Divine Dialogues

The Publisher to the Reader.

John 4:22

intelligible to all capacities whatsoever (for it is well known how dull and short-sighted some people are), nor yet, on the other side, to make his existence incredible by puzzling and confounding even the best understandings with high-flown notions and harsh contradictions—even perfect inconsistencies—under the pretense of magnifying the Nature of God even more. It is as if the more perplexed and self-contradictory the Nature of God were, the more glorious and adorable he would be. If that were true, our Savior’s words to the Samaritans would not have been a rebuke, but a compliment original: "Encomium", when he says, You worship what you do not know. Yet this is exactly the condition of all those who dress up the Deity with conflicting attributes; it is an invitation to those prone to atheism original: "Atheistically given" to abandon both the Deity and his worship at once.

I believe this consideration led the author of these dialogues not only to use sound reason to defeat, but also to explode with a fitting and proper contempt, that newly-invented opinion of the Nullubists original: "Nullubists"; from the Latin 'nullibi' (nowhere). This refers to philosophers, like René Descartes and his followers, who argued that God and the soul are incorporeal and therefore exist nowhere in space.. These people imagine themselves to be so much more intellectual than others by declaring that God is nowhere, even though they cannot deny that he exists. In this lofty adventure, though they boast that they are safely elevated above the region of imagination, I have no doubt that this high flight of their thoughts will eventually be found to be nothing more than a swollen bubble on troubled waters. The levity and puffiness of their spirits have carried their concepts (if they have any concept at all of what they are talking about) far above the level of common sense and reason.

In his adjusting of the phenomena original: "Phænomena" of the universe to Divine Goodness, it is notable that he has avoided no difficulties that human wit can imagine or invent. Instead, he has brought them all into view—or at least the hardest of them all—and provided such examples original: "Specimina" of every kind that, in all likelihood,