Theological Theses · §1994 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

The safest course is to confess our ignorance: 'Such knowledge is too wonderful for me' (Psalm 139, Sirach 3)

Anyone who searches into so great a matter finds darkness closing in on every side, and meets tangles and snares from which we cannot properly free ourselves. I therefore think nothing is safer or more honest than to confess our ignorance openly here and to take David's words in earnest: 'Your knowledge is too wonderful for me, too high for me to reach.'

I would not measure other people's minds by my own feebleness, nor condemn a modest inquiry into this matter. Still, I am readily persuaded that this mystery belongs among the things of which the wise man says, 'Do not seek what is too high for you, and do not search out what is too strong for you.'

It should not seem surprising if our mind, confined within such narrow bounds, cannot grasp how the divine intellect, which has no bounds at all, knows and reaches things that lie furthest from our knowledge.

Latin

XLIII. Itaque cum rem tantam scrutanti, undique se tenebrae offundant, & occurrant tricae ac pedicae, ex quibus nos non satis extricare valemus, nihil magis tutum & ingenuum puto, quam ignorantiam nostram hic aperte profiteri, & serio illud Davidis usurpare, Mirabilis facta est scientia tua prae me, & sublimior, quam ut assequi possim. Ac quanquam aliorum ingenia nolim ex mea tenuitate metiri, & super hac re modestam disquisitionem damnare; facile tamen adducor ut credam mysterium hoc ad ea pertinere, de quibus dicit sapiens, Altiora te ne quaesieris, & fortiora te ne scrutatus fueris. Nec mirum videri debet, si mens nostra tam angustis limitibus definita, percipere non possit qua ratione intellectus divinus, cui plane nulli sunt fines, ea cognoscat & attingat quae sunt a cognitione nostra remotissima.

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About this text

Louis Le Blanc, a Reformed professor at Sedan, sets out theology in theses argued against Rome: Scripture, faith, grace, free choice, good works and the saints.

This volume holds the Theses on Theology I–XLIII and On Faith I–XXII, in eighteen sections.

Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu (1614–1675) was minister and professor of theology at the Academy of Sedan, the Reformed school on France's eastern border. His Theses were disputed by students over many years and collected in a London folio (1675).

The Theological Theses range across the whole Reformed system — Scripture, God, predestination, grace, and justifying faith — in the crisp thesis-and-proof form of the seventeenth-century schools.

Date1675 AD (Sedan theses; London collection)

No modern English.

Reference

ESTC R17887; Wing L802. IA bub_gb_eOkHAW4G0-wC (+ EEBO 1675 for gap leaves).

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