Schurman, Agnosticism, 100, speaks of “the farce of nescience playing at omniscience in setting the bounds of science.” “The agnostic,” he says, “sets up the invisible picture of a _Grand Être_, formless and colorless in itself, absolutely separated from man and from the world—blank within and void without—its very existence indistinguishable from its non-existence, and, bowing down before this idolatrous creation, he pours out his soul in lamentations over the incognizableness of such a mysterious and awful non-entity.... The truth is that the agnostic’s abstraction of a Deity is unknown, only because it is unreal.” See McCosh, Intuitions, 194, note; Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 363. God is not necessarily infinite in every respect. He is infinite only in every excellence. A plane which is unlimited in the one respect of length may be limited in another respect, such as breadth. Our doctrine here is not therefore inconsistent with what immediately follows. F. Because to know is to limit or define. Hence the Absolute as unlimited, and the Infinite as undefined, cannot be known. We answer: (_a_) God is absolute, not as existing in _no_ relation, but as existing in no _necessary_ relation; and (_b_) God is infinite, not as excluding all coexistence of the finite with himself, but as being the ground of the finite, and so unfettered by it. (_c_) God is actually limited by the unchangeableness of his own attributes and personal distinctions, as well as by his self-chosen relations to the universe he has created and to humanity in the person of Christ. God is therefore limited and defined in such a sense as to render knowledge of him possible. _Versus_ Mansel, Limitations of Religious Thought, 75-84, 93-95; _cf._ Spinoza: “Omnis determinatio est negatio;” hence to define God is to deny him. But we reply that perfection is inseparable from limitation. Man can be other than he is: not so God, at least internally. But this limitation, inherent in his unchangeable attributes and personal distinctions, is God’s perfection. Externally, all limitations upon God are self-limitations, and so are consistent with his perfection. That God should not be able thus to limit himself in creation and redemption would render all self-sacrifice in him impossible, and so would subject him to the greatest of limitations. We may say therefore that God’s 1. _Perfection_ involves his limitation to (_a_) personality, (_b_) trinity, (_c_) righteousness; 2. _Revelation_ involves his self-limitation in (_a_) decree, (_b_) creation, (_c_) preservation, (_d_) government, (_e_) education of the world; 3. _Redemption_ involves his infinite self-limitation in the (_a_) person and (_b_) work of Jesus Christ; see A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 87-101, and in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1891:521-532.