the reflective consciousness on the idea of God is derived from the creation, and gives only a speculative and enigmatical representation of the being of God itself, as mirrored in the perfections of created, contingent existences. Though we see all things by its light, the sun itself, the original source of intelligible light, is not within our rational horizon. The creation is illuminated by it with the light of intelligibility, and by this light we become spectators of the creative act of God.
[Footnote 96: Ecclus. xiiii. 99.]
The creative act is not a transient effort of power, but a durable, continuous, ever-present act, by which God is always creating the universe. The creation has its being not in itself but in God. All that we witness therefore and come in contact with, is but the radiation of light, life, truth, beauty, happiness; physical, mental, and spiritual existence; from God, the source of being. We see the architecture which proceeds from his mighty designs; we behold the infinitely varied and ever shifting pictures and sculptures in which he embodies his infinite idea of his own beauty. We hear the harmonies that echo his eternal blessedness; the colossal machinery of worlds plays regularly and resistlessly by the force which he communicates around us; his signs, emblems, and hieroglyphics are impressed on our senses; the perpetual affirmation of his being is always making itself heard in the depth of our reason. The perpetual influx of creative force from him is every instant giving life and existence to our body. We breathe in it, and see by it, and move through its energy. It is every instant creating our soul. When our soul first came out of nothing into existence, it was created by a whisper of the divine word, which simultaneously gave it existence and the faculty of apprehending that whisper, by which it was made. God whispered in the soul the affirmation of his own being as the author of all existence. This whisper is perpetual, like the creative act. It constitutes our rational life and activity. By its virtue we think and are conscious. It concurs with every intellectual act. When the soul is stillest and its contemplation of truth the most profound, then it is most distinctly heard; but it cannot be drowned by any [{527}] tumult or clamor. "In God we live, and move, and have our being." We float in the divine idea as in an ocean. It meets us everywhere we turn. We cannot soar above it, dive beneath it, or sail in sight of its coasts. It is our rational element, in which our rational existence was created, in which it was made to live, and we recognize it in the same act in which we recognize our own existence. It is necessary to the original act of self-consciousness, and enters into the indestructible essence of the soul, as immortal spirit.
The Creed, therefore, when it proposes its first article to a child who is capable of a complete rational act, only brings him face to face with himself, or with the idea of his own reason. It gives him a distinct image or reflection of that idea, a sign of it, a verbal expression for it, a formula by which his reflective faculty can work it out into a distinct conception. As soon as it is fairly apprehended, he perceives its truth with a rational certitude which reposes in the intimate depths of his own consciousness. It is true that he cannot arrange and express his conceptions, or distinctly analyze for himself the operations of his own mind, in the manner given above. This can only be done by one who is instructed in theology. But although he is no theologian or philosopher, he has nevertheless the substance of philosophy or sapientia, and of theology, in his intellect; deeper, broader and more sublime than all the measurements and signs of metaphysicians can express. We have taken the child as creditive subject in this exposition, in order to exhibit the ultimate rational basis of faith in its simplest act, and, so to speak, to show its genesis. But we do not profess to stop with this simple act which initiates the reason in its childhood into the order of rational intelligence and faith; rather we take it as only the terminus of starting in the prosecution of a thorough investigation of the complete development which the intelligent faith unfolds in the adult and instructed reason of a Christian fully educated in theological science. Hence we have given the conception God in its scientific form, but as the scientific form of that which is certainly and indubitably apprehended in its essential substance by every mind capable of making an explicit and complete act of rational faith in God as the creator of the world. In the language of Wordsworth, "The child is father of the man." A complete rational act in a child has in it the germ of all science. He is as certain that two and two make four, as is the consummate mathematician. A complete act of faith in a child is as infallible as the faith of a theologian, and has in it the germ of all theology. He is able to say "Credo in Deum" with a perfect rational certitude; and this conclusion is the goal toward which the whole preceding argument has been tending.
But here we are met with a difficulty. The principle of faith cannot itself fall under the dominion of faith, or be classed with the credenda, which we believed on the veracity of God. How then can Credo govern Deum. The necessity for an intelligible basis for faith has been established, and this basis located in the idea of God evolved into a conception demonstrable to reason from its own constitutive principles. It would therefore seem that instead of saying "I believe in God," we ought to say "I know that God is, and is the infinite truth in himself, therefore I believe," etc. only on you.
This formula does really express a process of thought contained in the act of faith, and implied in the signification of Credo. Credo includes in itself intelligo. Divine faith presupposes, and incorporates into itself, human intelligence and human faith, on that side of them which is an inchoate capacity for receiving its divine, elevating influence. Hence the propriety of using the word Credo, leaving intelligo understood but not expressed. The symbol of faith is not intended to express any object of our knowledge, [{528}] except as united to the object of faith. For this reason it does not discriminate in the proposition of the verity of the being of God, that which is the direct object of intelligence, but presents it under one term with those propositions concerning God which are only the indirect object of intelligence through the medium of divine revelation. When we say Credo in Deum, if we consider in Deum only that which is demonstrable by reason concerning God, the full sense of Credo is suspended, until the revelation of the superintellible [sic] s introduced in the succeeding articles. The term Deum terminates Credo, only inasmuch as it is qualified by the succeeding terms; that is, inasmuch as we profess our belief in God as the revealer of the truths contained in the subsequent articles.
The foregoing statement applies to the use of the word Credo in relation with Deum in the first article of the Creed, taking Credo in its strictest and most exclusive sense of belief in revealed truths which are above the sphere of natural reason. In addition to this, it can be shown that there is a secondary and subordinate reason on account of which the mental apprehension of that which is naturally intelligible in God is included under the term faith, taken in a wider and more extensive sense.
This intelligible order of truth, or natural theology, was actually communicated to mankind in the beginning, together with the primitive revelation. We are, therefore, instructed in it, by the way of faith. The conception of God, and the words which communicate to us that conception, and enable us to grasp it, come to us through tradition, and are received by the mind before its faculties are fully developed. We believe first, and understand afterward; and the greater part of men never actually attain to the full understanding of that which is in itself intelligible, but hold it confusedly, accepting with implicit trust in authority, many truths which the wise possess as science. Moreover, the term faith is often used to denote belief in any reality which lies in an order superior to nature and removed from the sphere of the sensible, although that reality may be demonstrable from rational principles. In a certain sense we may say that this region of truth is a common domain of faith and reason. But we have now approached that boundary line where the proper and peculiar empire of faith begins, and like Dante, left by his human guide on the coasts of the celestial world, we must endeavor under heavenly protection to ascend to this higher sphere of thought.