Arnobius — Against the Nations 2.60
60.1. Since therefore the origins, causes, and reasons of so many and such great things flee even you yourselves, and you can neither say nor explain what was done or why, or why it ought not to have been, you tear and rend our modesty—we who confess that we do not know what cannot be known and do not care to seek or investigate what it is most clear cannot be grasped, though human suspicion stretch itself through a thousand hearts.
2. And therefore Christ—God, though against your will, God, I say, Christ (for this must often be said, that the hearing of unbelievers may split and burst)—speaking by the command of God the Prince under the form of a human, since He knew mortals’ nature to be blind and unable to grasp any truth of things set even before the eyes, commanded that they hold as ascertained and known whatever they had persuaded themselves of, and not, hesitating for their suspicions, sow and stretch litigious questions;
3. He ordered us to leave and postpone all those things and not to cast fruitless thoughts upon matters far removed from our knowledge, but, as far as can be done, to set out toward the Lord of things with whole mind and soul, to be raised from these places and transfer into Him the suspended turnings of the breast, to keep perpetual memory of Him, and though He can be formed by no imagination, still to fashion for oneself some I-know-not-what breezes of His contemplation:
4. for from all the things that the obscurity of august divinity contains, He alone is undoubted, alone true, and about whom no one can hesitate unless mad and of insane despair—whom it is enough to know so that you know nothing else, and you have obtained true and greatest knowledge, fixed in the cognition of God the head of things.
Latin
60.1. Cum igitur et vos ipsos tantarum ac tot rerum fugiant origines, fugiant causae, fugiant rationes, neque dicere neque explanare possitis, quid sit factum aut quare, aut cur oportuerit non esse, verecundiam convellitis et dilaceratis nostram, qui quae nequeunt sciri nescire nos confitemur neque ea conquirere aut investigare curamus quae comprehendi liquidissimum est non posse, quamvis mille per corda suspicio se porrigat atque intendat humana.
2. Et ideo Christus licet [in] vobis invitis deus, deus, inquam, Christus - hoc enim saepe dicendum est, ut infidelium dissiliat et dirumpatur auditus - dei principis iussione loquens sub hominis forma, cum mortalium sciret caecam esse naturam neque ullam posse comprehendere veritatem positarum nec ante oculos rerum, pro comperto habere et cognito quidquid sibi esse suasisset nec pro suis suspicionibus haesitare litigiosas serere atque intendere quaestiones,
3. omnia ista nos linquere et posthabere praecepit neque in res eas quae sint a nostra procul cognitione dimotae infructuosas inmittere cogitationes, sed, quantum fieri potis est, ad dominum rerum tota mente atque animo proficisci, sustolli ab his locis atque in eum traducere suspensas pectoris conversiones, memoriam eius habere perpetuam et licet nulla possit imaginatione formari, auras tamen nescio quas eius sibi contemplationis adfingere:
4. rebus enim ex omnibus, quas augustae continet divinitatis obscuritas, solum esse indubitabilem, solum verum et de quo nullus ambigere nisi amens possit et desperationis insanae, quem satis sit scire ut nihil aliud noveris, sisque veram et maximam scientiam consecutus in dei rerum capitis et cognitione defixus.