Te Deum Laudamus

Extract

Thee God we praise. But to speak of this Godhead I dare not presume, for since I cannot prove, nor conceive thine hid works, that thou hast made in a creature, what should I say to the maker that is a creator? For all philosophers that have laboured in divers sentences, as in grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, all, they proved by reason in their faculties, till they came to one point, that was called, prima causa. And here they stood still and could proceed no further. And that first causer, they said, might well be called a God. And so we, to the same first causer of all things, we say: Te Deum Laudamus. ‘Thee God we praise', that art so curious a maker of diversities of things. And Te dominum confitemur, ‘we knowledge thee', a lord that of everything art so wise a disposer and so noble a keeper.