"this is the very height of sinfulness to refuse to
acknowledge Him whom you cannot but know."[41] Arnobius, too, in a
passage in which much allowance must be made for rhetorical fervor,
exclaims, "Is there any human being who has not entered on the first day
of his life with an idea of that Great Head? In whom has it not been
implanted by nature, on whom has it not been impressed, aye, stamped
almost in his mother's womb even, in whom is there not a native
instinct, that He is King and Lord, the ruler of all things that be? In
fine, if the dumb animals even could stammer forth their thoughts, if
they were able to use our languages; nay, if trees, if the clods of the
earth, if stones dominated by vital perceptions were able to produce
vocal sounds, and to utter articulate speech, would they not in that
case, with nature as their guide and teacher, in the faith of
uncorrupted innocence, both feel that there is a God, and proclaim that
He alone is Lord of all?"[42] Such language as this last example is, of
course, the exclamation of the orator rather than the deliberate
judgment of the philosopher, but taken in connection with the other
passages cited it will indicate how strong a hold this conviction had on
the Fathers, and will anticipate, to some extent, what we shall have to
say later as to the use of the _Argumentum e Consensu Gentium_.

In direct connection and sharp contrast with this opinion of the
Fathers, there stands the seemingly contradictory statement, as
frequently encountered in their writings, that the soul of itself cannot
see God nor attain to true religion. In the very same sentence in which
St. Justin Martyr asserts that souls "can perceive ({noein}) that God
exists," he states that they do not see ({idein}) God,[43] and insists in
more than one place that "neither by nature nor by human conception is
it possible for men to know things so great and divine."[44] Frequently
the patristic writers have occasion to emphasize the inability of man to
attain by any of his natural powers to religious truth, and to point to
the impotent longings and aspirations of Greek philosophy as an example
of this. St. Clement of Alexandria, for example, asserts that "the
chiefs of philosophy only guessed at" religious truth,[45] and lays
down the general principle that "God, then, being not a subject for
demonstration, cannot be the object of science."[46] Origen, too, states
that "for ourselves, we maintain that human nat