Faith cannot be deceived. With power to understand invisible truths, faith does not know the poverty of the senses; it transcends even the limits of human reason, the capacity of nature, the bounds of experience. Why do you ask the eye to do what it is not equipped to do? And why does the hand endeavor to examine things beyond its reach? What you may learn from these senses is of limited value. But faith will tell you of me, your God, without distracting from my greatness. Learn to receive with greater confidence, to follow with greater security, whatever faith commends to you. Defer your judgment therefore, refrain from expressing an opinion, do not entrust the defining of so great a matter to the senses: it is for faith to pronounce on it. With its fuller comprehension, faith will define it more worthily and more surely. In its deep and mystical breast it can grasp what is the length and the breadth and the depth. What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, is borne within itself by faith, as if wrapped in a covering and kept under seal.
from Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermon 28 On the Song of Songs
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