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 (νοεῖν) that God exists," he states that they do not see (ἰδεῖν) 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 nature is in no way able to seek after God, or to attain a clear knowledge of Him without the help of Him whom it seeks."[47] The inconsistency between these two fundamental positions of the Fathers, of which much is often made, is, I think, more apparent than real. For they make a clear distinction in their thought, though the mere language which they use is sometimes confusing, between knowledge of the existence of God--the undefined feeling or belief that there is a God--which is the "innate opinion," for which they give every man credit; and the knowledge of God, _i.e._, of His attributes, etc., the subject-matter of dogmatic theology. The existence of the former of these, it is true, as of the latter, may be obscured and nearly obliterated by sin and the consequent disorganization; for in the teaching of the Fathers, as in that of their Master, it is the pure in heart that see God,[48] and it is only the man whose nature is kept in due balance by a life of moral rectitude--the "righteous man" of the Scriptures--who can be expected to exhibit clearly this "natural opinion" or to attain to a full knowledge and appreciation of the Christian doctrine of God. At the very best, the knowledge of the Deity attained apart from revelation seemed to the Fathers to be, in comparison with their own certainty, miserably vague and conjectural, and they are constantly contrasting, in the most striking and graphic way, the contradictory and uncertain results to which the philosophers attained with the definiteness and consistency of the already well-defined doctrine of the Christian church. To them certainty in regard to knowledge of God can only come by means of the testimony of one who had seen and known,[49] and this testimony they are satisfied that they find in two places chiefly--first, in the testimony of the