21. Human judgment must not pass its sentence upon God. Our nature is not such that it can lift itself by its own forces to the contemplation of heavenly things. We must learn from God what we are to think of God; we have no source of knowledge but Himself. You may be as carefully trained as you will in secular philosophy; you may have lived a life of righteousness. All this will contribute to your mental satisfaction, but it will not help you to know God. Moses was adopted as the son of the queen, and instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; he had, moreover, out of loyalty to his race avenged the wrong of the Hebrew by slaying the Egyptian246    This act is used as the evidence of Moses’ righteousness., and yet he knew not the God Who had blessed his fathers. For when he left Egypt through fear of the discovery of his deed, and was living as a shepherd in the land of Midian, he saw a fire in the bush, and the bush unconsumed. Then it was that he heard the voice of God, and asked His name, and learned His nature. Of all this he could have known nothing except through God Himself. And we, in like manner, must confine ourselves, in whatever we say of God, to the terms in which He has spoken to our understanding concerning Himself.

21. Ad hoc non sufficit saecularis doctrina aut vitae innocentia. ---Non est de Deo humanis judiciis sentiendum. Neque enim nobis ea natura est, ut se in coelestem cognitionem suis viribus efferat. A Deo discendum 0143B est, quid de Deo intelligendum sit: quia non nisi se auctore cognoscitur. Adsit licet saecularis doctrinae elaborata institutio, adsit vitae innocentia: haec quidem proficient ad conscientiae gratulationem, non tamen cognitionem Dei consequentur. Moyses in reginae filium adoptatus, et omnibus Aegyptiorum doctrinis eruditus (Act. VII, 22), cum utique ex naturae affectu Hebraei injuriam morte Aegyptii ultus esset (Exodi II, 12), Deum tamen paternarum benedictionum nesciebat. Namque ob metum caedis proditae Aegyptum derelinquens, cum in terra Madian pastor ovium esset, ignem in rubo sine concrematione rubi contuens, Deum audivit, et nomen interrogavit, et naturam cognovit (Exodi III, 1 et seqq.). Neque enim haec de Deo, nisi per Deum, cognita esse potuissent. 0143C Loquendum ergo non aliter de Deo est, quam ut ipse ad intelligentiam nostram de se locutus est.