Chapter 37
For if he takes up rashly a meaning which the author whom he is reading did
not intend, he often falls in with other statements which he cannot harmonize
with this meaning. And if he admits that these statements are true and
certain, then it follows that the meaning he had put upon the former passage
cannot be the true one: and so it comes to pass, one can hardly tell how,
that, out of love for his own opinion, he begins to feel more angry with
Scripture than he is with himself. And if he should once permit that evil to
creep in, it will utterly destroy him. "For we walk by faith, not by sight."
Now faith will totter if the authority of Scripture begin to shake. And then,
if faith totter, love itself will grow cold. For if a man has fallen from
faith, he must necessarily also fall from love; for he cannot love what he
does not believe to exist. But if he both believes and loves, then through
good works, and through diligent attention to the precepts of morality, he
comes to hope also that he shall attain the object of his love. And so these
are the three things to which all knowledge and all prophecy are subservient:
faith, hope, love.
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