Chapter 6.—Use of the Obscurities in Scripture Which Arise from Its Figurative Language.

7.  But hasty and careless readers are led astray by many and manifold obscurities and ambiguities, substituting one meaning for another; and in some places they cannot hit upon even a fair interpretation.  Some of the expressions are so obscure as to shroud the meaning in the thickest darkness.  And I do not doubt that all this was divinely arranged for the purpose of subduing pride by toil, and of preventing a feeling of satiety in the intellect, which generally holds in small esteem what is discovered without difficulty.  For why is it, I ask, that if any one says that there are holy and just men whose life and conversation the Church of Christ uses as a means of redeeming those who come to it from all kinds of superstitions, and making them through their imitation of good men members of its own body; men who, as good and true servants of God, have come to the baptismal font laying down the burdens of the world, and who rising thence do, through the implanting of the Holy Spirit, yield the fruit of a two-fold love, a love, that is, of God and their neighbor;—how is it, I say, that if a man says this, he does not please his hearer so much as when he draws the same meaning from that passage in Canticles, where it is said of the Church, when it is being praised under the figure of a beautiful woman, “Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are shorn which came up from the washing, whereof every one bears twins, and none is barren among them?”55    Cant. iv. 2.  Does the hearer learn anything more than when he listens to the same thought expressed in the plainest language, without the help of this figure?  And yet, I don’t know why, I feel greater pleasure in contemplating holy men, when I view them as the teeth of the Church, tearing men away from their errors, and bringing them into the Church’s body, with all their harshness softened down, just as if they had been torn off and masticated by the teeth.  It is with the greatest pleasure, too, that I recognize them under the figure of sheep that have been shorn, laying down the burthens of the world like fleeces, and coming up from the washing, i.e., from baptism, and all bearing twins, i.e., the twin commandments of love, and none among them barren in that holy fruit.

8.  But why I view them with greater delight under that aspect than if no such figure were drawn from the sacred books, though the fact would remain the same and the knowledge the same, is another question, and one very difficult to answer.  Nobody, however, has any doubt about the facts, both that it is pleasanter in some cases to have knowledge communicated through figures, and that what is attended with difficulty in the seeking gives greater pleasure in the finding.—For those who seek but do not find suffer from hunger.  Those, again, who do not seek at all because they have what they require just beside them often grow languid from satiety.  Now weakness from either of these causes is to be avoided.  Accordingly the Holy Spirit has, with admirable wisdom and care for our welfare, so arranged the Holy Scriptures as by the plainer passages to satisfy our hunger, and by the more obscure to stimulate our appetite.  For almost nothing is dug out of those obscure passages which may not be found set forth in the plainest language elsewhere.

CAPUT VI. Obscuritas Scripturae in tropis et figuris quorsum utilis.

7. Sed multis et multiplicibus obscuritatibus, et ambiguitatibus decipiuntur qui temere legunt, aliud pro alio sentientes; quibusdam autem locis quid vel falso suspicentur non inveniunt, ita obscure quaedam dicta densissimam caliginem obducunt. Quod totum provisum divinitus esse non dubito, ad edomandam labore superbiam, et intellectum a fastidio revocandum , cui facile investigata plerumque vilescunt. Quid enim est, quaeso, quod si quisquam dicat sanctos esse homines atque perfectos, quorum vita et moribus Christi Ecclesia de quibuslibet superstitionibus praecidit eos qui ad se veniunt, et imitatione bonorum sibimet quodammodo incorporat; qui boni fideles et veri Dei servi, deponentes onera saeculi, ad sanctum Baptismi lavacrum venerunt, atque inde ascendentes conceptione sancti Spiritus fructum dant geminae charitatis, id est, Dei et proximi: quid est ergo quod si haec quisque dicat, minus delectat audientem, quam si ad eumdem sensum locum illum exponat de Canticis canticorum, ubi dictum est Ecclesiae, cum tanquam pulchra quaedam femina laudaretur, Dentes tui sicut grex detonsarum, ascendens de lavacro, quae omnes geminos creant, et non est sterilis in eis (Cant. IV, 2)? Num aliud homo discit, quam cum illud planissimis verbis, sine similitudinis hujus adminiculo audiret? Et tamen nescio quomodo suavius intueor sanctos, cum eos quasi dentes Ecclesiae video praecidere ab erroribus homines, atque in ejus corpus, emollita duritia, quasi demorsos mansosque 0039 transferre. Oves etiam jucundissime agnosco detonsas, oneribus saecularibus tanquam velleribus positis, et ascendentes de lavacro, id est de Baptismate, creare omnes geminos, id est duo praecepta dilectionis, et nullam esse ab isto sancto fructu sterilem video.

8. Sed quare suavius videam, quam si nulla de divinis Libris talis similitudo promeretur, cum res eadem sit eademque cognitio, difficile est dicere, et alia quaestio est. Nunc tamen nemo ambigit, et per similitudines libentius quaeque cognosci, et cum aliqua difficultate quaesita multo gratius inveniri. Qui enim prorsus non inveniunt quod quaerunt, fame laborant; qui autem non quaerunt, quia in promptu habent, fastidio saepe marcescunt: in utroque autem languor cavendus est. Magnifice igitur et salubriter Spiritus sanctus ita Scripturas sanctas modificavit, ut locis apertioribus fami occurreret, obscurioribus autem fastidia detergeret. Nihil enim fere de illis obscuritatibus eruitur, quod non planissime dictum alibi reperiatur.