Quotable Newman: Not the nature of Christian knowledge
And in matter of fact there have been very grievous
mistakes respecting the nature of Christian knowledge.
There have been at all times men so ignorant of the
object of Christ's coming, as to consider mysteries
inconsistent with the light of the Gospel. They have
thought the darkness of Judaism, of which Scripture
speaks, to be a state of intellectual ignorance; and Christianity to be, what they term, a "rational
religion." And hence they have argued, that no
doctrine which was mysterious, i.e. too deep
for human reason, or inconsistent with their self-devised
notions, could be contained in Scripture; as if it were
honouring Christ to maintain that when He said a thing,
He could not have meant what He said, because they
would not have said it. -- Parochial and Plain Sermons, i, 16