Theophilus. The conclusion, my friend, that you here think to be so just and strong, as not possible to be denied, is so far from being so, that it is a glaring absurdity; and the quite contrary to that one only true conclusion, which you should have made, and which so easily and naturally flowed from what was said. For if the mystery is the deep ground of all things, of all nature, and all creatures. then the one conclusion that infallibly flows from it, is this, that no acuteness or ability of natural reason can so much as look into it. For natural reason is no older than flesh and blood; it has no higher a nature or birth than natural doubting; it had no existence when nature began its first workings, and therefore can bear no witness to them. It was not present, had no eyes, when things first came forth; it never stood in the center, from whence the birth of everything must arise; it never saw the forming of the first seeds of every life: and yet the mystery, you see, contains all this: and therefore the one plain and necessary conclusion is this; that natural reason is, and must be, as incapable of entering into this mystery, as flesh and blood is incapable of entering into the kingdom of heaven.