is a gift of God; do not believe that we said it was a gift of
reasoning. Other religions do not say this of their faith. They only give
reasoning in order to arrive at it, and yet it does not bring them to it.

279. Faith is a gift of God; do not believe that we said it was a gift of
reasoning. Other religions do not say this of their faith. They only gave
reasoning in order to arrive at it, and yet it does not bring them to it.

280. The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.

281. Heart, instinct, principles.

282. We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is
in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no
part in it, tries in vain to impugn them. The sceptics, who have only this
for their object, labour to no purpose. We know that we do not dream, and,
however impossible it is for us to prove it by reason, this inability
demonstrates only the weakness of our reason, but not, as they affirm, the
uncertainty of all our knowledge. For the knowledge of first principles, as
space, time, motion, number, is as sure as any of those which we get from
reasoning. And reason must trust these intuitions of the heart, and must
base them on every argument. (We have intuitive knowledge of the
tri-dimensional nature of space and of the infinity of number, and reason
then shows