The Names of God

If we had remained in the state of innocence, meditation on divine things would have been easy. It would have been a constant delight to walk in the presence of God and to excite in the heart acts of faith, hope, charity, thanksgiving, humility, reverence, obedience and the like. In that happy state man enjoyed a very special assistance, which enabled him to know his Creator and to fulfil with the greatest joy all the duties that the various virtues enjoined. But when that blissful condition ceased in consequence of sin, this help was withdrawn, and our natural weakness made the contemplation of divine things irksome and the practice of virtue difficult. Earthly and material things now appeal to us powerfully and we readily give days to discuss and examine them. The wars and battles of history or fiction fascinate us, but we have to force ourselves to contemplate the things of heaven. The perfections or attributes of God are particularly difficult, and yet there is nothing more helpful to salvation, nor more agreeable and consoling when once we have made a little progress; none are more efficacious for the acquisition of virtue nor better calculated to clarify the mind and to throw light on all the duties of life. For the Holy Scripture says: "To know Thee is perfect justice and to know Thy justice and Thy power is the root of immortality. (Wis. xv.) Hence following the example of St. Denis the Areopagite whose works have for fifty years exercised on me a most marvellous charm, I have resolved to explain very briefly the divine perfections or attributes ascribed to God by the Holy Books. In this short exposition I omitted designedly the testimony of the Scriptures and the Fathers and also all theological proofs in order that the reader may more readily form a clear idea of these divine attributes, excite in his heart affections worthy of such sublime considerations and by this exercise, as St. Denis says, make his soul like unto God.