Dialectic proofs: common topics, councils, common spiritual nature; two uses

I add this because, when solid and firm foundations have been laid, or even when the wholly uninstructed are to be taught, Christ himself and the Apostles also employ dialectic proofs and oratorical arts — as may be seen in Andreas Hyperius of Flanders, formerly professor at Marburg, in his Theological Topics — such as: (1) topical places common to several disciplines; (2) proofs sought from the decrees and judgments of councils, from the Church's custom, from human traditions, from the opinions and sentences of the Latin as well as the Greek fathers — for the authority of all these is only probable, and rests on the authority of canonical Scripture, which the Protestants with one mouth testify and Bellarmine also somewhere does not deny; (3) proofs sought not from the proper but from the common nature of the spiritual things under discussion, which are called dialectic and logical only by analogy, even if their terms are merely spiritual.

And they are used chiefly for two causes. (1) For hearers ignorant of the divine mysteries and unskilled in Scripture's language. Thus Paul in Acts uses the authority of Aratus to refute the Stoics and Epicureans, who would not have admitted the Scriptures, just as Mohammedans do not today; likewise the poet Epimenides against the Cretans; and Menander to correct the Corinthians. Thus Christ, in teaching the people, for the most part uses common and dialectic arguments from likes and other such things customary then in Syria. This is useful for instruction. But acroamatically Christ teaches his disciples and analytically disputes against the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Satan. (2) For illustrating those things which were first demonstrated acroamatically or analytically.