Chapter III — The supreme necessity by which all Theologians, but especially those who direct the consciences of Christians, are bound to the study of holy Scripture

I. Words fail me with which to lay open, as its dignity deserves, the extreme necessity of the study here proposed. If I could impress this single truth more deeply upon your soul, O director of souls, and fully persuade you of it, I should attain the fruit which I have proposed to myself in the labor I have undertaken. Words do not reform the morals of men; but the law of the Lord alone converts souls. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and innumerable others delivered for the most part excellent institutions of morals; yet they recalled no one to a better way of life. Gather from this what fruit so many books, whether old or new, which swarm with the mere opinions of men, are apt to bring forth. Such is the disposition and nature of man, that he refuses to submit to the authority of other men's judgments. It is divine authority that takes the minds of men captive into its obedience, and confines their morals within the paths of virtue. Hence it is that that Theology which does not draw its conclusions from the holy Scriptures deserves to be called not Theology but Battology — vain babbling — utterly unfit for making morals honest.

II. The divine Scripture itself commands the meditation of itself in six hundred places. In Deuteronomy, chapter 6, these words are found: Hear, O Israel, and observe to do the things which the Lord hath commanded thee, that it may be well with thee... Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thy heart: and thou shalt tell them to thy children, and thou shalt meditate upon them sitting in thy house, and walking on thy journey, sleeping and rising: and thou shalt bind them as a sign on thy hand: and they shall be and shall move before thy eyes: and thou shalt write them in the entry, and on the doors of thy house... Take heed diligently lest thou forget the Lord.

III. I beg and adjure you, O director of souls, to bend your serious meditations for a little while upon this divine testimony. Two things are here prescribed: one, the exercise of divine love; the other, the study of the divine law. Could the commandment of divine love be expressed in clearer words and more lucid phrase? Tell me, pray: could it ever have entered your mind that Theologians would be found who would attempt to reduce so most grave a commandment almost to nothing? And yet, as is plain to all, very many have striven to attenuate this first and most grave precept with vain inventions. For some cavil that this precept never of itself binds and presses in the whole course of life; others, only at the point of death; others, incidentally at some time; others, once within five years; and others, once within two years. Gather from this: if a commandment so lucid and expressed with such perspicuity — a commandment which is the basis and foundation of the whole law and the bond of the Christian law, which Christ renewed in his Gospel and imposed more strongly upon Christians — if, I say, many authors have dared to cavil at and elude this precept, with what inventions will they not obscure the other precepts, which are not so perspicuous, but ambiguous, and as it were remote conclusions? What Christian, the prejudices of certain Casuists being removed, reading the law just transcribed, would call into question its morally continuous obligation? You have now comprehended how necessary is the meditation of the divine law; since according to it, and not according to the pleasures of the Casuists, you shall be judged. And the burden by which Theologians — above all the curators and directors of souls — are bound to devote their labor to the study of the Scriptures is the graver, inasmuch as unlettered Christians, ignorant of the Latin tongue, cannot read holy Scripture. The Church has therefore wisely forbidden them this reading, in order that the Pastors may hold out to them this heavenly and divine food pure and refined from every noxious error. Nor may you rejoin that all the Casuists too study the divine Scriptures. Be it so. But from their commentaries upon the law transcribed above it is clearly evident that they read the holy Scriptures loaded with prejudices and anticipations, and distracted by various affections — if indeed they really read them at all, and do not rather transcribe what the earlier Casuists have taught.

IV. Passing over the innumerable Scriptures of the old Testament which inculcate the reading and serious meditation of the holy Law, I shall relate some testimonies of the new Covenant. Christ the Lord reproved the Pharisees for being ignorant of the holy Scriptures, saying in Matthew 22: And Jesus answering, said to them: You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. Again, questioned by the Pharisees on another matter, he sends them back, not to the Jewish Casuists and the Rabbis, but to the Scriptures: Search the Scriptures: for you think in them to have life everlasting: and the same are they that give testimony of me (John 6). St. Paul, in Romans 15, commands the unwearied study of the Scriptures: For what things soever were written, were written for our learning: that through patience and the comfort of the Scriptures, we might have hope. Again, writing to Timothy, he first sets before his eyes, in chapter 3, the evils and calamities of the time to come, and then, that he may guard himself against such great evils, he strongly enjoins upon him the reading of the Scriptures: But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, patience... But continue thou in those things which thou hast learned, and which have been committed to thee: knowing of whom thou hast learned them. And because from thy infancy thou hast known the holy scriptures, which can instruct thee to salvation, by the faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work. But what the Apostle immediately subjoins in chapter 4 must be impressed more deeply upon the soul and seriously meditated: Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil thy ministry. A time will come, says Paul, when they will not endure sound doctrine. What is sound doctrine? That which consists of truth alone, say all the Fathers. Doctrine is corrupted by the admixture of falsity. That doctrine, therefore, is certainly corrupt which teaches the use of contrary opinions, of which, if one is true, the other must needs be false. The most tremendous of all the punishments with which God threatens is the neglect of the Scriptures, and a reading of them that is burdensome and full of disgust. The time seems already to have come which Amos foretold in chapter 8: I will send forth a famine into the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord... They shall go about seeking the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. The Lord withdraws both the reading and the understanding of the Scriptures from those who either neglect them or strive to elude them with arbitrary inventions. Turn over the innumerable books of the many Casuists which are read by Parish priests and Confessors as masters in the government of souls: scarcely any exhortations of divine Scripture in them, most rare any argumentations drawn from it. If some testimony is alleged, it is frequently twisted to confirm lax opinions, as is evident in this text: My yoke is sweet — which the Probabilists commonly use in order to accommodate Christian Morals to human appetites. Scarcely one of them expounds the evangelical oracle in its genuine sense: namely, that the yoke of Christ is sweet because it is the yoke of divine love, because it is anointed with the unction of charity, because the Christian law is the law of divine love. But divine love wars with the love of the flesh and of the world.

V. The Councils and all the Fathers most deeply inculcate the reading of the Scriptures upon Priests. The Council of Trent, Session 5, chapter 1, commands that Bishops, Archbishops, and Primates, either by themselves — as they are bound by divine law, when they are able — or through a substitute, interpret sacred Scripture to the people. It prescribes that revenues be established from which the men destined for this office are to be supported. Then, many things being passed over, it subjoins: In the Monasteries of Monks also, where it can conveniently be done, let there likewise be a lecture on sacred Scripture... And in the Convents of the others, in which studies can conveniently flourish, let a lecture on sacred Scripture likewise be held. The Fourth Council of Toledo established the following, which is found in the Decretum, distinction 37, chapter 1: Ignorance, the mother of all vices, is to be shunned most of all in the Priests of God, who have undertaken the office of teaching among the peoples: for the Apostle Paul frequently admonishes Priests to read the holy Scriptures, saying to Timothy: Attend etc. Let Priests therefore know the holy Scriptures and the canons, that all their work may consist in preaching. The chief, therefore, and almost the sole occupation of Priests, and above all of Pastors, is the study of holy Scripture. What if Pastors should occupy the greater part of their life in business affairs, in reckoning up revenues, in settling lawsuits, in domestic and economic cares, and should hand over to certain Religious the administering of the food of holy Scripture to the flock committed to themselves, not to others? Such men, assuredly, would be not Pastors, but hirelings and betrayers of their own ministry. Pastors are bound to feed the flock out of their own selves: they may employ ministers and helpers in those things which they cannot themselves perform. They are exceedingly deceived, and shamefully mock themselves, when they believe that they can fulfill their ministry by the labor of others. They must expend all their strength, their studies, their vigils, and their cares in discharging their own ministry; and when they cannot alone fulfill all its parts, then let them take ministers to their aid. Let them commit the government of temporal things to others, that they themselves may be able to devote themselves wholly to God and to the guarding and forming of their flock. Those Pastors run the road of damnation who commit spiritual things to ministers, reserving to themselves the cares of earthly business.

VI. What are the chief sacred books which holy Pastors and directors of souls ought to read and meditate? They are the books of the Psalms, of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and the Prophets, from the old Testament. More abundant still will be the fruit which you will gather from the mature reading of the new Testament. You will not stumble there upon petty questions, cases, and disputations; because the Gospels teach how to live holily, not how to dispute subtly. No lawgiver has inserted into his laws the controversies and petty questions which the wits of men are able to devise. The holy Fathers of the Church, who are our Masters — Justin Martyr, Cyprian, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and innumerable others — settled questions of morals by the holy Scriptures and the divine traditions, and thus governed the peoples committed to them. These men had engraved deep in their soul the oracle of Christ the Lord, who says in John 14: But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind. On this text St. Thomas writes as follows, lecture 6: He will teach you all things: because whatever a man may teach from without, unless the Holy Spirit give understanding within, he labors in vain: for unless he be first present to the heart of the hearer, the discourse of the Teacher will be idle.

VII. I hear many clamoring that these things are theoretical, not practical. Those who do not hear confessions, who write in their chamber and do not handle the business of human society, most easily publish specious rules which serve nothing for practical execution and direction. There is need of good and solid practice. Explain to us where in the holy Scriptures are found the doctrines by which can be resolved those immense volumes of questions which Caramuel, Diana, Sánchez, Escobar, Castropalao, Candido, Zanardi, Sporer, Tamburini, Gobat, and the other recent Doctors have published?

VIII. I answer that by a few oracles of holy Scripture the greatest part of the questions which luxuriant wits have stirred up is struck down and reduced to nothing; concerning which St. Augustine writes as follows in Sermon 143 de tempore: These, my brethren, are the great deliriums of great Doctors. Nor am I one to disapprove all the controversies which the new Casuists agitate; but I say that many are of no moment, and that more can be resolved by the divine Scriptures alone, by the traditions, and by the doctrine of the Fathers. And because not a few appeal to practice, I am willing to obey them. The controversies which the new Casuists have brought in against the first commandment of charity toward God and the Neighbor — are they not dissolved by the mere words in which God expressed it? Those innumerable questions which they discuss concerning impure touches, concerning conjugal matters, concerning sodomy and other most shameful acts, concerning dances, concerning comedies, concerning the promiscuous conversation of men and women, are overthrown by these divine oracles alone: He that loveth danger shall perish in it (Ecclesiasticus 3). Turn away thy face from a woman dressed up (Ecclesiasticus 10 [recte 9]). If thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out... If thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off, etc. (Matthew 5). From all appearance of evil refrain yourselves (1 Thessalonians 5). If these and six hundred other similar divine oracles were consulted with prejudices laid aside, and without the zeal of twisting such commandments to the desires and appetites of men, those most empty little questions and petty distinctions, agitated in our age with such contention for the obscuring of evangelical truth, would go up in smoke. The disputations which the most recent authors have stirred up concerning homicide, concerning the duel as vindicator of honor, concerning the material lie, concerning amphibologies, concerning thefts, concerning compensations, concerning usury, and other matters, and which fill those immense volumes of the Casuists, can be settled by the most lucid testimonies of divine Scripture, if evangelical truth alone be regarded, and that zeal for pleasing men and hunting after human favor be utterly rooted out.

IX. In like manner the commandments of the Church are clear and manifest, and the examples of holy men lie open to all. It is pleasing to hear what St. Augustine writes in Epistle 119: But this I grieve at exceedingly: that many things which are most wholesomely commanded in the divine books are less cared for, and all things are so full of so many presumptions, that he is more gravely rebuked who during his octave has touched the earth with bare foot, than he who has buried his mind in wine. All such things, therefore, as are neither contained in the authorities of the holy Scriptures, nor found decreed in the Councils of the Bishops, nor strengthened by the custom of the universal Church, but are varied innumerably by the diverse customs of diverse places — so that scarcely, or never at all, can the causes be found which men followed in instituting them — I judge, where the liberty is granted, are to be cut away without any hesitation. I pass over many things which the holy Doctor writes in the same place, and I exhibit a few of those which he adds toward the end of the epistle: And I marvel that this escapes you: that not only in innumerable other matters many things escape me, but even in the holy Scriptures themselves I am ignorant of far more things than I know. And therefore I bear a hope, not unfruitful, in the name of Christ; because I have not only believed my God that on those two commandments dependeth the whole Law and the Prophets, but I have also experienced it, and experience it daily. For no mystery, no discourse however obscure, is opened to me out of the sacred writings, where I do not find these same precepts: The end of the commandment is charity, from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith; and, The fulness of the law is charity. Therefore, O Christian, whether these things or others, so read, so learn, as to remember that it was most truly said: Knowledge puffeth up, charity edifieth. But charity envieth not, is not puffed up. Let knowledge, then, be so employed, as a kind of scaffolding by which may rise the structure of charity, which abideth for ever, even when knowledge shall be destroyed.

X. Not only, says Augustine, have I believed my God revealing it, but I have also daily experienced that the whole law and the Prophets are contained in those two precepts of charity. If Christians would seriously meditate these two commandments alone, they would laugh at and despise the innumerable questions and most vain entanglements of certain Casuists. But so far are many of these from referring the questions that arise back to these two precepts, that on the contrary they attenuate these two commandments, restrict and limit the force of their obligation, in order to be able to soften the other laws.