As for their other assertion, that God's knowledge cannot comprehend things infinite, it only remains for them to affirm, in order that they may sound the depths of their impiety, that God does not know all numbers.For it is very certain that they are infinite;since, no matter of what number you suppose an end to be made, this number can be, I will not say, increased by the addition of one more, but however great it be, and however vast be the multitude of which it is the rational and scientific expression, it can still be not only doubled, but even multiplied.Moreover, each number is so defined by its own properties, that no two numbers are equal.They are therefore both unequal and different from one another; and while they are simply finite, collectively they are infinite.Does God, therefore, not know numbers on account of this infinity; and does His knowledge extend only to a certain height in numbers, while of the rest He is ignorant? Who is so left to himself as to say so? Yet they can hardly pretend to put numbers out of the question, or maintain that they have nothing to do with the knowledge of God; for Plato,(2) their great authority, represents God as framing the world on numerical principles:
and in our books also it is said to God, "Thou hast ordered all things in number, and measure, and weight."(3) The prophet also says," Who bringeth out their host by number."(4)And the Saviour says in the Gospel, "The very hairs of your head are all numbered."(5) Far be it, then, from us to doubt that all number is known to Him "whose understanding," according to the Psalmist, "is infinite."(6) The infinity of number, though there be no numbering of infinite numbers, is yet not incomprehensible by Him whose understanding is infinite.And thus, if everything which is comprehended is defined or made finite by the comprehension of him who knows it, then all infinity is in some ineffable way made finite to God, for it is comprehensible by His knowledge.
Wherefore, if the infinity of numbers cannot be infinite to the knowledge of God, by which it is comprehended, what are we poor creatures that we should presume to fix limits to His knowledge, and say that unless the same temporal thing be repeated by the same periodic revolutions, God cannot either foreknow His creatures that He may make them, or know them when He has made them? God, whose knowledge is simply manifold, and uniform in its variety, comprehends all incomprehensibles with so incomprehensible a comprehension, that though He willed always to make His later works novel and unlike what went before them, He could not produce them without order and foresight, nor conceive them suddenly, but by His eternal foreknowledge.
CHAP.19.--OF WORLDS WITHOUT END, OR AGESOF AGES.(7)
I do not presume to determine whether God does so, and whether these times which are called "ages of ages" are joined together in a continuous series, and succeed one another with a regulated diversity, and leave exempt from their vicissitudes only those who are freed from their misery, and abide without end in a blessed immortality; or whether these are called "ages of ages," that we may understand that the ages remain unchangeable in God's unwavering wisdom, and are the efficient causes, as it were, of those ages which are being spent in time.Possibly "ages"is used for "age," so that nothing else is meant by "ages of ages" than by "age of age," as nothing else is meant by "heavens of heavens" than by "heaven of heaven." For God called the firmament, above which are the waters, "Heaven," and yet the psalm says, "Let the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord."(1) Which of these two meanings we are to attach to "ages of ages," or whether there is not some other and better meaning still, is a very profound question; and the subject we are at present handling presents no obstacle to our meanwhile deferring the discussion of it, whether we may be able to determine anything about it, or may only be made more cautious by its further treatment, so as to be deterred from making any rash affirmations in a matter of such obscurity.For at present we are disputing the opinion that affirms the existence of those periodic revolutions by which the same things are always recurring at intervals of time.Now whichever of these suppositions regarding the "ages of ages" be the true one, it avails nothing for the substantiating of those cycles; for whether the ages of ages be not a repetition of the same world, but different worlds succeeding one another in a regulated connection, the ransomed souls abiding in well-assured bliss without any recurrence of misery, or whether the ages of ages be the eternal causes which rule what shall be and is in time, it equally follows, that those cycles which bring round the same things have no.existence; and nothing more thoroughly explodes them than the fact of the eternal life of the saints.
CHAP.20.--OF THE IMPIETY OF THOSE WHO ASSERT THAT THE SOULS WHICH ENJOYTRUE AND
PERFECT BLESSEDNESS, MUST YET AGAIN AND AGAIN IN THESE PERIODIC REVOLUTIONSRETURN TO LABOR AND MISERY.
