Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/157

 and farther does the hope recede of having the God-revealed truths explained.

After this, in the 2d division, there are adduced the proofs of the fathers of the church that God is an incorporeal, immaterial essence, and the same argument is continued. What is quoted is not the false, but the queer, reasoning of the fathers of the church, which shows that the fathers of the church were far from that conception of God which is common with every believer at the present time. They take pains to prove, for example, that God is not limited by anything, or is not subject to suffering, or not subject to destruction. No matter how worthy the labours of these fathers have been in the time of struggle against the pagans, the statement that God is not subject to suffering has involuntarily the same effect upon us as would have the statement that God does not need any raiment or food, and proves that to a man who argues the indestructibility of God the conception of the Deity is not clear and not settled. It does not explain anything to us and only offends our feeling. But, apparently, the compiler needs it: precisely what offends our feeling is what he needs, namely, the abasement of the idea of God.

In the 3d division the compiler quotes, in the shape of a proof, that invective which the fathers of the church uttered in defence of their opinion:

“In connection with this it is important for us to notice that the ancient pastors, rebuking the errors of the anthropomorphists, called their opinion a senseless, most stupid heresy, and accounted the anthropomorphists, who held this opinion, as heretics.”

And as the last argument of the church the following is adduced:

“For this reason we hear, among other things, in the ‘order of Orthodoxy,’ which the Orthodox Church performs in the first week of the Great Lent, the following