Chapter 30.—What the Mechanical Arts Contribute to Exegetics.

47.  Further, as to the remaining arts, whether those by which something is made which, when the effort of the workman is over, remains as a result of his work, as, for example, a house, a bench, a dish, and other things of that kind; or those which, so to speak, assist God in His operations, as medicine, and agriculture, and navigation; or those whose sole result is an action, as dancing, and racing, and wrestling;—in all these arts experience teaches us to infer the future from the past.  For no man who is skilled in any of these arts moves his limbs in any operation without connecting the memory of the past with the expectation of the future.  Now of these arts a very superficial and cursory knowledge is to be acquired, not with a view to practising them (unless some duty compel us, a matter on which I do not touch at present), but with a view to forming a judgment about them, that we may not be wholly ignorant of what Scripture means to convey when it employs figures of speech derived from these arts.

CAPUT XXX. Quid eodem conferant artes mechanicae.

47. Artium etiam caeterarum, quibus aliquid fabricatur, vel quod remaneat post operationem artificis ab illo effectum, sicut domus, et scamnum, et vas aliquod, atque alia hujuscemodi; vel quae ministerium quoddam exhibent operanti Deo, sicut medicina, et agricultura, et gubernatio; vel quarum omnis effectus est actio, sicut saltationum et cursionum et luctaminum: harum ergo cunctarum artium de praeteritis experimenta faciunt etiam futura conjici; nam nullus earum artifex membra movet in operando, nisi praeteritorum memoriam cum futurorum exspectatione contexat. Harum autem cognitio tenuiter in ipsa humana vita cursimque usurpanda est, non ad operandum, nisi forte officium aliquod cogat, de quo nunc non agimus; sed ad judicandum, ne omnino nesciamus quid Scriptura velit insinuare, cum de his artibus aliquas figuratas locutiones inserit.