Cornelius a Lapide

On the Spiritual Sense — First Prefatory Dissertation to the Apocalypse

Editorial Note

This prefatory dissertation is editorial material by the 1891 editor Peronne, drawn (as his footnotes acknowledge) from Patritius's De interpretatione Scripturarum Sacrarum. It is not part of Lapide's original commentary but introduces the volume's hermeneutical framework.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter I: On the Spiritual Sense of Things, or On Typology
  • Article I: On the Various Kinds of Types
  • Article II: How Types and Symbols Differ
  • Article III: That the Economy of the Old Covenant Was Adorned with Types
  • Article IV: Some Questions on Types
• Chapter II: On the Spiritual Sense of Words
  • Article I: On the Nature and Names of the Spiritual Sense of Words
  • Article II: That the Spiritual Sense Underlies the Words of Scripture, Derived from Types
  • Article III: Some Questions on the Spiritual Sense of Words
  • Article IV: Cautions on the Use of Spiritual Interpretation
• Chapter III: On the Corollaries and Consequences of the Sense Underlying the Words of Scripture, or the Consequent Sense of Scripture
  • Article I: Testimonies of the Sacred Writers
  • Article II: Testimonies of the Fathers
  • Article III: Various Cautions

Introduction

1. The question we approach is a weighty one, concerning the spiritual sense of the Scriptures. For it concerns that sense which the Holy Spirit, as their Author, willed to lie beneath the Scriptures no less than the literal sense — a sense which this one book possesses as something proper to itself and shared with no other; a sense which, in the latest ages, Luther first of all, then others among the Protestants, and now generally the more recent men called Rationalists, openly reject and deny that they recognize in the Scriptures. These considerations, I say, sufficiently show in what place this question ought to be held.

2. Furthermore, what the spiritual or mystical sense is, and from what origin it must be derived, can be fully learned from the teaching of the Fathers. Yet this term has a twofold usage in their writings: one by which it signifies that sense which is proper to the Scriptures themselves, the matter we are now treating; and another by which it designates those judgments which indeed do not lie beneath the Scriptures themselves, but are consequences and corollaries drawn from what is said or narrated in the Scriptures — about which we shall also speak below. Now this discrepancy of usage, which is found in the books of the Fathers, is the cause why this question — which would otherwise be sufficiently clear if we constantly held in mind the right notion of the spiritual sense — is so intricate and confused among writers, even among those who pass for the most expert in theological matters; and you would marvel that they, whether speaking or disputing, call "spiritual" or "mystical" what is in fact something quite different — namely, those corollaries we mentioned, or even the literal sense itself when it refers to mysteries and other such loftier matters, or is taken in a transferred sense.

3. Our care, therefore, must be this: that, having first indicated the origin and laid open as it were the source of the spiritual sense, and having clearly and accurately distinguished the notions and names of the matters in hand, we may treat this question with the utmost clarity; and, avoiding the circumlocutions with which some — moved by I know not what scruple — encumber and complicate it, we may set forth the whole matter as simply as possible. We are confident that we shall do this safely if, with Thomas as our guide, we walk that way which he himself, following the Fathers, opened up for us, summing up the substance of what we are about to treat in these few but masterly words: "The Author of Sacred Scripture is God, in whose power it lies that He should not only fit words to signify (which man too can do), but also the things themselves. And therefore, although in all sciences words signify, this science has it as its own peculiarity that the very things signified by the words also signify something. That first signification, then, by which the words signify things, pertains to the first sense, which is the historical or literal sense; but that signification by which the things signified by the words in turn signify other things is called the spiritual sense, which is founded upon the literal sense and presupposes it." I, Quaest. I, art. 10.

4. By these words of Thomas we are taught that a spiritual sense can lie beneath the Scriptures for this reason: that through the things narrated or commemorated in them, other things besides were signified, with God as their Author. From which this also manifestly follows, namely that this spiritual sense is not so much proper to the Scriptures themselves as to those things which the Scriptures embrace; yet it does lie beneath the Scriptures, because the Holy Spirit, in entrusting those things to the sacred volume, willed also to entrust the meaning He had imparted to those things — a meaning we are to gather from the Scriptures just as we gather the literal sense. In a word, that the Scriptures can contain a spiritual sense, this they have from the very signifying force of the types; but that they actually contain it has no other source than the counsel and will of the Holy Spirit. With these things known beforehand, anyone easily understands that the spiritual sense can be considered in two ways: as it lies beneath the Scriptures themselves, and as it lies beneath the things which are recounted in the Scriptures; and thus, although it is one and the same sense, yet for the sake of clarity it can be divided in thought and as it were treated as two senses — the first of which you may aptly call the spiritual sense of the words, the latter of the things; and the latter is the origin and as it were the source of the former. There ought, then, to be a particular treatment of each; but we shall add only a few remarks on the consequent sense of the Scriptures.

Chapter I: On the Spiritual Sense of Things, or On Typology

5. All those things from which the spiritual sense of the words, or of the Scriptures themselves, flows, we call by the common name of "types," together with Paul (Gal. IV, 24); and the very signification of the types, indeed the whole discipline, has received from more recent writers the name of "typology." Types, then, are those persons, things, or actions, and those events and deeds, which by some particular counsel and ordinance of God were so shaped and directed that they should either pre-signify certain future things pertaining to the very economy of the divine covenant — and especially to Christ and His Church; or express and represent in some rougher outlines certain loftier matters, namely the spiritual, the heavenly, and the divine; or finally serve as norms and rules by which we should regulate and shape our morals. Whatever we gather from the writings of the Fathers that touches upon types in any way is easily reduced to that threefold class. We shall therefore divide the types themselves into prophetic, anagogical, and tropological — names which, though not always used by the Fathers themselves with one constant meaning, have nevertheless been employed by them; and we shall briefly discuss, one by one, what is most necessary to know about each kind, and finally add a few other remarks bearing on this treatment of typology in general.

Article I: On the Various Kinds of Types

I. On Prophetic Types

6. The class of types called prophetic extends more widely than the other classes, for the whole economy of the Old Covenant was the foreshadowing — a kind of sketch, as it were — of the New Covenant. Hence very many specimens of prophetic types can be drawn from the Old Covenant: whether persons (such as Adam, Melchizedek, Isaac and Ishmael, Moses); or things (such as Noah's ark, the Old Law, the victims and ceremonies, the festival days, the cloud that led the Israelites, the manna, etc.); or events and deeds (such as the casting out of Hagar and Ishmael, the crossing of the Red Sea).

It is plain that these types, since they were signs and symbols of future things, must be reckoned as forerunners, no differently than the prophecies themselves are — from which they differ in this one respect: that the latter were uttered in words, but these in the manner we have described. Yet they must by all means be distinguished, as Thomas distinguished them (Quodlib. VII, art. 15, ad 1, and art. 16): prophetic types must be distinguished from symbolic vaticinations, by which the prophets sometimes predicted future things, and of which the Scriptures display three modes. One of these was when God first represented to the prophet's mind some image, usually monstrous and enigmatic, then disclosed its meaning, and finally the prophet recounted the whole matter to others — as is to be seen done in Jer. 1:11-16; 24:1-8; Ezek. 37:1-11; Amos 7:7-8; 8:1-2, etc. The second, when God commanded the prophet himself to do some action, adding a declaration of the deed which the prophet was to teach to others: such we find in Isa. 20:2-4; Jer. 13:1-9; 19:1-11; Ezek. 4:1-8, etc. Finally, when the prophet himself proclaimed those things which God had previously revealed to him, with some thing or symbolic action added at the same time for the sake of illustration and ornament — such as the prophecies of Ahijah (1 Kings 11:29), of Elisha (2 Kings 13:15), and of Agabus (Acts 21:11). For in none of these is there any place for the prophetic types proper. Nor are these mere images presenting themselves to the prophet's mind, as is the first mode of symbolic vaticinations; nor are they actions otherwise without cause, looking to nothing else than that, by a kind of crude image, they may set before the eyes also those things which the prophet conveys to his hearers' ears — as occurs in the latter two modes.

II. On Anagogical Types

7. More recent writers usually attach the name ἀναγωγή (anagogy) to that spiritual sense which deals with the eternal blessedness of men. But the Fathers did not define the use of this word within such narrow limits. For since any spiritual sense lifts the mind and soul of readers up to things loftier than what the words themselves, taken in their obvious sense, signify, the name ἀναγωγή — in keeping with the meaning of the word — was sometimes made by the Fathers a common name for the spiritual sense as such. Yet at other times, and more properly, they applied this name to that spiritual signification which by its very nature reaches things loftier than what is earthly and bodily — chiefly the heavenly and the divine. And therefore the types to which this spiritual signification is peculiar are also by their own proper appellation called anagogical types.

You will find a number of these and their interpretation in the Book of Wisdom — for example Solomon's Temple (9:8) and the manna, several of whose meanings are read in the book itself (16:21-26); and more in Paul's epistles, such as the city of Jerusalem (Gal. 4:25), the tabernacle and its parts and furnishings (Heb. 9), Melchizedek's priesthood (ibid. 6:20ff.), and Aaron's priesthood (ibid. 8:1ff.). For the rest, anagogical types are fewer than the others, chiefly because most of them can be reckoned among the prophetic types, and the Fathers have in fact most frequently reckoned them among both at once.

III. On Tropological Types

8. The third class comprehends the tropological or moral types, whose spiritual signification is called tropology — a name borrowed by the Fathers from the Greek word τρόπος, which among other things signifies custom and habit. Such a type was the manna (Wisd. 16:27); and so likewise, on the testimony of Paul (1 Cor. 10:5), were the things that befell the Israelites in the desert. Beyond these you will find scarcely anything that the sacred writers explicitly mention as a tropological type, although it can be inferred that this kind of type was very widespread indeed: both from what Paul says about the deeds and events of the people of Israel as they journeyed through the desert (and there is no reason for us to think that the same was not true of others read in the Old Testament), and also from this — that since the entire economy of the prior covenant was a kind of pattern of the later one which God has made with us, it must be supposed that an account was had also of the morals which we should follow.

9. We do not, however, on that account think that every thing taken or proposed by the sacred writers as an example — even though they call it a τρόπος — is to be reckoned in the number of the types we are treating; but only those for which we can produce, either from the writers' own words or from elsewhere, an argument that the form of a type was bestowed on them by God. For not every thing that can serve as an example (e.g., Paul setting himself before others as an example, Phil. 3:17, 2 Thess. 3:9, or the Thessalonians, 1 Thess. 1:7; or Christ washing the disciples' feet, or carrying His Cross, or even "suffering outside the gate," Heb. 13:12) is a type, although every tropological type does serve as an example. For although God willed that all these should be examples of virtues, He cannot be believed to have willed it in that special and loftier manner by which He Himself shaped and governed persons, things, and events so that a spiritual signification (besides the literal) might lie beneath them — which is what is proper to moral types.

What we say of the sacred writers must likewise, as is fitting, be said of the Fathers and the interpreters of the Scriptures: if they bring forward some thing or person from the Old or New Testament and propose it as an example, and from what is reported about it in the Bible draw some moral sense, we shall not at once declare that thing or person to have been a tropological type — since such interpretations can be made even concerning other things which are not read in the Bible at all, such as the deeds of the saints or of illustrious men, who certainly were by no means types. But if perhaps anyone wishes to call those things, from which the Fathers and interpreters draw judgments and lessons pertaining to morals, "types" — taking the word in that sense by which the Greeks call "τύπος" whatever can serve as an example — we do not object, provided the distinction stands between these and those tropological types about which this question is concerned, in which a spiritual signification was present by a special counsel and institution of God.

Article II: How Types and Symbols Differ

10. This is the place where we should note that any types whatsoever have sometimes been called symbols by the Fathers — not unfittingly, for every type is a symbol. Yet we should not aptly bestow the name "type" on every symbol. Therefore, since God has used not only types but also other symbols, and since types — not just any other symbols — belong to that class of things which (like oracles and vaticinations) have something exceeding the force and order of nature, and which one ought not to invent where it is not really necessary to acknowledge something of the kind, we shall offer certain marks and a rule by which we may more safely distinguish types from the other symbols which God Himself used or commanded to be used.

Accordingly, the symbols of past things — which are properly held and called μνημόσυνα (memorials) — are necessarily not to be reckoned as types: such as the rainbow (Gen. 9:13); the feast of Passover among the Hebrews insofar as it was a monument of their repulse from servitude; the confection of the Eucharist, which the Church calls a memorial of the Lord's death. Nor those things which God sometimes added to His words to confirm or more fully illustrate something which He had already clearly and openly declared — such as the portents that accompanied the covenant struck between God and Abraham, or the cloud that filled the Temple built by Solomon: these you may aptly call ἐπιδεικτικά (demonstrative) symbols. Nor those which would be conveniently called μεταστατικά — by which, I say, God so used something to signify, that with the added words He might indeed seem to speak of the symbol, while every hearer easily understood that the meaning of the words pertained elsewhere — as was the serpent which God addressed in place of the devil at Gen. 3:14, or the fig tree dried up at Christ's command. Nor finally the δεικτικά symbols, which betokened something that would happen or come about at the very moment they were employed — as the slaying of victims for sin and for trespass, which indicated that the punishments were being remitted by the Law.

11. On the contrary, we hold that those symbols are to be reckoned as types which, while having none of the features just listed, also — whether you regard their own nature or the nature of the things they signified — you easily understand to have been so confirmed, governed, and ordained by God alone for the signifying of something that some likeness or analogy is found to come between them and the thing signified. Of this kind are certain men or events of human affairs employed by God as symbols of other things; but also very many things and very many deeds — among which it suffices to mention the one lamb, which was a symbol both of the going-out from Egypt and of Christ's later sacrifice, both by divine institution and design: but of the former it was nothing but a mere symbol, since it was a past matter, one which the Israelites themselves could have devised and instituted by their own ingenuity; of the latter, however, it was also a type — as a future matter not yet plainly known to men, which it foreshadowed directly and immediately (ἀμέσως), with no intervening prediction having been made for it to illustrate.

12. In general, then, that we may distinguish types from mere symbols, let this be the rule, drawn from the very nature of the spiritual sense of the Scriptures. Since in symbols nothing more is to be perceived than the signification of some one thing, hence when we know that something which is read in the Scriptures is a symbol, and yet the very obvious and literal sense of the words by which it is recorded conveys nothing of the kind, we shall hold for certain that it is not a mere symbol but a type. For it must then be said that beneath the literal sense of the words there lies yet another sense, namely the spiritual one; but the spiritual sense in the words is derived not from mere symbols (in which, as Saint Thomas teaches, Quodlib. VII, art. 15 ad 1, art. 16, that sense does not lie hidden), but only from types, about which both these things are said. These things may be illustrated by an example. Matthew interprets, as said about Christ being brought back out of Egypt, the words which Hosea uttered concerning the people of the Israelites being brought back from that same Egypt; therefore this bringing-back was a symbol of that earlier return. But was it also a type? The very nature of the matter, according to what we have just observed, sufficiently teaches it; and we shall learn the same thing if we apply this rule. For when those words are weighed as they stand in the book of Hosea itself, connected with the rest of the discourse, you will perceive that their obvious and literal sense conveys nothing that touches Christ; therefore the spiritual sense will lie hidden in them, and so what the literal sense brings forth — namely the bringing-back of the Israelites from Egypt — is by no means a mere symbol (for the literal sense would convey that anyhow), but a type of Christ returning from that same region. In the same way you will recognize that the paschal Lamb, the Psalmist, Solomon, and other such figures were types of Christ, not mere symbols: for the things said about them in the Scriptures of the Old Covenant — which, taken in their literal sense, by no means pertain to Christ — were nevertheless received and interpreted by the writers of the New Testament as said of Christ.

Article III: That the Economy of the Old Covenant Was Adorned with Types

13. The nature and manifold form of types having been set forth, we must now demonstrate that these types — when the economy of the prior covenants was in force — were really used by God. No Catholic doubts of this matter; indeed, even among the Heterodox there have been many who held this view — among whom stand out Grotius, Cocceius, Glassius (Philologia Sacra, bk. II, part 1, tract 1, sect. 1), Spencer (De legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus, bk. I, ch. 11), and in more recent times J. Dav. Michaelis and J. Christoph. Blasche. Yet not a few of the older Heterodox, and in our own age almost all, reject types of every kind, especially the prophetic; or, if some of them sometimes seem to admit any, they nevertheless affirm that these were types κατ' ἔκβασιν — only after the event, and on account of some resemblance which they happened to have with those of which they are reckoned to be types — not because God shaped and directed them so as to pre-signify those things. But it is so well established that the Scriptures, the traditions, the judgment both of the old and of the new synagogue, and reason itself, are on our side, that our adversaries must necessarily lose their case. The arguments are at hand, drawn both from the Scriptures and from reason; for the rest, see Patrizi, vol. I, pp. 189-200.

I. Arguments Drawn from the Scriptures

14. The Scriptures support our judgment by more than one consideration. First, the words of Paul are manifest, in which he expressly affirms that there were types of this kind: either pre-signifying things to come (Rom. 5:14; Gal. 4:24; Col. 2:17; Heb. 9:9; 10:1; 11:19); or revealing heavenly, divine, and other things loftier than what is corporeal and earthly (Heb. 8:5; 9:23); or teaching us how morals are to be rightly formed (1 Cor. 10:6, 11). Peter too sufficiently shows clearly that what befell Noah and his family at the onset of the flood was a type of baptism, calling it their ἀντίτυπον (antitype). Nor are testimonies from the Old Covenant lacking. For the author of the Book of Wisdom thus writes of the temple: "And Thou hast bidden me build a temple… a likeness of Thy holy tabernacle, which Thou didst prepare from the beginning," (Wisd. 9:8) — that is, a type of heaven. The Psalmist, undertaking to sing what had befallen the Israelites in the desert, calls them a "parable" (mashal) and "enigmas" (chidoth) (Ps. 78:2), for no other reason indeed than that they signified something besides what they were — exactly as parables signify something besides what they sound. Moreover, the sacred writers speak of certain persons, things, or events, and bring all these together and set them forth in such a way that even our adversaries themselves (see Bauer's Hermeneutica sacra § 8, near the end) freely concede that — even though those writers do not openly declare it — these same things were held by them as types of the kind we have described: namely, that not by any chance similarity which they might have with other things, but, to speak with Peter, "by the definite counsel and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23), they signified those things.

15. But the writers of the New Testament not only acknowledge types among the things of which the economy of the divine covenants consists, and not only hand down to us persons, things, deeds, and events as types; they also so use those very things which were written about the types — and which cannot be taken in the literal sense as written of other things — as if they had been written not of types, but of those things which were signified by the types. This can have no other cause, surely, than that they held it for certain and beyond doubt that what was said or written about the types was also said or written about the things signified by the types; this however could not happen otherwise unless it were equally certain to them that that power, by which the types signified something else, had been divinely implanted in them. We have indicated above some words of the Old Scriptures which are used in this way by the writers of the New Testament (n. 11). It is moreover helpful to observe that Christ Himself used some of them in the same way. Famous is that saying of the Psalmist: "The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner," Ps. 117:22, which we read transcribed in Matthew, and in Mark, and in Luke, and in Acts, and in the first Epistle of Peter, and which, although the Psalmist speaks of himself, Christ nevertheless used as said of Himself: but how would this be done, unless because the Psalmist and those things which are narrated in those words to have happened to him, were a prophetic type of Christ?

16. But what of the fact that the sacred writers not only do those things which we have so far enumerated, but moreover draw the force of their arguments either from the types, or from what is written about the types, to prove or confirm something pertaining to the things figured by these types? Thus Paul, Rom. 9:27, where he mentions the gentiles to be gathered to Christ, also bids the Jews to hope, using the testimony of Isaiah, who however speaks of the Israelites to be vindicated from the servitude with which the Assyrians oppressed them, Isa. 10:22. The same Paul, to demonstrate that "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.... which is.... of faith," Rom. 10:4, 6, brings forward what Moses had said of the old law: "The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart," ibid. 8 from Deut. 30:14. The same one argues that the Synagogue with its Mosaic laws was to be rejected by God, Gal. 4:21-31, from the things narrated about Hagar and Ishmael in Genesis, and indeed from those words by which God commanded Abraham to cast both of them out of his house, Gen. 21:10: "Cast out this bondwoman and her son," etc. In the same way he defends the divine nature of Christ, Heb. 1:5, by bringing forward what God had said about Solomon: "I will be His Father, and He shall be My Son," 2 Sam. 7:14. But you will find other things of this sort in Paul. And Christ Himself used those words of the Psalmist, of which we spoke a little earlier, to demonstrate what was to be expected from Himself by the Jews who were not believing in Him.

17. Finally, the Bible furnishes another support for our opinion, which, although it can conveniently be reduced to one of those we have set forth, it is nevertheless better to follow up with a special consideration. These are oracles of the Old Scriptures whose πλήρωμα (fulfilment) the apostles and evangelists, using these forms of speech: "And the Scripture was fulfilled, Then was fulfilled, That it might be fulfilled," and the like, place in another matter than in that concerning which those oracles taken in their literal sense are known to have been issued. This happens in these chapters of the New Testament: Matt. 2:15; 13:35; John 13:18; 15:25; 19:36; Acts 1:16. For we must necessarily acknowledge a double πλήρωμα of these oracles: the first in that matter to which the literal sense pertains; the other in that in which the writers of the New Testament say the oracle was fulfilled. Wherefore oracles of this kind pertain to both matters. But how they can pertain to the latter, which their literal sense in no way concerns, no one will divine, unless he posits that the prior matter was a type of the latter. But for this argument of ours to retain its force, we must demonstrate that those expressions: "That it might be fulfilled, Then was fulfilled," etc., in sum the very words "to be fulfilled," πληροῦσθαι, τελειοῦσθαι, in these expressions have entirely the same meaning as that those very things to which the cited oracle pertains happen or come to pass, not other things similar to them, about which however the oracle was not at all uttered.

18. How greatly this opinion must be valued, no one fails to see; and so it stirs wonder that there have been and still are eminently Catholic men who have called it into doubt by act or word. For if the meaning of those words were different, there would surely be doubt whether very many of the prophecies which are brought forward in this way by the apostles and evangelists truly pertain to Christ, or at least their meaning would be deprived of the authority of the Hebrew writers which confirms it; besides which it would taste of something rather inept to have accommodated these oracles to those things about which they were not at all issued, on account merely of some similarity which by chance came in between those and those about which they were really issued. We have moreover many things by which to defend the truth of this opinion. For, as others have already observed, those expressions display a certain ἐνέργεια (force) by which we are compelled to take them in an entirely different signification than that they should be a simple form of comparison, and announce a simple similarity of things. We find moreover parallels of those expressions in the Old Testament, and in these the very words are used which were constantly used by the Syriac interpreter of the New Testament for the words πληροῦσθαι, τελειοῦσθαι, employed in the manner of which we are inquiring, namely the words ארם, which is πληροῦσθαι "to be fulfilled," and שלם, which is τελειοῦσθαι "to be perfected," or completed, or finished, never in any other sense than that which we say underlies those expressions in the New Testament: for they signify that the very thing happens or comes to pass which ought to happen or come to pass, because either it had been foretold, or promised, or, that it might happen, by some means commanded or established. Read 1 Kings 2:27; 8:15, 24; 2 Chron. 6:16; 36:21; Ps. 20:5, 6, in which is the word כלה, and Job 23:14; Isa. 44:28, in which the word שלם is used. But also in the New Testament we read many passages in which no other notion can be attached to the verb "to be fulfilled" and similar verbs besides this one, since it is certain that those things were foretold of which they are said to have been fulfilled; from these it will suffice to indicate a few in which what we affirm not even the Socinians themselves can fail to perceive: Matt. 2:23; Luke 1:20; 24:44; John 18:9, 32; Acts 3:18; 13:33.

19. Nor does our opinion have much to fear from the authority of certain Syrian writers who, writing in Syriac, namely in that language which is closest to the language of the apostles and of Christ Himself, employed such forms of speech when they accommodated the words of the Scriptures to other matters than those concerning which they had been uttered; that, I say, has no weight by which anyone may prove that such a use of those formulas was also proper to the speech of those who consigned the New Testament to writing. For, besides the fact that none of those Syrian authors is so ancient that he did not flourish nearly three hundred years after the completion of the editing of the New Testament, namely at that time when the speech of the Syrians is to be believed to have differed more and more from the Syro-Chaldaic speech in which Christ and the apostles spoke, they are all Christians, and all use those forms of speech only then, when they bring forward testimonies of the Scriptures; from which it appears that those forms so used by them must not be traced to the custom of speaking, but to an entirely different cause; what this is, it is easy to perceive. For those who handle the volumes of the Fathers know that they spoke and wrote constantly in the manner and mode of the sacred Writers and with the same forms of speech; for proving this, a most copious testimony is at hand, namely that of Augustine, who writes thus: "So great is the force of habit even for learning, that those who in some way have been nourished and educated in the holy Scriptures wonder at other expressions, and consider them less Latin, than those which they learned in the Scriptures, and which are not found in the authors of the Latin language." Doctr. Christ. book II, ch. 14. Since therefore Christian Writers both accommodated the oracles of the Scriptures, as is known, to other and various matters, and sometimes wrote and even spoke in the very speech of the Scriptures, it was not difficult that sometimes both should occur together, that is, that they should at the same time accommodate the meaning of the oracles to other matters, and at the same time do so by employing that very form of speech which the sacred Writers were accustomed to employ in transcribing and explaining the oracles; and this all the more because the similarity of the matters suggested that form of speech, since indeed that had been done which is written in the oracle — that, I say, which the words of the oracle, separated from the rest of the discourse and the context of the book and taken by themselves, can sound — even though that for which it was issued and written had not been done. The whole is confirmed by this consideration, that this catachréstic (improper) use of the verb "to be fulfilled" is found, although rarely, among the old Christian writers, and indeed among those who wrote in Greek, e.g. Clement of Rome, but never among others; to whom on the contrary that notion of this verb was by no means unknown, which we defend; for in Herodotus we read this: "sometime to fulfil the oracle... that was spoken concerning this naval battle," book VIII; in Tully (Cicero): "Lest I seem either to profess what I cannot fulfil." Pro Cluentio. Read the Lexicon of Forcellini, under "impleo."

II. Reasons

20. If there were no other weights of reasons by which we might confirm that the economy of the divine covenants was furnished by God with types, yet great weight would accrue to this opinion from the comparison diligently and carefully instituted between those things which are recorded in the books of the Old, and those which are recorded in the books of the New Testament. For from this comparison, to anyone who does not bear a mind occupied with prejudiced opinions, it cannot but appear that wondrous connection of both covenants — not only that which is found between the different parts of some one and the same history, or between predictions and the outcomes of the things predicted, although both of these connections in the matter we are treating are entirely perspicuous, but that which is wont to exist between the image and that which the image represents. But to demonstrate this is not the place here, because it would surely be too long a work. Therefore I urge the students of the sacred letters to read Augustine's disputation against Faustus, book XII, chapters 6-38, and books 11-17 of the City of God, likewise the parallelism of the Old Testament with the New produced by Father Daniel Huet, which is nearly half of his work entitled Demonstratio Evangelica, particularly what he has gathered in chapter 170, and likewise the book of J. Marchetti, entitled Il Cristianesimo dimostrabile sopra i suoi libri anche a chi non li crede, especially part I, § 21, and part II, §§ 18, 19.

Article IV: Some Questions on Types

I. Names of the Types among the Sacred Writers

21. Types have other names also in the epistles of Paul. They are called allegories, Gal. 4:24; parables, Heb. 9:9; 11:19; shadows, Col. 2:17; Heb. 8:5; 10:1; exemplars, that is ὑποδείγματα, Heb. 8:5; 9:23; or ἀντίτυπα, Heb. 9:24, although this last is used by Peter to signify the thing designated by the type. Therefore it is not to be disapproved if some call the figure itself a type, but the thing prefigured an antitype. But the name "allegory," rather than the types themselves, must be said to indicate their signification or the mode of signification, which we can also learn from the manner in which Paul employs it: for he does not call the things themselves an allegory, but says they were ἀλληγορούμενα, said by allegory, that is, according to the spiritual sense by which they presignified something else. Other names are found among the Fathers.

II. How the Types Become Known

22. There is more than one way by which we recognize the types. And the first and chief is when the very Writers of the Bible affirm in express words that something was a type, figure, shadow, or exemplar of Christ, the Church, or of other things either future, or heavenly and divine, or pertaining to morals; of which many of the things we have set forth above from the New Covenant exhibit a specimen to you. Another indication for recognizing the types we have when those same Writers receive as written or said about Christ, about the Church, or about another of those things, words which, if their literal and obvious sense be considered, were in no way written or said about them: from this we conclude that another sense, namely a spiritual one, underlies those words; and this for the reason that the persons, things, and events about which they had been spoken or written, signified τυπικῶς that of which we are taught by the Writers of the New Testament that those words were written and spoken in a spiritual sense; of which also you have more than one specimen above (11). Moreover, since the rationale of the types, which are indicated in great number by the apostles and evangelists, is that very same one as is also that of many other persons, things, and events, and from this we rightly argue that the whole economy of the divine covenants which preceded the death of Christ, if viewed as a whole, presignified that which followed this same death, we shall also rightly argue that all those things were types between which and those which pertain to the new covenant a manifest analogy intervenes, although the Writers of the new covenant have handed down nothing about these to us — such as the tree of life Gen. 2:9, the covenants entered into by God with Abraham Gen. 15:9, and with the Israelites Exod. 24:3, the scapegoat Lev. 16:10, etc. To this kind also are referred others, e.g. some ceremonies or rites for which, just as no reason appears why they were prescribed by the law given by Moses, so the best reason is discerned if they are deemed to signify something; by way of example let there be the unleavened bread to be eaten with the lamb on the festal day of the Passover, the best rationale of which you will discover if you understand that by them was presignified the bread of the Eucharist, or also, as Paul perhaps too thought 1 Cor. 5:6, the soul pure from all stain with which one ought to approach to receiving the Eucharist. Furthermore, this is the analogy from which the Fathers draw an argument when they affirm that something is to be held as a type; and if they unanimously consent in this, that consensus will be another indication, besides those which we have suggested, for discerning the types. You will also safely take as types those by whose names Christ, the Church, the works of Christ or His followers are designated τροπικῶς, such as David, Jerusalem, Israel. When a whole genus or some whole thing, like the ceremonies and the tabernacle, is a type, also those things which are subject to that genus, and the parts of that thing, must be deemed to be types — yet cautiously, and not progressing further than is fitting, so that you would wish to express some spiritual sense from every minute detail, all the more because such consequences, as it were, of the types do not for the most part exhibit a spiritual sense except a probable, not a certain one. Therefore in this matter too those things must be observed which we shall set down below for finding out the spiritual sense of words.

III. Whether All Things Contained in the Old Testament Were Types

23. Not a few think that nothing at all is recorded in the Scriptures of the old covenant which has not some typical signification underlying it. The name for these is Figurists, and for their doctrine, Figurism. From what causes this is to be traced, and what disadvantages arise therefrom, are recounted by Fleury, Discours V sur l'histoire ecclésiastique §§ 11, 12, and Bergier, Dictionnaire de théologie, under "Figure," who however, as is the custom, confuse rhetorical figures with the spiritual sense.

These think they have as patrons and even as authors of their opinion not just one of the Fathers, and indeed Paul himself. For they everywhere thrust forward those words of Paul: "All these things happened to them in figure," 1 Cor. 10:11. There are also many things to be read in the Fathers which seem to favor them, e.g. in Augustine: that "all or nearly all the things which are contained as deeds in the books of the Old Testament are to be received not only properly, but also figuratively," Doctr. Christ. book III, ch. 22 — even the very crimes, as Irenaeus had written before Augustine: "But concerning those things which the Scriptures do not rebuke, but are set down simply, we ought not to become accusers... but to seek the type." Adv. Haer. book IV, ch. 31. No one however has seemed to patronize that opinion more than Jerome, who pronounces this: "It is perspicuously demonstrated that all things of that people went before in shadow, and type, and image," to Dardanus, epistle 129; likewise: "There are not, as some think, in the Scriptures simple words: very much is hidden in them," to Damasus, epist. 18; nay rather: "The single words, syllables, accents, points, in the divine Scriptures are full of meanings;" what more? "After the truth of the history all things are to be received spiritually," Prologue of Commentary on Isaiah.

24. But, unless I am mistaken, it must absolutely be denied that typology extends so widely, both because what is brought forward for that opinion does not prove the matter to be so; and also because, besides authorities of equal weight, reason itself persuades us to deny it, and to accept and affirm this one thing — that very many types are in fact found in the Old Testament, and that we must entirely assent to the Fathers, who taught that "the whole series of the old law was a type of the future," Ambrose on Luke, book II, § 56 — yet so that we understand these things to have been said, as the schools speak, of the genera of the individuals, not however of the individuals of the genera.

And first, for those who expressly deny that typology extends so widely, these testimonies of the Fathers are at hand. Of Tertullian, affirming that, since "not all are images, but also realities; not all are shadows, but also bodies,... many voices of them (the prophets) can be defended as bare, and simple, and pure from every cloud of allegory; as when they resound the destinies of nations and cities — of Tyre, and Egypt, and Babylon, and Idumaea, and the ships of the Carthaginians; as when they recount the very plagues, or pardons, captivities, restorations, and the outcome of the final dispersion of Israel itself. Who will interpret these more than recognize them? Things are held in letters, that letters may be read in things," De resurr. carn. ch. 20. Of Hilary: "Those who think all things written in the books of the psalms are to be referred to the person of our Lord the only-begotten Son of God,... their opinion cannot be reproved, for the whole of this sense is from the effect of a religious mind, and is without blame;... although.... this very thing is sometimes done unskillfully," on Psalm 63. Of Epiphanius: "Moses.... is wont everywhere to decree partly things which fit the times, partly things which serve to adumbrate certain matters, partly those by which future goods are declared, which in the Gospel at last by His coming Christ Jesus our Lord fulfilled," Haer. 33. Of Jerome: "Those who were in part types of the Lord Savior, must not be believed to have done in His type all the things they are narrated to have done," on Hosea 11:1, 2. Of Augustine: "To me, however, just as those seem greatly to err, who think no deeds in that kind of writings signify anything else besides what they were done in that way, so they greatly dare, who contend that there absolutely all things are wrapped in allegorical significations. Surely not all things which are narrated as deeds are to be thought to also signify something; but on account of those which signify something, even those which signify nothing are woven in... Thus in the prophetic history some things also are said which signify nothing, but to which adhere those that do signify," passim in De Civitate Dei. Of Gregory the Great: "So [Job] weaves the history of his life, that he also interposes something earthly which can be understood allegorically — so that what he records be in great part historical, and yet sometimes through these same things he may rise to spiritual understanding," Moralia book XXI, ch. 1. Of Thomas: "These four senses are not attributed to sacred Scripture so that in every part of it it must be expounded in those four senses, but sometimes in those four, sometimes in three, sometimes in two, sometimes in one only," Quodlib. VII, art. 15 — that is, in the one literal sense; for Thomas teaches that the spiritual sense rests upon the literal sense, flows from it, and cannot exist without it. Of the same: "The spiritual sense.... is taken or consists in this, that certain things are expressed by the figure of other things," ibid. Of the same: "In the sacred.... Scripture chiefly the later things are signified by the prior, and therefore sometimes in sacred Scripture according to the literal sense something is said about the prior, which can be spiritually expounded about the latter, but it is not converted [the converse does not hold]," ibid.

25. Other Fathers moreover tacitly reject so widely extending a typology when they reprove the κακοζηλία (perverse zeal) and excess of certain men in extorting typical senses. In Methodius we read this: "Well indeed, nay rather excellently, you seem to me to be versed in these things, O Theophila, cautiously and safely providing this — that the words of the Scripture be understood as they sound according to the native sense. For it is not without danger always to wish to spurn and leap over the meaning of the Scripture which meets us and at first sight strikes the mind," Convivium decem virginum, oration 3. Basil has this: "Some.... by certain captious quibbles and tropologies have tried to add something of authority to the Scriptures from their own ingenuity. But this befits him who sets himself wiser than the oracles of the Holy Spirit, and who under the pretext of interpretation introduces his own inventions. Therefore, let them be understood as they are written," Hexaem. homily 9. Gregory Nazianzen, concerning those who receive either none or all the things in the Scriptures in a spiritual sense, says thus: "The one is in a certain manner Jewish and abject, the other inept and worthy of a dream-interpreter, and each merits equal reproof," Oration 42. Finally Origen himself produced some things relevant to our matter: "It will therefore be the part of the wise scribe and one taught about the kingdom of God, who knows how to bring forth from these treasures new and old, to know how in every passage of Scripture either to cast away entirely the killing letter and seek the life-giving spirit, or to confirm in every way and prove useful and necessary the doctrine of the letter, or, the history remaining, to introduce opportunely and decently also the mystical sense;" then, when some examples have been brought forward, he proceeds thus: "Therefore from these few which we have brought forward, if any be students in the divine Scriptures, they can very easily gather the distinctions also of the rest. For the wise man, if he hears, he says, the word, not only will praise but also add to it. What will he add? That he may discuss and discern, in every single chapter of the law, where the letter of the law must be fled, where embraced, where also the narrative of history may agree with the mystical exposition," on Numbers, homily 11.

26. Finally, the very reason of the thing forbids that we convert all the things which the books of the Old Testament exhibit into types; nay, the very reverence with which it is fitting to follow the divine letters forbids it, since we would expose them, not to mention ourselves, to the cackling of ill-disposed men, if these were to perceive that in every single thing which those books exhibit to us, we anxiously hunt down some type and some mystery. And in very truth, what of this sort would you find in the regions, cities, rivers, mountains, and peoples mentioned in the Scriptures? What such would the wells dug by the shepherds of Isaac present to you, Gen. 26:15-22, the pottage of Jacob, ibid. 25:29, the tower of Penuel, Judg. 8:8, 9, the hair of Absalom? 2 Sam. 14:26. What of the camels of Eliezer, Gen. 24:10, the asses of Saul, 1 Sam. 9:3, the dog of Tobias? Tob. 11:9. What finally did the fatness of Eglon signify, Judg. 3:17, the lameness of Mephibosheth, 2 Sam. 9:3, the gout of Asa? 1 Kings 15:23.

27. But as for the authorities thought to stand for the opposite opinion, as we have said, they either in no way or not sufficiently establish the matter. For what Paul's testimony contributes to the adversaries, anyone will easily perceive if it be brought forward not mutilated, as is wont, but whole. For Paul did not write: "All things happened to them in figure," but: "Now all these things happened to them in figure," those things, namely, which he had just enumerated. As to the fact that Irenaeus bids us seek a type in the crimes which are narrated in the Old Testament, that not only does not prove that he thought all things absolutely in the same Old Testament were typical, but rather the contrary is to be gathered from his words; for if he so thought concerning those things "about which Scripture does not rebuke," we may rightly believe that he thought otherwise at least concerning those things which are reproved by the Scriptures themselves, all the more because he had also previously mentioned these other matters and had taught what is to be thought of them, without however appearing to have recognized any type in them. How Jerome's and Augustine's words are to be understood, we are sufficiently taught by their other words which we have produced. In general, however, whatever is read in the ancient Fathers which seems to urge a more widely extended typology than is fitting, diligently attend that it can and indeed ought to be understood in one of two ways: either that the Fathers do not speak of the individuals of the genera, but of the genera of the individuals; or that they did not speak of things as they are in themselves, and as to what they have of themselves, but as viewed from this aspect, insofar as they have been related in the Scriptures — that, I say, they affirmed that signification to underlie not the things themselves but the narrations of the things, and they called it spiritual, not because they held the things narrated to be types properly so called, but because they called also other significations spiritual, besides that sense which is truly and properly to be held and called spiritual.

IV. Whether the New Testament Also Has Types

28. We call the New Testament both that divine economy and that order of things which Christ established; and the books in which these same things, together with the deeds of Christ, the Writers inspired by the divine Spirit consigned to writing. It must be observed however that in some of the books which we call the New Testament — namely the gospels — those things are contained which for the most part were done while the old economy still held sway; for that the new succeeded the old when Christ underwent death, Paul has taught us: "For where there is a testament, the death of the testator must of necessity intervene; for a testament is of force after men are dead; otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth," Heb. 9:16. Wherefore the question whether types are had in the new covenant turns differently with respect to the books than with respect to the divine economy itself; for if we ask this concerning the latter, the question can regard only those things which are after the death of Christ. With these things known beforehand, the whole matter is more easily handled. Therefore, if types are to be held such as we have defined them, we say that, although according to the opinion of some Fathers some types must be thought to be recorded in the gospel, yet no types existed any longer after the death of Christ, that is after the Old Testament was taken away, or at least after the coming of the Holy Spirit, that is, after the new testament was promulgated.

For thus the argument suggested by the new Scriptures themselves persuades us to believe; and from this, no one will deny, the greatest weight accrues to our opinion. For whatever of the reasons by which we confirm that the economy of the divine covenants was furnished with types is to be drawn from the books of the Apostles or Evangelists, it all pertains to the old covenant; but in the new you would find no type ever recognized by them; nay, they so speak of the types and of either Testament, that from their sayings anyone may rightly conclude that they thought, after the Old Testament was taken away and the new introduced, there was no longer any place for types, for "the end of the law is Christ," Rom. 10:4.

Nor are there lacking Fathers who seem to support our opinion. Cf. Origen, De Principiis, book IV, § 13; Chrysostom, homily 23 on John, § 3; homily 32 on the Epistle to the Hebrews, § 1; Augustine, sermon 74 On the Words of the Gospel according to Matthew, § 5; book XXII Contra Faustum, ch. 6; Jerome, Preface of Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians.

29. Someone might perhaps oppose to us chapter 24 of Matthew, where Christ speaks at the same time of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the end of the world, so that the former of these would seem to have been a type of the latter. However, I would wish you to consider that Christ indeed spoke at the same time, that is in one and the same continuous discourse, of those matters — for it was fitting that He answer the threefold inquiry of the disciples about these same things — yet He did not speak promiscuously, as if those matters were one and the same, as happens when the Writers speak at the same time, by divine inspiration, of the type and of the antitype, but distinctly and in distributed fashion. The disciples, as Jerome comments on this passage, "ask three things: At what time Jerusalem is to be destroyed, when Christ will come, when the consummation of the world will be." But the discourse of Christ presents single responses to the single questions. For first Christ responds to the last question, beginning with these words: "See that no man deceive you," and concluding with these: "Then shall the end come;" then to the first, suggesting from Daniel's prophecy a sign of the city about to be destroyed; finally to the second: "Then," He says, "if any man shall say to you," etc., where that "then" either defines no time at all, as very often in Matthew, or means the same as "afterwards," that is, after the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Jewish state.

Chapter II: On the Spiritual Sense of Words

We shall briefly recall to memory the nature of the spiritual sense, intending then to prove that this sense truly underlies the Scriptures, then to resolve those questions which are wont to be raised concerning it, and finally to give certain admonitions concerning the use of spiritual interpretation.

Article I: On the Nature and Names of the Spiritual Sense of Words

30. In the definition of the spiritual sense we have said that it lies hidden beneath the literal, because the words, as they sound when joined and connected with the rest of the discourse, that is, taken in the literal sense, are by no means seen to convey this spiritual sense, although in fact it underlies them. The Holy Spirit is said to intend this remotely; for proximately He intends that which the words sound when taken in the literal sense, and through this very thing He wills to express that other thing which we call the spiritual sense, and therefore the literal sense is the middle term between the design of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual sense. But how it can come about that the Holy Spirit directly and at the same time remotely intends that which He expresses by the words, you will understand from those things which have been said elsewhere concerning the directly though remotely signified meaning of words used metaphorically. But the words are said to convey the spiritual sense only obliquely; for the mind of readers is by no means borne directly into it, but it must come to their knowledge by another way, and they must learn from other passages of Scripture that it underlies the words. Nor do the words convey this sense except remotely, that is, through those things which they themselves signify, inasmuch, I say, as those things which are exhibited through the literal sense of the words themselves are figures and types signifying that which is exhibited through the literal sense. Let us declare the whole matter by an example. Those words: "I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to Me a Son," 2 Samuel 7:14, have a spiritual sense. Indeed, the Holy Spirit through them proximately intended to designate Solomon, since their literal sense exhibits Solomon; but through that which He spoke of Solomon by these words, namely remotely, He willed to declare something concerning Christ. Yet the words convey this obliquely, since whoever reads them does not perceive anyone other than Solomon to be commemorated by those same words, unless he has first read Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, 1:5; but these words can also convey Christ insofar as Solomon, of whom they were spoken, was a type of Christ, whence also their spiritual signification, which exhibits Christ, must be said to lie hidden beneath the literal sense, which exhibits Solomon.

31. These things being properly understood, whatever follows from them, each one can learn for himself. And first we discover more and more in what the spiritual senses of both things and words agree among themselves, and in what they differ. For the spiritual sense of words is nothing other than the spiritual sense of things itself, expressed secretly by the words. Both, however, the Scriptures unfold to us, but in the Scriptures themselves, or in their words and expressions, only the latter underlies, while the former underlies the persons, things, events, and deeds of which mention is made in the Scriptures. Both are from the Holy Spirit; yet the former the Holy Spirit imparted to things, not insofar as He is the author of the Scriptures, but as He is the agent of things, as St. Thomas speaks; while the latter He imparted to the Scriptures, as He is their principal author. Moreover, the former is from the Holy Spirit immediately, with no other thing interposed; the latter, with the literal signification of the words and the thing signified by the literal sense interposed. The spiritual sense of things does not depend on the signification of any other thing, nor does it as it were rest upon and adhere to any other; the spiritual sense of words depends on their literal sense, upon which it is built up as upon a foundation, as Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, and Thomas write, in that part wherein the literal sense brings forth that from whose typical signification the spiritual sense is derived into the words themselves. Finally, the spiritual sense of things could have existed even if no Scriptures had ever existed, which cannot be said of the spiritual sense of words.

32. We learn moreover another thing from that definition. For since between the literal sense and the spiritual sense of words there is that similitude or proportion which exists between the thing expressed through the literal sense and the thing expressed through the spiritual sense, inasmuch as the former is a type and the latter an antitype, it is necessary that the words truly exhibit the spiritual sense, just as the type truly exhibits the antitype. But words can exhibit something only so far as they can sound it when taken in the literal sense; and therefore, in order that they may exhibit that which is brought forth by the spiritual sense, it is necessary that they be such as, when separated from the rest of the discourse and context of the speech and used apart, they can sound this same thing, when taken at least in a transferred literal sense. This happens, for example, in the words shortly before quoted from Nathan's prophecy, which, although the context of the speech compels us to understand them as said of Solomon, yet taken in themselves and apart from that context, can most fittingly bring forth Christ in the literal sense. Detach also from Hosea's discourse, 11:1, those words: "Out of Egypt I called My Son;" what is there in these, when so detached, which, if taken in the literal sense, agrees less with that thing which they afterwards designate? Likewise, does not the history of Isaac and Ishmael, if you consider it by itself as a rhetorical allegory, convey indeed a transferred literal sense, in which, when so taken, it exhibits very fully that which, when joined with the rest of Abraham's history, Paul being witness, μυστικῶς portends?

33. Furthermore, from that very definition of the spiritual sense you will also know that the words of Scripture which are to be received in the spiritual sense necessarily have two senses underlying them, the literal, I say, and the spiritual; and that the spiritual sense cannot be gathered except from those words whose literal sense furnishes some figure or type; and conversely, that whatever words taken in the literal sense furnish some figure or type can also have the spiritual sense underlying them.

34. Moreover, to him who from the definition has properly come to know the nature of the spiritual sense which is in the Scriptures, the diverse names by which the Fathers were accustomed to call this sense will by no means impede him. Let us add some, which we think will be sufficient for students of sacred letters, to prevent any discrepancy of names from holding any of them back in reading the Fathers.

By far the most common and customary of all is the designation "spiritual sense," whose origin seems to be traced back to a certain custom which obtained not only in the earliest age of the Christian commonwealth, but even before it, as we learn from Philo, On the Contemplative Life, and from those things which the same author there narrates of the Therapeutae, describing this custom thus: "To these men the whole Law seems to be like a living being, having for its body the structure of the words, but for its soul the invisible sense enclosed in the expressions." This appellation, however, and the ground for distinguishing between the literal and the spiritual sense, has been sanctioned by Paul's authority, who, treating of the Law, more than once urges the distinction between letter and spirit, although this distinction is other than that which exists between the literal sense and the spiritual sense. The reason for this appellation has been drawn both from the excellence and sublimity of the spiritual sense, and because, lying hidden beneath the literal, the words do not so much subject it to the eyes of readers as leave it to the mind to think out and discover. Note, however, that just as by the name "literal sense" the Fathers sometimes indicate only the proper sense of the words, so for them the "spiritual sense" is not only the sense of which we now treat, but also the literal transferred sense itself — which you may see called "spiritual" even by John, Apocalypse 11:8; and not infrequently also that sense which we are accustomed to call the accommodated; nay, even the literal and proper sense itself, which exhibits mysteries and other more sublime things, in just the manner in which Christ, concerning the words by which He had promised the Eucharist, says: "The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life," John 6:64; while Augustine, concerning these very words, says: "What is it: 'They are spirit and life'? They are to be understood spiritually. Have you understood them spiritually? They are spirit and life. Have you understood them carnally? Even so they are spirit and life, but they are not so for you," on John, tract 27; for you have here an antithesis between "spiritually" and "carnally," by which it manifestly teaches you what is the meaning of the former.

35. Frequently in use too is the name "mystical sense," which has been applied to the spiritual sense because it displays something secret or at least hidden and sacred; and therefore that spiritual sense which contains mysteries and heavenly and divine things more frequently obtains this name; nay, you will even find the literal sense, by which these same things are exhibited, called by it.

36. Another name for the spiritual sense is "allegory," or "allegorical sense," often itself employed by the Fathers, who however by no means contracted its notion, as more recent interpreters of Scripture do, so that it should denote only that spiritual sense which embraces Christian dogmas; rather, most of them by this name promiscuously designated both any spiritual sense and the literal transferred sense, although some so distinguished the two that they called the former an allegory of things and the latter of words.

37. Nor is the name "tropology" and "tropological sense" infrequent among the Fathers; according to the twofold notion of this word they used it to denote both the spiritual sense which pertains to the forming of morals — which they also called ethical or moral — and the sense of received and transferred words and expressions.

38. There will further occur in the writings of the Fathers, to signify the spiritual sense, the names "image," "enigma," "anagoge" or "anagogical sense," likewise "figurative sense" — called by the Greeks κατὰ σχῆμα — "typical," "symbolic," "parabolic," and κατὰ διάνοιαν, concerning the force and notion of all of which what one ought to think you will partly be able to judge for yourself, and partly will understand from what we have written about these names where types were treated. Diligently bear in mind, however, that these names, no less than those above, often in the Fathers' writings designate the literal sense — whether it be transferred or signifying certain more sublime things — and sometimes not the very sense of the words, but the very purpose or design which the Holy Spirit had in producing the Scriptures. Nor will it be unprofitable to note that the sense κατὰ διάνοιαν is properly so called as it is distinguished from the sense κατὰ ῥητόν, while the sense κατὰ σχῆμα is distinguished from the sense κατὰ λέξιν, that is the proper sense — a distinction however which is less accurate, unless the sense κατὰ σχῆμα is the sense of rhetorical figures, that is of tropes, which therefore would better be called the sense κατὰ τρόπον.

Article II: That the Spiritual Sense Underlies the Words of Scripture, Derived from Types

39. Now we must proceed further and demonstrate that this sense truly underlies the words of Scripture, and is derived into them from no other source than the signification of the types — that is, that it underlies the words insofar as it underlies the things which these words designate when taken in their literal sense. The first follows of its own accord from several of the things by which we have confirmed that there were types; the second the very nature of the matter declares. Wherefore, to demonstrate those two points, no long disputation will be needed by us.

I. The Spiritual Sense Underlies the Words of Scripture

40. That a spiritual sense underlies the Scriptures, the Scriptures themselves teach us. For Paul declares this: "The Law is spiritual," Rom. 7:14, that is, it also has a spiritual sense, as Jerome interprets Paul's statement. But the notion of "law" embraces not only what the law commands, but also the words by which the commands are uttered. Wherefore that spiritual sense must be believed, on Paul's testimony, to underlie not only the things commanded by the law but also the very words of the law. Concerning the history of Isaac and Ishmael the same Apostle wrote thus: "Which things are said by way of allegory," Gal. 4:24; this allegory therefore is in the sayings or words. Yet it is plain that that allegory is by no means rhetorical; rather, as Chrysostom and Jerome write, Paul used the name καταχρηστικῶς (by misuse); therefore it can be nothing else than the spiritual signification of the types itself, flowing into the words and exhibited covertly through the words, which is wont to be called allegory ἀναλογικῶς (by analogy).

41. Moreover, the writers of the New Testament received the words spoken about the types as if they had been spoken about the antitypes; therefore it is established that these words were also spoken about the antitypes. But according to the literal sense they could only have been spoken about the types; therefore they were spoken about the antitypes according to the spiritual sense. So a spiritual sense underlies those words. That the writers of the New Testament received them as spoken about the antitypes is made manifest by this — that they generally cite these without making any mention, and taking no account either of the types to which they pertain, or — what would be the same thing — of the literal sense which they display. Consider, for example, Matt. 2:15; 13:35; 21:42; John 13:18; 15:25; 19:36; Rom. 10:8; Eph. 4:8; Heb. 1:5; 2:13. See other arguments in Patrizzi himself, ibid. p. 220. Compare both what was said above about types, and Glaire, Introduction aux livres de l'ancien et du nouveau Testament, vol. I, p. 299ff.

II. The Spiritual Sense Is Derived into the Words from the Types, that is, from the Spiritual Signification of the Types

42. The spiritual sense is derived into the words of the Scriptures by their Author from the spiritual signification of the things which they themselves signify in the literal sense; or, if you prefer, the words designate the thing about which they are spoken μυστικῶς, by the authorship of the Holy Spirit, through the spiritual signification of the things which they exhibit when taken in their literal sense.

But the chief argument for this is that no other origin — not only no more obvious or more probable, but none which displays even any appearance of probability — can be attributed to the spiritual sense. For what other could it be? Whatever you devise must, of necessity, differ from that which we have indicated in this: that the Holy Spirit, in uttering the words, intended what we call the spiritual sense not remotely — that is, not with another signification interposed — but proximately and ἀμέσως. But this being granted, no distinction would now remain, as far as the speaker's mind is concerned, between the spiritual and the literal sense. Would any remain in the words themselves? None at all. For once that intermediate signification, which lies in the things themselves or in the matter of the words, has been removed, the words cannot but display ἀμέσως, and so even directly, that very thing also which is signified by the spiritual sense; but to display a thing in this way is proper to words taken in the literal sense — that is, this is the second distinction between these two senses. The whole distinction between the two senses, then, would be this one thing: that the spiritual sense lies altogether hidden in the words, and cannot be drawn out from them unless some other θεόπνευστος (divinely inspired) writer affirms that it underlies those words. Such indeed is the case; yet how this can cohere with that which is also posited — that the spiritual sense is displayed directly by the words — I plainly do not see. But I do clearly see this: that if these two senses differ from one another in this one thing alone, the whole nature of the spiritual sense which underlies the words will consist in obscurity alone, and the spiritual sense will be nothing else than a kind of obscure literal sense; whence this disadvantage too will follow, that two literal senses will be said to underlie one and the same expression of the Scriptures — concerning which what one should think, we have already disputed.

43. Furthermore, those who hold this opinion rightly glory in Paul as their author. For he teaches that the narrative of Isaac and Ishmael is an allegory — surely a spiritual one; and he proves this by the very fact that those two sons of Abraham were types of the two Testaments: "Which things are said by way of allegory; for these are the two testaments," Gal. 4:24. We do not hesitate to affirm that the same view was held by the Fathers also. For what did Jerome mean when he recalled "the truth of history, which is the foundation of spiritual understanding," to Dardanus, epist. 129. What did Augustine mean teaching this: "Above all, brethren, in the name of the Lord we both admonish, as much as we can, and prescribe, that when you hear the sacrament of the Scripture narrating the things that were done expounded, you first believe that what was read was done in the way it was read, lest, with the foundation of the deed taken away, you should as it were try to build in air," sermon 72 on the Seasons; and elsewhere: "The discourses of the prophets are found to be tripartite; for some pertain to the earthly Jerusalem, some to the heavenly, some to both... I have said tripartite, not bipartite, for this reason; for this is what I think, yet not blaming those who have been able here," that is, in those discourses, "to carve out from any deed the sense of spiritual understanding, with the truth of history being preserved at least in the first place," City of God, bk. XVII, ch. 3. What Gregory the Great, writing this: "Allegory germinates spiritual fruits, which, however, the truth of history brings forth from the root," on Job, bk. VI, ch. 1; and likewise this: "In the words of sacred discourse, dearest brethren, the truth of history must first be preserved, and afterwards the spiritual understanding of allegory must be sought. For then is the fruit of allegory pleasantly plucked, when it has first been made solid through history in the root of truth," homily 40 on the Gospels. What of the other Fathers, who wrote things like these? What, I say, except that the spiritual sense of the words flows forth from the spiritual sense of the things?

We persist the more securely in this opinion because the authority of Thomas most fully favors it. Some of his words bearing on this matter we have related above; we think it worthwhile now to relate some others: "The Author... of things can not only adapt words to signify something, but can also dispose things into a figure of another; and according to this, in sacred Scripture the truth is manifested in two ways. In one way, inasmuch as things are signified through words, and in this the literal sense consists; in another way, inasmuch as things are figures of other things, and in this the spiritual sense consists. And thus several senses are proper to sacred Scripture," Quodlib. VII, art. 14. "The spiritual sense is always founded upon the literal, and proceeds from it," ibid. "The signification by which through such things Christ or His members are signified makes another sense besides the historical, namely the allegorical," ibid. art. 15. "It must be said that the spiritual sense of sacred Scripture is taken from this, that things performing their course signify something else," ibid. art. 16.

Article III: Some Questions on the Spiritual Sense of Words

I. On the Species of the Spiritual Sense

44. This question turns both upon the manner in which words taken in a spiritual sense signify something, and upon that which is so signified.

Words too, when they are taken in a spiritual sense, are — no otherwise than when they are taken in the literal sense — either proper or transferred. Hence the spiritual sense also, if you regard the manner in which the words display it, is in some cases proper, in others transferred. It is called proper when the words can, when severed from the rest of the discourse, signify in the literal and proper sense that which, woven together with the rest of the speech, they signify in the spiritual sense. But if they could signify it in the literal sense indeed, but in a transferred one, when taken by themselves and apart, the spiritual sense itself is also to be called transferred. So you will easily understand that the spiritual sense of these words is proper: "Nor shall you break a bone of Him," Exod. 12:46; John 19:36; and of these: "I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to Me a Son," 2 Sam. 7:14; Heb. 1:5; but transferred is that which underlies these words: "The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the head of the corner," Ps. 117:22; Matt. 21:42.

45. But if you regard that which is signified by the words taken in a spiritual sense, we have already said elsewhere that it is the custom of interpreters to distinguish the spiritual sense in a threefold form, as it touches either things to be believed, or things to be hoped for, or things to be done; and according to this threefold form to call the one allegorical sense, another anagogical, another tropological; of which appellations we have also weighed what and how great is the κυριολογία (proper signification). More aptly we should apportion the various forms of the spiritual sense according to the diversity of the thing signified, so that the types themselves — that is, the spiritual sense of things — are divided into the prophetic, anagogical, and tropological sense, a partition which seems more in accord with what we read written in the Fathers about the various species of the spiritual sense. Nevertheless, by the more ancient Fathers, especially Origen and Jerome, a twofold form of this sense is wont to be distinguished, of which the one embraces the first two of those three, and the other corresponds to the third; this latter they called the ἠθικόν (moral) sense, tropological, or also moral, but the former anagogical, mystical, spiritual.

You will also find other partitions of the spiritual sense among writers who treat of the Bible; if, however, you have rightly understood the definition of this sense, you will discover with no trouble that the various forms into which they partition this sense are to be reduced either to those which we have enumerated, or to the literal or accommodated sense, or to the corollaries of the sentences.

II. To What Extent the Spiritual Signification of Words Extends

46. Since we have demonstrated that the spiritual sense of the words takes its origin from the types, and that the individual things contained in the Scriptures are by no means to be held as types, it is a foregone conclusion that the spiritual sense does not underlie every part of the Scriptures. Yet, leaving aside that origin which all attribute to the spiritual sense of words, this matter can also be proved by other arguments. Some, however, are accustomed to extend the question not only to whole parts of the Scriptures — say, to whole narratives, or to whole psalms — but even to individual sentences, to individual words, to individual letters. We, however, after briefly setting forth what is to be thought concerning letters and concerning individual words, will discuss the rest more carefully.

47. So I say: nothing mystical and no spiritual sense underlies the letters. To demonstrate this truth, the very futility and absurdities with which the contrary opinion abounds are sufficient. In hunting after this mystical sense of letters — which is none — the Jews especially have toiled, those addicted to that kabbala which Glassius wittily called "spurious, impure, old-womanish, and feverish," Philol. sacr. bk. II. Pt. I, from whom also, if you have leisure and inclination, or from quite a few others, you can learn what the kabbala is. The Jews had some Christians as partners in this work. These men in vain put forward Jerome's authority and protect themselves with those words of Jerome: "The individual discourses, syllables, accents, and points in the divine Scriptures are full of meanings," in his epistle to the Ephesians 3:6 — the genuine sense of which we shall presently set forth.

48. But neither are we compelled to believe that a spiritual sense underlies each individual word of the Scriptures merely because the individual words are not held — and cannot be held — to be ὥσπερ θεόπνευστα (as it were divinely inspired). Add that we are often left in doubt, in some statement of the Scriptures, which word out of the various ones presented by discrepant manuscripts is the genuine one. Rather, if you look thoroughly into the matter, you will perceive that there can be no place for this question. For we either consider words as they are joined and woven with others in one and the same statement, or each one apart and by itself. If the first, we are no longer inquiring about the sense of individual words, but of the whole statement; for the sense drawn out from it is not of single words, but of the whole statement, since often, when certain words are changed, the sense — both literal and spiritual — yet remains entire, as in that passage of Exodus: "Nor shall you break a bone of Him," Exod. 12:46, which in Numbers is read thus: "They shall not break His bone," while in John: "You shall not crush a bone of Him." But if you regard individual words apart and by themselves and outside the context of speech — unless perhaps they are proper names — they will no longer present to you any sense which can be drawn only from a whole statement, but a bare notion of one thing, generally vague and indefinite; wherefore no spiritual sense is to be expected from it. For what sense, not only spiritual but even literal, that is fixed and determinate, lies in the words "to be," "to have," "to speak," "to do," "to stand," "to come," etc.; or in the nouns "earth," "mountain," "river," "people," "city," "house," etc.?

You will perhaps say that the noun "house," for example, in the Scriptures often designates the Church, and "people" designates Christians. But if you think this, you already see that you are not taking the word individually, but with the notions of other words added and joined to it. Would you indeed believe that those words of Solomon: "Man shall go into the house of his eternity," Eccl. 12:5, are said of the Church, or those of Moses: "Is this the way you repay the Lord, you foolish and unwise people?" Deut. 32:6, are said of Christians?

49. It remains therefore that we inquire whether some spiritual signification underlies the individual statements and sentences of the Scriptures which, besides the literal sense, must be acknowledged to be from the Author, the Holy Spirit. Those who thought so were called Figurists, of whom many were also found among the Reformed, following Cocceius as their leader. There were several causes for the introduction of Figurism among Christians. For it was believed — though falsely and wrongly — that this doctrine was commended by the authorities not only of the Fathers but also of the writers of the New Testament, especially of Paul. In addition, the opinion that even the individual words of Scripture were θεόπνευστα (divinely inspired); a certain rash contempt for those things which in the sciences seemed simpler and plainer; and what followed therefrom, an ill-judged study of those things which are reckoned to bear something marvelous and extraordinary; and indeed the very method and custom of the Jews in expounding the Scriptures — these things impelled men to follow this doctrine. With how great inconvenience and detriment to truth, however, is sufficiently well known. For hence arbitrary senses have sometimes been imposed on the Scriptures and offered for sale as if oracles of the Holy Spirit. Hence inept arguments have been sought for proving the most holy truths and precepts of religion. Hence a handle has been given to the enemies of this same religion either to abominate divine things and ridicule them, or to fabricate a calumny against us — as if we venerated the very things in which some of the Fathers erred in the interpretation of the Scriptures, or as if they should babble forth that Christian doctrine is wholly contained in metaphors and allegories and rests upon them. Read Lyranus, Fleury, Dissert. V sur l'histoire ecclésiastique, §§ 11, 12, and Bergier, Dictionnaire de théologie, s.v. "Figure." We can indeed not deny that there were some among the Fathers — not so many, however, as certain Protestants in particular contend, but very few — who extended mystical interpretation further than was fitting, and whom you may therefore think to have favored the Figurists; nay rather, there were also some who, by the precepts and rules which they committed to writing, might appear to attentive readers to have taught figurism, and among these is Jerome, some of whose words we cited a little above, while others were given earlier in number 22. Nevertheless, we confidently deny that a spiritual sense underlies every individual statement of Scripture, since there is no authority that compels us to believe this, and reason in fact persuades us not to believe it.

50. Nor do the testimonies of the Fathers gathered by some in support of this opinion give us any greater trouble, since they were for the most part said about the spiritual sense of things, not of words. Even if by these testimonies you were to prove that all persons, things, and events recorded in the sacred volume have a spiritual sense, it would not follow from this that one underlies every individual statement, since most of these touch upon no person, no thing, and no event. Moreover, whether the spiritual sense even of things extended so widely among the Fathers themselves we have already examined. If indeed some sayings of the Fathers seem in fact to favor the opinion we are attacking, they are nevertheless not sufficient to confirm it. For first, they are neither so numerous nor so clear that that opinion ought to be thought to have been common to the Fathers, or even could be, nor that they should be said to have agreed upon it. Then you may easily perceive that they spoke about this matter rhetorically and hyperbolically. For who would not at once recognize in those words of Jerome transcribed a little above a hyperbole not infrequent in Jerome, which the very statement manifestly betrays? For what? Shall we suppose that Jerome really thought that under every syllable, every letter of the Scriptures, there lies, I will not say several, but even a single sense? Remember besides that the term "spiritual sense" and others of this kind are uncertain and vague in the writings of the Fathers, and must be defined as the context of the discourse requires; and where they seem to have asserted that no portion of the Scriptures lacks a spiritual sense, they meant nothing else than what the Apostle taught Timothy in these words: "All Scripture, divinely inspired, is profitable for teaching," etc. 2 Tim. 3:16.

And what about the fact that not a few Fathers, and of no small reputation, agree with us and others who hold this view? Tertullian, Origen, Hilary, Basil, Nazianzen, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Thomas expressly or at least implicitly maintain it, whose testimonies we have already cited. We will add some others to these. Origen wrote thus: "What need is there to seek allegory in these things, since the letter itself is edifying? We have therefore shown that there are some things which are absolutely not to be observed according to the letter of the law, and that there are some which allegory ought not at all to alter... We have shown, as I think, by the authority of divine Scripture, that of the things written in the law, some must be wholly avoided and shunned, lest they be observed according to the letter by the disciples of the Gospel; certain ones, however, must be held altogether as they are written; and others, while indeed possessing their own truth according to the letter, must nevertheless usefully and necessarily receive also an allegorical sense," in Numbers, Homily 11. Epiphanius: "All divine words are not to be referred to allegories, but are to be taken as they stand," Heresies 61. Gregory: "Some sentences... however serve external precepts in such a way that, if anyone desires to penetrate them more subtly, he indeed finds nothing within, but conceals from himself even what they say outwardly," Moral. bk. XXI. Thomas, who calls Augustine to witness: "In certain matters the literal sense alone must be sought," Quodlib. VII, art. 15.

51. As for the reasoning of the opinion which we defend, to whom does it not seem the best? For what spiritual sense besides the literal could be said to underlie, for example, the prophecies by which Christ or the New Testament was foretold? Consider those words of Jacob: "The sceptre shall not be taken away from Judah," etc.; or those of Isaiah: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive," etc.; or those of Jeremiah: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah," etc.; or those of Micah: "In the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be," etc.; or those of Zechariah: "Behold, thy King shall come," etc. What spiritual sense is there in those things which are written about heavenly beatitude, a sense which Thomas (ibid.) does not even acknowledge? What sense besides the literal could even the precepts of the Decalogue exhibit to you, or the very many statements found in the law, in the psalms, and in the prophets, suited only to forming morals? What about the proverbs of Solomon or of Sirach? What about those parts of the histories which contain either the years which the patriarchs lived and at which they began to beget children, or the genealogies? Therefore one ought not to think that a spiritual sense underlies every individual part of the Scriptures.

III. Whether the New Testament Has a Spiritual Sense

52. Concerning this matter also, which has just come under question — whether a spiritual sense lies hidden in the books of the New Testament — a presumption has already been made, since we have proved that this sense is derived from types into the words, but that no types, at least after the coming of the Holy Spirit, were attached to the economy of the new covenant. We shall, however, confirm this by other reasons as well, premising that the gospels are to be set aside from this question, inasmuch as they contain things which were for the most part performed while the old Testament was still in force.

For those who think that what we are now inquiring about must be affirmed, it is an indubitable fact that they have absolutely no support from the Scriptures themselves, that is, from the writers of the New Testament. For whatever can be gathered from their testimony to defend the spiritual sense pertains entirely only to that sense which underlies the books of the Old Testament; nor will you find any words in the New Testament which they have taken in a spiritual sense.

53. From among the Fathers, I doubt whether you will be able to produce anyone who in express words denies what we deny, and teaches that the spiritual sense in no way underlies the remaining books of the New Testament besides the gospels; but you may find some who seem to think otherwise. If, however, you carefully attend to that which it is always most important to remember in these questions about the spiritual sense, and which can never be too much insisted upon — that the sense which the Fathers call spiritual is not always of that kind which is added by the Holy Spirit to the words besides the literal, but is sometimes the literal sense itself, which sets forth mysteries and certain more sublime dogmas, or supplies examples, or is symbolic or figurative; or sometimes an accommodated sense; or some pious commentary by which from the literal sense itself or from the very meaning of the Scriptures they infer and conclude something useful for instructing and rightly forming morals — if, I say, you attend to this, you will easily see that it cannot be proved that the Fathers oppose rather than support this opinion, and you will easily dissolve whatever is wont to be objected, drawn from the writings of the Fathers, however poorly weighed. For run through the commentaries either of Chrysostom on the Acts of the Apostles, which he alone of the older Fathers expounded, or of him and others on the Epistles of the Apostles, or of those who wrote anything on the Apocalypse, and I think you will scarcely scrape together anything from them by which to bring aid to the contrary opinion. Indeed I read this in Chrysostom on the Acts of the Apostles: "Is this work only history, and does it lack the Spirit? By no means," Hom. 1 in Acts; but it becomes manifest from the series and context of the discourse that "spirit" here designates nothing other than divine inspiration. Moreover, those testimonies of the Fathers which we produced when we inquired whether there are types in the New Testament — do they not also persuade us to believe, regarding the present question, that the Fathers in no way thought differently from us?

But there are also other authors of great name whom we have as agreeing with us, since they have taught that types are altogether rarer in the New Testament, and that the spiritual sense of words is more rarely found in its writers; and when they speak of the New Testament, they include the gospels also, and from the gospels they cite the few examples which they are wont to bring forward. Read Cornelius a Lapide, Encom. Scripturae, § 24, and De Epist. Pauli, canon 6; Serarius, Prolegom. bibliac., c. XXI, q. 8; Bonfrere, Praeloquia, c. XX, sect. 3; Molina, In Thom. 1, q. 1, art. 10, disp. IV; to whom add Tostatus, who denies that allegories are found in the New Testament, In Matth. XIII, q. 28.

54. We conclude therefore that, if you take the spiritual sense to be that which we have defined — namely, that which besides the literal really underlies the words and expressions by the divine Author's intention — no such sense exists in those books of the New Testament which embrace anything other than what preceded the death of Christ, or at most the coming of the Holy Spirit. But if you call the spiritual sense that which is, as it were, a corollary of the statements described in those books, and which we gather by commenting and concluding from them, no one will deny that this can rightly be gathered from them, as the Fathers used to gather it.

IV. Whether the Force of an Argument Inheres in the Spiritual Signification

55. Some deny that any force inheres in arguments drawn from spiritual signification; most affirm it. The dispute, however, is plainly settled if you divide the question concerning theory from that which concerns practice. We shall therefore treat each separately, and shall first deal with the force of the arguments which the spiritual sense supplies, and then with their use.

1° That Force Is Asserted of Spiritual Signification

56. The Scriptures themselves teach us that this force inheres in spiritual significations as well as in literal ones; for we have already seen that the writers of the Bibles themselves, and even Christ Himself, employed this kind of argument. But the reason which compels us to believe this is also manifest, namely that the Holy Spirit is the author of the spiritual sense as well as of the literal, and therefore the one is to be held with religious reverence equally with the other, lest we depreciate the authority of either the former or the latter. Indeed, those who think otherwise must also necessarily deny that any spiritual sense exists in the sacred Scriptures. For if it exists, it can have no other author than the Holy Spirit; if it has such an Author, it cannot but be most certain; if it is most certain, it cannot be unfit for arguments to be drawn from it.

57. Those who think the contrary attack our opinion and defend their own with reasons and authorities. For concerning those passages from the Old Testament which we affirmed were taken in a spiritual sense by the writers of the New Testament, and thus taken were employed as arguments, they deny that any spiritual sense really underlies them. If you ask their reason, they say they deny it for this very reason, that those writers draw arguments from such places. But it is plain that one who reasons thus commits what dialecticians call a circular argument, and posits the very thing which is in question. Nor does this other reason help them any more — that an argument drawn from the spiritual sense is useless because, as Thomas teaches, though in a different sense, "nothing necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which Scripture does not somewhere clearly hand down through the literal sense," I, q. 1, art. 10, ad 1. For this reasoning does not touch what we are now inquiring about, namely whether the force of an argument inheres in the spiritual sense, but what we shall inquire about later, namely the use of such arguments. Besides, if this reasoning of the adversaries settled the matter universally and absolutely, it would also be necessary to say that an argument drawn from any chapter of the Scriptures taken in the literal sense is useless whenever the same thing can be proved by the literal sense of other chapters: than which what could be more absurd?

Nor do they make any more headway with the authorities they produce — Dionysius the Areopagite, Irenaeus, Epiphanius, etc. For if the alleged testimonies of these Fathers are weighed attentively, they leave our opinion entirely intact, as may be seen in Patrizzi, ibid. pp. 236 ff.

2° On the Use of Arguments Which Can Be Drawn from the Spiritual Sense

58. Although arguments drawn from the spiritual sense cannot but possess that force which we attribute to them, and although it is established that the writers of the New Testament and Christ Himself employed them, nevertheless such arguments now have scarcely any use in theology. For the spiritual sense from which one would wish to draw arguments is either certain or doubtful.

From a spiritual signification which is not entirely certain and indubitable, it is clear that no argument can be drawn for establishing a point. Thus, for example, the tree of life planted by God in the midst of paradise is said to have been a type of the Eucharist, and there is indeed no reason to deny it; yet we are not so certain about this matter that from what Moses relates about this tree you could prove that the effects of the Eucharist are those which we are commanded to believe.

59. But where some spiritual signification is certain and indubitable, this generally happens because some other one of the writers of the Bible teaches it to us, and therefore there are two places from which it can be gathered: one, where the words of the author himself are read; the other, where they are mystically explained for the sake of declaring or proving something. In the former, however, that signification lies hidden, while in the latter it is open; therefore, since the authority of both is equal, if we wish to press this signification to declare or prove something ourselves, we shall draw it rather from the place where it is open than from the one where it lies hidden. But to draw an argument from the place where it is open — that is, where the words of the divinely inspired writer himself are interpreted by another divinely inspired writer — comes to one and the same as drawing the argument not so much from the authority of the former as from that of the latter; for thus we do nothing else than repeat the words or sentence of the latter. And so the entire force of the argument depends not so much on that signification itself as on the authority of this same writer, and the argument itself is suggested to you not by the place to which the signification lies, as it were, hidden, but by the place where that writer opens it up to you. And to this seem to point the words of Thomas: "Nothing necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which Scripture does not somewhere clearly hand down through the literal sense." Let an example be the oracle uttered concerning Solomon: "I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to Me a Son," 2 Sam. 7:14. Who would understand these words, as they are read in the second book of Kings, to have been said of Christ, namely according to the spiritual sense, unless Paul, Hebrews 1:5, had informed us? If therefore you should set out to prove from these words that Christ is the Son of God, you will undoubtedly use them, not as words uttered by Nathan to signify Christ as God, but as words reported by Paul and taken in this sense: by which you see that the argument rests on the authority of Paul himself.

60. But do not object that, if matters were thus, then other arguments drawn from the sacred Scriptures, when the Fathers teach us their sense, would also have to be said to rest on the authority of the Fathers, and to be drawn not so much from the sacred Scriptures as from the testimony of the Fathers. Do not, I say, raise this objection. For the force of an argument drawn from some spiritual signification is to be said to be referred to the testimony of another of the writers of the Bible, who teaches us this signification, only insofar as the divine authority of all divinely inspired writers is one and the same — indeed, the Author of all the sacred Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, is one and the same. Therefore it is no different than when someone wishes to draw an argument from the more obscure words of some writer, say Plato or Aristotle, which the writer himself explains in another place: for such an argument would be drawn not from the place where those words are read, but from the place where they are explained. The matter stands otherwise, however, when we draw arguments from words of the sacred Scriptures taken in some sense which we have learned from the Fathers. For the authority of the writers who uttered these words and of the Fathers who interpret them is not one and the same; since although, when all the Fathers agree on some sense to be elicited from the Scriptures, this sense cannot but be held as true, nevertheless the weight which inheres in the opinion of the Fathers does not exist because they were inspired by the divine Spirit, as were the writers of the Bible, but because they are witnesses of what the Church has taught at every age concerning the interpretation and sense of the Bible. Therefore the force of that argument by which you would wish to prove that this or that signification really underlies certain words of the Scriptures rests indeed on the authority of the Fathers, and we believe this on the Fathers themselves; but that the thing signified by those words is true, we believe the divinely inspired writer himself, and the force of the argument drawn from the signification of these words for proving the truth of the thing signified rests on his own authority. It is therefore plain that what is objected to us is beside the point.

61. As for our affirmation that arguments drawn from the spiritual sense are now scarcely of any use in theology, we warn that this is true only when the very thing which is set forth through the spiritual sense is what must be proved, as you will easily understand from the example given above. The case is otherwise, however, if you consider spiritual significations from that aspect by which they portend something future; for then, even if another of the writers of the Bible teaches them to us, they themselves of themselves, equally with other prophecies, supply that kind of argument which is wont to be drawn from the prediction of future things. For example, those words of Exodus 12:46: "You shall not break a bone of Him," mystically signified the future fact that Christ's legs would not be broken; this signification we learned from John. Therefore if you should set out to confirm by those words that Christ's legs were in no way broken, you would have to use them not as uttered by Moses, but as reported by John and taken in that sense, in which case John, not Moses, would furnish you the argument; but if you wished to prove that what John narrates as having occurred was foretold long ago by Moses, you would clearly accomplish this by setting forth the spiritual signification of those words.

Furthermore, Molina rightly observes: "although individual spiritual senses (those, namely, which are less certain) are only a probable argument for confirming matters of faith, yet the consonance of so many figures of the Old Testament, by which the things of the New Testament are so vividly delineated and expressed, is no slight argument for the confirmation of the faith, which we can also use against unbelievers." Augustine had already put forth the same: "And from those things which are wrapped in figures, if certain ones are placed as it were under one view, as if woven together, they so unite their voices in attestation of Christ that the deafness of any dull person might blush," Against Faustus, bk. XII, ch. 7.

V. Whether There Are Prophecies in Which, Besides the Literal, a Spiritual Sense Also Lies Hidden

62. Famous — and indeed of evil fame — is Grotius's invention, which he devised for interpreting the prophets. Namely, that the prophecies are typical, and consequently have two senses: one proximate and less noble, by which they designate the types themselves; another remote and more sublime, by which they designate Christ and the things pertaining to Him. He sets forth this invention in the commentaries with which he illustrated Matthew, and he clings to it in his interpretation of the Old Testament, whenever some prophecy must be explained, except for the very few in which he could not at all deny that Christ alone is signified. How miserably the matter turned out for Grotius, and how tenacious he was of his purpose against all the laws and rules of the hermeneutic art, cannot but at once appear to those who turn over his commentaries. Read, for example, what he noted on Isaiah ch. 53, and on Micah 5:2. Yet Pascal seems not only to have embraced these Grotian opinions, but to have extended them more widely and farther, and freed them from every limit — whose words, I confess indeed, I was astonished to find thus reported in the Bibles long ago published at Paris, La sainte Bible de Vence, vol. XIII, General Preface on the Prophets, p. 25, and in the annotations which are read at the end of the work published by Duclot, La Bible vengée — so that even Pascal's opinion may be approved and accepted. Pascal's words run thus: "If the prophecies are believed to have a single sense, it is certain that the Messiah has not yet come; if they have a double sense, it is certain that He has come and that He is Jesus Christ," Pensées, ch. XIII, no. 2. How bold indeed! — which, however, it is not the place to refute here; although for refuting such a fabrication, even a single prophecy uttered by Daniel concerning the seventy weeks would suffice. Let Pascal indeed dare, and, if he agrees with us that those weeks consist of years, not of days, let him extract from it some other meaning besides the appointed age in which Christ was to come. But if Daniel designates this age, granted only this and nothing more, would not this prophecy, however much only a single sense lies under it, be sufficient and more than sufficient for us to conclude with certainty that the Messiah has come, and that He is no other than Jesus Christ?

The common and most certain opinion, therefore, which we ought to follow, inasmuch as it was that of all the Fathers, is that the greatest and chief part of the prophecies which were uttered while the former covenant was in force pertain directly, proximately, and solely to Christ and the things pertaining to Him. See Bergier, Dictionnaire de théologie, under Prophétie. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that some of them were typical — those, I say, in which both a type was foretold according to their literal sense, and through the type, that is, according to the spiritual sense, the antitype was at the same time announced. See Bossuet, Supplements on the Psalms.

Article IV: Cautions on the Use of Spiritual Interpretation

63. We think that whatever has hitherto been disputed about the spiritual sense will be sufficient for anyone, so that, mindful of that Augustinian saying: "To interpret signs uselessly is the mark of an evilly wandering error," Christian Doctrine bk. III, ch. 9, he may learn how he ought to conduct himself in eliciting such a sense, what he must perform in this matter, and what he must avoid. Nevertheless there is no doubt that we shall be looking out for the convenience of the studious if we gather the chief points from them in summary, and reduce them to certain heads, as it were. Therefore, having first laid down certain principles relating to this, we shall supply indications and arguments by which we may detect, distinguish, and thence draw out the spiritual sense where it lies hidden; then we shall declare what must be especially attended to, and what must be especially avoided, in mystical interpretation.

I. Certain Principles Are Laid Down

64. Although it is beyond doubt that a spiritual sense underlies both the matter and the words of the Scriptures, if you speak of them in general, nevertheless it cannot be affirmed with certainty about each in particular. For this reason the spiritual sense which is certainly known to underlie certain things or words must be most carefully and cautiously distinguished from that which we gather either by arguments not entirely certain, or only by conjecture from things or words. By what marks we shall separate the certain from the uncertain will be set forth presently. Meanwhile, let this be among the first things laid down in mystical interpretation: that we should hold nothing more sacred and important than not to peddle as utterances and oracles of the Holy Spirit things which perhaps are by no means such.

65. This spiritual sense can underlie words only insofar as it equally underlies the very things which these same words designate. It therefore appears that the spiritual signification of the words and of the things designated by them is one and the same. And just as the spiritual signification of things rests on some likeness or proportion which obtains between the things themselves or types and the antitypes, so the spiritual sense of the words is supported and built upon the literal sense of these as upon a kind of foundation. But when we say that the literal sense of the words is the foundation of the spiritual sense, understand it thus: that, if these words are torn from the discourse or narrative to which they are attached, they can — at least when taken in a transferred literal sense — designate the antitype as well as the type, as we have already declared in another place.

Since these things are so, it is plain how preposterously he would act who, in order to labor at gathering the spiritual sense, would neglect the literal — since this would be nothing else than to build a house before the foundation has been laid. Indeed, although, as the Fathers held — among whom consult Jerome, in his Letter to the Galatians 4:18; Augustine, Against the Adversary of the Law and the Prophets, bk. I, ch. 13; and Gregory, bk. II, Homily 10 on Ezekiel — and as reason itself persuades us to believe, the spiritual sense is more excellent and more sublime than the literal sense in which it lies hidden (since the thing itself never fails to surpass its image), yet it is established that greater zeal must be placed in defining the literal sense.

66. Finally it will not be useless to have noted one further point: that the foundation, I say, of the spiritual signification is not necessarily the same as the foundation upon which the truth of the things mystically signified rests; or, to speak with the philosophers, that the subjective truth and the objective truth of the spiritual sense are different. The latter can exist without the former, but not the contrary. The former depends on the literal sense of the very words under which that spiritual sense lies; the latter must be sought either from other passages of Scripture, or from the other rules of Catholic doctrine. For example, the spiritual signification of those words: "You shall not break a bone of Him," Exodus 12:46, is plainly best founded in the literal sense itself; for these words, taken in themselves, can perfectly well signify that the bones of Christ were not to be broken; but that they were in fact not broken, we have learned from no other than John. And from this same example we learn how the subjective truth of the spiritual sense cannot exist without the objective, inasmuch, I say, as we know on no other ground that the matter which John narrates was mystically foretold by those words of Moses than because John testifies that what was mystically foretold by those words actually came to pass.

II. Arguments and Indications of the Spiritual Sense

67. In mystical interpretation, some of the rules which we suggested for defining the literal sense will help us — Op. cit. I, p. 55 ff. For the preparation of mind, which we placed first among the remote rules, is the more necessary for seeking the spiritual sense, in proportion as more abundant light must shine on the mind of the interpreter in that inquiry. There is no need for us to advise that one must religiously adhere to Catholic doctrines. The more carefully a reading of the entire Bibles is conducted, the more fully will the wonderful economy of the divine covenants and their mutual relation appear to us — upon which the whole rationale of typology depends, and consequently the spiritual sense of the Scriptures. The figurative diction of the Bibles must also be especially held in mind, that we may know how to distinguish true types from mere rhetorical figures and changes of words, as we shall instruct below. The leading interpreters of the Scriptures must also be consulted, but especially those who have engaged more wisely and more accurately in this kind of interpretation, of whom it suffices to name Cornelius a Lapide.

68. Yet certain and indubitable arguments for the spiritual sense are to be sought from no other source than from those authorities which it would be irreligious to oppose — namely, from the testimony of the sacred Writers, from the judgment of the Church, and from the common opinion of the Fathers: only on these authorities, I say, can it be certainly established for us whether a spiritual sense underlies the things, and the words too by which the things are designated. There is, however, a threefold reason and mode of this matter.

For indeed, if the sacred Writers, or the Church, or the Fathers with one voice teach that some person or thing, or some event, was a type by which something was signified, and at the same time that this signified meaning is contained in the words whose literal sense displays that type, then there will be no further place for doubt that we should at once believe a spiritual sense lies hidden both in the thing and in the words. For example, this must absolutely be believed concerning the deeds and events of Isaac and Ishmael, and concerning the history by which these are recounted; for Paul expressly affirms in Galatians 4:24 that a spiritual sense underlies both them and it.

But if they affirm only the first of these, that is, that some person, or thing, or event was a type, although it does not necessarily seem to follow from this that the words which display this type are also to be taken in a spiritual sense, since the signification of types is the reason why a spiritual sense can also underlie words, but not why it necessarily underlies them, nevertheless, according to what we observed in another place, even this reason is sufficient for us to suppose without fear of error that a spiritual sense also underlies the words. Wherefore, when Paul mentions the cloud which led the Israelites on their journey, the Red Sea passage they crossed, the manna they ate, the rock which gave them drink, and other such things, in 1 Corinthians 10:1ff., as one who held that all these were types, we would be peevish, perhaps even audacious, to deny that this is sufficient reason for us to say that a spiritual sense also lies hidden in the histories of these things.

Finally, if they put forward testimonies or words of the Scriptures taken indeed in a spiritual sense, yet without warning us in any way that they are so taking and putting them forward, so that we should perceive it, this rule is at hand for us, drawn from the very notion of the spiritual sense, which, if rightly applied, never deceives nor can deceive. If the literal and obvious sense itself of the words, as they are read in the place from which they are taken, does not relate to that of which nevertheless the sacred Writers, or the Church, or the Fathers with one voice teach they were said, you may hold for certain that the latter is referred to through the spiritual sense of these same words, and therefore that this sense lies in these words, while through the literal sense some type is designated. Paul affirms that those words of Nathan were said of Christ: "I will be to him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son," Hebrews 1:5. But if you read Nathan's prophecy itself, you will understand it was said of Solomon. Conclude therefore that these words also have an underlying spiritual sense, in which, when so taken, they refer to Christ, whose type Solomon was. In the use of this rule, however, you will diligently beware of what shall presently be said must be avoided.

69. Other arguments and indications, moreover, by which with greater or lesser probability we can prove that a spiritual sense has been imparted to certain words, are deduced from this, that the entire ancient economy contains a typical significance, and these you will easily learn from what we have discussed concerning the manner in which types are made known.

III. What Is to Be Avoided in Mystical Interpretation

70. Now, however, let us set forth in summary those things which it is especially necessary to avoid in seeking out the spiritual sense, things which nevertheless anyone could have already learned from this whole discussion of ours.

Therefore, first of all, excess must be shunned, by which one sins in more than one way. For it happens that those sin by excess who, in order to establish the spiritual sense alongside the literal, end up destroying the literal itself, or at least pervert and corrupt it, on account of which Jerome sharply censures Origen, Against John of Jerusalem, § 7; though in truth those who do this devise not a spiritual sense but a fictitious literal sense, and substitute it in place of the true one, since the spiritual sense cannot exist without the literal nor be opposed to it. They also sin by excess who peddle the offspring and inventions of their own genius as the mystical utterances of the Holy Spirit, or sell as certain a spiritual sense which is at most probable; concerning which Jerome also writes that Origen offended, while he "makes his own genius to be the sacraments of the Church," Preface to Book V of the Commentary on Isaiah. Those also are to be regarded as excessive who demand or strive to find in the spiritual sense such an order of things as exists in the literal sense, and these likewise are reproved by Jerome. Those sin in the same way who endeavor to expound mystically every little word of the histories or discourses in which a spiritual sense lies hidden; on which subject consult Huet, Demonstratio Evangelica, prop. IX, ch. 171. Finally, those are rightly accused of excess who extend spiritual significations beyond the economy of the divine covenants, when they fabricate that something, which has nothing to do with that economy, has been pre-signified as by a type from some thing of those contained in the Scriptures.

71. Another thing, which you will principally beware of, is that you should not suppose to be a spiritual sense what is literal. On this matter scarcely anything more remains to be said beyond what has been stated throughout this dissertation. The danger of this error becomes more pressing where the literal sense of the words either reveals mysteries or has been transferred metaphorically, especially when the words are transferred from history and from things really done, and most of all when from types. Likewise where symbols in use are commemorated, where deeds are set forth as examples, where similitudes are employed and comparisons instituted, and finally where prosopopoeia or images are found. He is exposed to the danger of this same error who, in reading the Fathers and the interpreters of the Bible, does not constantly keep in memory what we have often pointed out, that many and diverse names are found promiscuously used by them sometimes to designate one sense of the Scriptures and sometimes another.

72. Finally, beware lest you think that the words or sentences of another are taken in a spiritual sense by any of the sacred Writers, when he accommodates them to certain other matters and adapts them κατὰ τὸ συμβεβηκός, or according to some similitude which exists between those things and the thing truly designated by those words and sentences.

Chapter III: On the Corollaries and Consequences of the Sense Underlying the Words of Scripture, or the Consequent Sense of Scripture

73. It is implanted and innate in the minds of men that, while we read writings or lend our ears to a speaker, we at the same time reason from what is said or heard, gather some things from others, and ascribe what we understand to be corollaries of the things written or said to those very persons who wrote or spoke them as their own opinions. This, just as in other books, is wont to happen also in reading the Bible. Yet a manifold difference exists between the corollaries in the two cases. For the authors of other books either perhaps did not notice these things while they wrote; or, even if they did notice, they did not happen to take care that these things should occur to the minds of readers; or, however much they may have wished this to happen, they could nevertheless not foresee that it would certainly come about, and much less provide that it certainly should come about. But, as concerns the Bible, the matter is otherwise on every side. For these things are plainly undoubted and certain, if they are said of the Holy Spirit and of those corollaries, what Augustine wrote concerning Moses and the manifold literal sense of the Scriptures: "He certainly perceived in these words, and thought, when he wrote them, whatever truth we have here been able to find, and whatever we have not been able, or are not yet able, to find, and yet can be found in them," Confessions, book XII, ch. 31, that is, gathered from them. And likewise this other passage: "And that very meaning (which those corollaries exhibit)... assuredly the Spirit of God, who wrought these things through him (who, I say, published the Bible through the Writer inspired by Himself), undoubtedly foresaw would occur to the reader or hearer, nay, in order that it should occur, because it too rests upon truth, He provided," On Christian Doctrine, book III, ch. 27.

It is therefore established that the Holy Spirit, in publishing the Bible, set Himself this aim among others, that He should also teach us those things which by the aforesaid method we gather and draw out from the Bible, and which follow from the subject matter and argument, and pertain either to imbuing the mind with the truth of doctrines or to forming morals in honesty, no less than those very things of which they are corollaries, and which are openly and expressly contained in the Bible. This can moreover be confirmed by several other arguments.

Article I: Testimonies of the Sacred Writers

74. And first, the Scriptures themselves suggest arguments for this matter. Paul speaks thus: "For whatever things were written, were written for our learning, that through patience and the consolation of the Scriptures we might have hope," Romans 15:4; and in another place: "Now all these things happened to them in figure; and they are written for our correction (or, as the Greek words of Paul themselves sound, εἰς νουθεσίαν, for our admonition)," 1 Corinthians 10:11, namely, that from these we may gather and learn what we must do, what we must avoid; to this, I say, the Holy Spirit looked while those things were being written by that very Author. To Timothy, indeed, Paul wrote thus: "From infancy you have known the sacred letters, which can instruct you unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture divinely inspired is useful for teaching, for reproving, for correcting, for instructing in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, equipped for every good work," 2 Timothy 3:15. You see how Paul repeats this usefulness from the fact that Scripture is divinely inspired, and therefore attributes the cause of this usefulness to its Author, the Holy Spirit. And all Scripture, πᾶσα γραφή, is said to bring this usefulness, which nevertheless very often happens that you would try in vain to grasp directly (ἀμέσως) from the words themselves of the sentences or narratives. Take an example from these: "But the earth was empty and void, and darkness was upon the face of the abyss. And the evening and morning were one day,... the second day,... the third day," etc., Genesis 1. "A river... is divided into four heads; the name of one is Phison," etc., Ibid. 2:10; "And Cain knew his wife," etc., Ibid. 4:17; "This is the book of the generation of Adam," etc., Ibid. 5:1; and from six hundred others. Therefore these things must be said to bring that usefulness in so far as other things either follow from them, or can be gathered or thought out by us through intermediate reasoning or commentary. You will easily understand that what Paul more than once speaks and presses concerning the difference between the letter and the spirit pertains to these same corollaries and consequences.

75. Add that, if this had not been the Holy Spirit's intention, no other reason would appear for many of the things which are read especially in the Israelite history, why they should be reported by the sacred Writers, and therefore Paul would seem to have spoken less truly in what we just now reported. For as concerns history, very many things are of no importance whatever; nor surely is it any concern of ours if Eglon king of the Moabites was fat with adipose tissue, if Mephibosheth son of Saul limped, or if Asa king of Judah suffered from gout. Nor would you discover any type lurking in these matters, by which at least a spiritual sense should underlie such narratives or parts of narratives. Finally, not a few of these are so obscure and entangled that not even their meaning can be gathered. To what end, then, are all these things narrated with the Holy Spirit as their Author? to what end has that heavenly character been impressed upon them, no differently than upon the other sacred Scriptures, and that divine authority added, by which we ourselves so believe them to be θεόπνευστα (God-breathed) that to think otherwise would be a religious offense for anyone? On the contrary, if we draw out anything true from these very passages, which the etymologies of names, or the reasons of numbers, or other adjuncts of persons, things, and places, may furnish for our reflection, and which may conduce to the right shaping of morals or to nourishing piety toward God, the meaning thus gathered is undoubtedly that which, as Augustine says, "the Spirit of God, who (through the Writer inspired by Him) wrought these things, undoubtedly foresaw would also occur to the reader or hearer, nay, in order that it should occur, because it too rests upon truth, He provided;" and this is what Augustine intended, when he observed, how "the obscurity of the divine speech is even useful for this, that it brings forth several meanings of truth," City of God, book XI, ch. 19.

In this way, however, we rightly understand why the Holy Spirit took care that these too should be included in the sacred volume, what usefulness can be drawn from them, and finally how truly Paul spoke.

Article II: Testimonies of the Fathers

76. What the Fathers' opinion was on this matter is too well known to need confirmation. We have more than once observed that what they call the spiritual or mystical sense is often not a meaning subjacent to the words of the Scriptures, but rather those things of which we are now treating, the corollaries and consequences from the meaning itself, indeed whatever truth, on the occasion taken from what we read in the Scriptures, occurs to the mind. That the Fathers attached this notion to those names or similar ones is manifestly evident from their Commentaries on Sacred Scripture.

77. But another argument can also be sought from these commentaries. For they consist in great part of doctrines, precepts, and meanings set forth in such a manner as if the Holy Spirit Himself had suggested them through what is contained in the Scriptures. Wherefore, unless the Fathers had believed that the matter stood thus, they would have to be said to have deceived us; but unless the matter itself were thus, they themselves would be mistaken, and their commentaries — indeed not futile or useless, but they would for the most part have had a vain foundation laid beneath them. But if it be granted that the opinion which we defend is true, it now appears that the method which the Fathers adopted in their Scriptural commentaries is censured not only unjustly but also irreverently. I shall finally subjoin in support of this opinion certain testimonies of the Fathers, which presented themselves to me of their own accord while reading their Commentaries.

78. Eusebius speaks thus: "Throughout the entire sacred and God-inspired Scripture, the principal aim of understanding looks to this: that it should hand down mystical and divine things, while at the same time preserving also the obvious understanding of the history," Demonstratio Evangelica, book IX. Since these are nearly twin to those which we shall presently transcribe from Augustine's books On Christian Doctrine, they are to be understood in the same way.

Hilary, expounding these words of the Psalmist: "All things whatsoever the Lord willed, He did in heaven, on earth, in the sea and in all the deeps. Bringing clouds from the end of the earth, He made lightnings into rain. He brings forth winds from His treasures," Psalm 134, notes that the very sense of the words stands below the matter of the discourse, which is the power of God, and says: "Is this alone the omnipotence of perfect will in God, that the earth exhales clouds, that lightnings flash with imminent rains, that winds blow with alternating breezes? But the powers of the words and the natures of the kinds refute this opinion of ours.... What human understanding has place here?" Yet not on that account is this sense of those words to be rejected, which Hilary himself accepts, going on thus: "But these things have been mentioned by me, who wish to show the power and reason of what was said, in such a way that it may nonetheless be understood to be a matter of invisible and omnipotent power, that from the sea, which is from the end of the earth, clouds are drawn forth, and that lightnings flash amid the rains, and that winds blow from the hidden seats of their breaths;" but that from this very sense of those words certain more sublime corollaries are to be drawn, he adds: "But because the omnipotence of God is not only in these things, nor only in what He willed has He done in heaven and on earth, in the sea and in the deeps, and in those things which are recorded as bodily done, let us remember that spiritual things are signified, and it must now be shown what under these sayings we ought to understand through the power of prophecy." These he calls spiritual and to be understood through the power of prophecy, doubtless because these also, even if not directly (ἀμέσως) as the sense of the words, yet through this very sense as a medium, "certainly the Spirit of God," to use Augustine's words, "undoubtedly foresaw would occur to the reader or hearer, nay, in order that they should occur, because they too rest upon truth, He provided." Hilary at once expounds what these spiritual things are: "In that He did all things whatsoever He willed in heaven and on earth, in the sea and in the deeps, as far as has been permitted to our knowledge, nothing is more lovable to God than man," etc., on Psalm 134.

Jerome was of the same opinion. Of the opening of Genesis he speaks thus: "Therefore the translation of the words at the beginning can be taken concerning Christ rather according to the sense than according to the word," Hebrew Questions on Genesis 1:1; where the very contrast of sense and word clearly shows that Jerome is not speaking of the sense of the words, but of what can be gathered by reflection from this sense; and this could not rightly or correctly be done unless it be granted that the Holy Spirit, in suggesting to Moses the opening of Genesis, provided that what Jerome speaks of should be gathered from the meaning of this opening. To this also belongs that saying of Jerome concerning the words of Christ: "In which through so many ages now the talents of so many great men have toiled, that they have rather conjectured than expressed the meaning of each word," to Marcella, epistle 27.

Ambrose likewise on this same opening: "There is also a mystical beginning... In this beginning therefore, that is, in Christ, God made heaven and earth," Hexaemeron, book I, ch. 4; where the word "mystical" does not signify a sense truly and properly spiritual derived from types into the words, but something else, which the Holy Spirit intends besides the meaning of the words themselves, yet to be gathered from it.

That Augustine stands with us, the testimonies which we have already transcribed from him bear witness. And likewise when he prescribes: "that the fullness and end of the Law and of all the divine Scriptures is to be understood as love," On Christian Doctrine, book I, ch. 35. For indeed, if this is the end of all the Scriptures, since very many of their sentences in themselves do not at all attain this end directly (ἀμέσως), it must be concluded that the very same conclusion is drawn from these words of Augustine which we saw above is drawn from the words of Paul.

Finally, Gregory the Great fully agreed with us when he wrote thus: "Our Lord and Savior... sometimes admonishes us by sermons, sometimes indeed by works. For His very deeds are precepts, because, while He silently does something, it is made known what we ought to do," Homily 17 on the Gospel; that is to say, it has been provided by the divine power of God that from the narration of the deeds done by Christ, which the Evangelists wrote, we should draw out and gather precepts for living rightly.

Article III: Various Cautions

79. These things which follow, or are brought forth by reflection from the words or from the subject matter of the sacred Scriptures, are usually designated by the Fathers by the same names by which the spiritual sense properly and strictly so called is wont to be designated, such as spiritual, mystical, moral sense, and the like, or intelligence, or simply also sense without any adjectival name. Most aptly might it be called sense "according to the meaning" (κατὰ διάνοιαν), as the Greeks do, who however call the spiritual sense thus too. We might not unfittingly call it in Latin the consequent sense.

80. That this sense is plainly something other than the literal sense, no one fails to see. But that it also differs in every respect from the spiritual sense, you readily understand from the definition of the latter; for the spiritual sense arises from types, and is thence derived into the words, and truly underlies them, equally with the literal sense, none of which features the consequent sense possesses. Indeed, it cannot even be called a sense of the Scriptures truly and strictly, if the name "sense," as used throughout this whole discussion, signifies either the meaning of a word or a meaning resulting from the meanings of several words. It can nevertheless be so called and held, in so far as the Holy Spirit, in suggesting the meanings to the Writer of the Bible, provided that we should draw out that sense from the meaning of these.

81. From the doctrine set forth above, which we have borrowed from Augustine, we conclude that in gathering a sense of this kind, only this one thing must be guarded against: that we bring forth nothing absurd from truth, or inept, or wholly alien to the very signification of the words, or that in no way appears to be a consequence; for these things, as if they were corollaries of the Scriptures or to be gathered from the Scriptures, the divine Author of the Scriptures certainly did not intend.

82. Nevertheless, those things which are so connected with the meaning of the Scriptures that they are produced by manifest and necessary consequence from it, must be distinguished from those which by another route, namely from the etymologies of names, from the reasons of numbers, and from other similar means, occur to the mind of those reading the Bible, since the former certainly follow from the meaning of the Scriptures, as are, for example, the corollaries of theologians: but not so the latter, which only do so probably with more or less likelihood. Concerning those former corollaries Gregory Nazianzen writes thus: "Is it not obvious that those things, though not stated in the Scriptures, are nevertheless gathered from them, which these necessarily produce and prove?.... For if, when you say twice five or twice seven, I should gather ten or fourteen from your words, or from your saying 'a mortal animal endowed with reason' should conclude it to be a man, would I seem to you to be raving? By no means surely, since I would be saying your own. For the words are not more those of him who speaks than of him who at the same time brings the necessity of speaking. As therefore in this case I would not weigh what is said more than what is understood, in the same way, if I should find anything else of those things which are either in no way, or certainly not openly enough, said, yet to be understood and gathered from the Scripture, I would not so dread you as a sycophant of names, as to flee from the pronouncement itself," Oration On the Holy Spirit, which is the 5th Of Theology.