Precepts and dogmas, Scripture's inward efficacy, and divinity-marks read in the whole

Sacred Scripture's precepts and dogmas also do not lack their own light — nay, they have by far the greatest. That this may appear more clearly, note that they are of two kinds. For Scripture teaches and commands many things of which men have by nature some notice, but very confused and wavering. Yet Scripture has laid those things open more lucidly, and taught them fully and accurately. Of this sort are what Scripture hands down concerning God's nature and attributes — namely concerning God's eternal, immense, and immutable essence; concerning his infinite power, wisdom, goodness, and also justice; concerning the creation of the world and of all that is in it; concerning God's providence by which he conserves, rules, and administers all things; likewise concerning man's office both toward God and toward the neighbor: that God is to be loved above all, all things referred to his glory, himself carefully worshiped and invoked, trusted, and that one is to rest upon his care; that the neighbor also is to be loved, good done to all, injuries borne, oneself thought of humbly, innermost thoughts and affections kept pure — and in a word, nearly all and each of the precepts of the Christian life, which ought to be pure and sincere in every part, and from which all filth and luxury ought to be absent. Those things and the like the sense of conscience proves, reason confirms, and certain rudiments of them are discerned in the pagans' books. For they hand down some things concerning God, piety, and man's office that are not contemptible — yet obscurely, sparingly, coldly, doubtfully, and mixed with very many errors. But Scripture places those things in clear light and teaches them fully and openly: so that after its light has shone on us, we wonder that things so certain and undoubted were seen and handed down only thinly, doubtfully, and obscurely by the most excellent minds. But when those most excellent minds handed down so jejunely and obscurely the things whose truth we now discern by Scripture's benefit, while Scripture handed them down so fully and perspicuously — and yet the sacred writers did not excel other men by erudition or by nature's gifts, but on the contrary most were rude and unlearned in the human sciences — it is necessary that they were led by another light than nature's, and taught and inspired by God.

But besides those things of which men have by nature only a thin and fleeing cognition, sacred Scripture teaches many things that surpass reason, which the human mind cannot grasp, and for which it has no certain arguments. Yet they cohere so well with what the sense of conscience proves and right reason is convinced of, and agree so well with those prior things, and are built upon them so fittingly, that it sufficiently appears they are not human inventions but mysteries of divine wisdom. Such, for example, is the doctrine of the expiation of our sins through the death and offering on the cross of Christ, God and man — which is discerned to agree most with God's justice and mercy. For in this manner God's justice was satisfied while our sins were punished in Christ, and mercy while they were forgiven us. And with this doctrine coheres that dogma so sublime and lofty concerning three divine persons in one essence. For unless the Son of God were God and equal to the Father, his sacrifice would not have been of infinite value, such as was required that by it our sins be expiated, inasmuch as they had deserved infinite punishment. And such also is the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. For it seems agreeable to reason that a man who acts well or ill in the body should also receive in the body punishment or reward for what was done justly or unjustly — which, since it does not happen in this life, agrees with God's justice that our bodies, which death has reduced to dust, be joined again to their souls, so that it may go well or ill with the whole man according as he acted well or ill.

But moreover the greatest indication of divinity in sacred Scripture is its efficacy, by which it acts inwardly in a man — partly by terrifying consciences and affecting them with the sense of sin, partly by raising the bruised mind and consoling afflicted consciences; but chiefly by so changing the man that he hates sin and pursues piety and true virtue from the soul. By this efficacy nothing is more powerful in confirming the faithful, although it cannot compel to assent those who have not yet felt that efficacy and have hardened against God's Word. And yet even a most profane man, if he has not felt the efficacy of God's Word, yet if he considers it attentively, can easily recognize that this Word is such as to generate the highest tranquillity and joy in those who firmly believe it, and to compel them to every good work and every virtue.

And let these few things suffice as a taste of this argument, which can never be exhausted, and which is treated more fully and copiously by learned men whose footsteps we follow and who have borne the torch before us. But this seems worth adding: that these characters of divinity which we said shine in Scripture are not to be sought in single parts of Scripture separated from the whole, but in the divine writings as they are considered jointly and as wholes in themselves. For it is not to be thought that any pericope of a Canonical book has a certain mark by which it can be discerned and distinguished from the Apocrypha.