The Speakers are, Sophronius, Eugenius, Pyrocles, and Timotheus.
Euge.
The Seriousness you yet retain in your looks, and the posture we found you in at our entrance, makes me fear these two Gentlemen and I are unseasonable intruders, that are so unhappy as to disturb your Meditations.
Sophron.
Instead of doing that, you will much promote them, if you please to accompany me in them: For the subject that busied my thoughts is both so abstruse and so important, that it needs more than one to consider it, and deserves that He should be a far better considerer than I, who therefore must think my self far less fit for that task than you.
Eug.
I will punish the flattery of these last words, by declining to make any Return to it.
Pyrocl.
And I, Gentlemen, to prevent the loss of time and words between you, shall without farther Ceremony ask Sophronius, what his thoughts were employed about when we came in.
Sophr.
I was then musing upon a Subject, that was newly proposed to me by our common Friend Arnobiut, who would needs have my opinion, Whether, and if at all, how far, we may employ our reasonings about things that are above our Reason, as Christians grant some mysteries of their Religion to be.
Euge.
If, by things above Reason, be meant only those, that are undiscoverable by Reason without Revelation; I should not hesitate to say, that there may be divers things of that kind: For the free Decrees of God, and his determinations concerning the Government of the World, and the future state of mankind (to name now no others) are things which no humane Reason can pry into, but must owe the fundamental discovery it makes of them, to the Revelation of him, whose purposes they are.
But if, by things above Reason, be meant such, as though delivered in words, free from darkness and Ambiguity, are not to be conceived, and comprehended by our Rational Faculty, I shall freely confess, that I scarce know what to say upon so unusual and sublime a subject.
Pyrocl.
For my part, Gentlemen, I think it were very requisite to be sure in the first place, that the subject of our Discourses is not Chimerical, but that we can really know, that there are things we cannot comprehend, though they be proposed to us in expressions no less clear than such, as would suffice to make other things intelligible to us.
Sophr.
Your cautiousness, Pyrocles, must not be rejected by me, who when, before you came in, I was putting my thoughts into some order, judg’d it unfit to consider, either how one might know what things were to be look’d on as above Reason, how far we may discourse of them, or whether or no any supernaturally revealed Propositions, such as Divines call Articles of Faith, ought to be reckoned among them, till I should have first seriously enquir’d, whether in general we ought to admit any such Objects of our Contemplation, as these, and the like Questions suppose.
Euge.
I hope then that this being the first thing you purposed to enquire into, we may, without too much boldness, desire to know what came into your mind about it.
Sophr.
If I had brought my considerations to an issue upon that subject, I should with less reluctancy acquaint you with them; but I since I have yet made but an imperfect progress in my enquiry, instead of delivering any positive opinion upon so abstruse a subject, I shall only tell you, that as far as I could yet discern, it seemed to me that among the Objects, our reason may contemplate there are some whose Nature we cannot comprehend, others whose Attributes or Actions are such, as that we cannot understand how they should belong to the Subject, or else that we cannot conceive how they should consist with some acknowledged Truth.
Euge.
So that if I apprehend you right, you do not only admit some things to be above Reason, but make no less than three sorts of them.
Sophr.
If you will needs have two of them to be coincident, I shall not much contend, but I think the number you have named may, without any great inconvenience, be admitted: For by things above Reason, I here understand (not false or absurd ones, but) such, as though the Intellect sees sufficient cause (whether on the score of Experience, Authentick Testimony, or Mathematical Demonstration) to assent to; yet it finds it self reduc’d when ‘tis conversant about them, to be so with a notable and peculiar disadvantage: And this disadvantage does usually proceed either from the nature of the thing proposed, which is such, that we cannot sufficiently comprehend it, or from our not being able to conceive the manner of its existing and operating; or from this, that it involves some notion or proposition, that we see not how to reconcile with some other thing, that we are perswaded to be a truth. The first of these three sorts of things, may, for brevity and distinction sake be called Incomprehensible, the second Inexplicable, and the third Unsociable. But for fear lest the shortness I have used in my expressions, may have kept them from being so clear, I shall somewhat more explicitly reckon up the three sorts of things that seem to me above Reason.