Faith & Spirit Quote by William Hamilton

Hamilton’s line performs a neat double move: it sounds like humility before God, but it’s really a power play on behalf of human limits. By insisting that “the infinite God” cannot be “comprehended or conceived” given the “present limitation of our faculties,” he pulls theology out of the courtroom of proof and places it inside the softer (and safer) territory of epistemology. The sentence doesn’t argue for God so much as it fences off the kinds of arguments you’re allowed to demand.

The intent is strategic. “Infinite” isn’t just praise; it’s a technical barrier. If God is truly infinite, then any finite mind trying to map Him is guaranteed to fail. That built-in failure becomes the point: skepticism can be reframed as category error, not intellectual victory. Hamilton’s phrase “by us” is doing political work too, spreading responsibility across a collective audience. Doubt isn’t a personal shortcoming, but a shared condition. That’s disarming, and it’s persuasive.

As a politician, Hamilton is also modeling a kind of public piety that doesn’t overpromise. He avoids the hazards of doctrinal specificity by leaning into abstraction. In a plural or contentious environment, that’s useful: you can affirm God’s majesty while sidestepping sectarian fights about what God wants, who speaks for Him, or how confidently anyone can claim divine endorsement. The subtext is a warning against certainty dressed as reverence: if the object is infinite, then the loudest claimant to understanding is often the least trustworthy.