authors of our Scriptures use all those forms of expression
104 ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. [BOOK III.
Chap, xxviii. It is safer to explain a donhtful passa'je hy other parages of
A^crijjture than by reason.
39. When, however, a meaning is evolved of sucli a kind that what is doubtful in it cannot be cleared up by indubitable evidence from Scripture, it remains for us to make it clear by the evidence of reason. But this is a dangerous practice.
For it is far safer to walk by the light of Holy Scripture ; so that when we wish to examine the passages that are obscured by metaphorical expressions, we may either obtain a meaning about which there is no controversy, or if a controversy arises, may settle it by the application of testimonies sought out in every portion of the same Scripture.
Chap. xxix.— The knowledge of tropes w necessary.
40. Moreover, I would have learned men to know that the authors of our Scriptures use all those forms of expression which grammarians call by the Greelc name tropes, and use them more freely and in greater variety than people who are unacquainted with the Scriptures, and have learnt these figures of speech from other writing, can imagine or believe.
Nevertheless those who know these tropes recognise them in
Scripture, and are very much assisted by their knowledge of them in understanding Scripture. But this is not the place to teach them to the illiterate, lest it might seem that I was teaching grammar. I certainly advise, however, that they be learnt elsewhere, although indeed I have already given tliat advice above, in the second book—namely, where
I treated of the necessary knowledge of languages. For the written characters from which grammar itself gets its name (the Greek name for letters being ypd/jLfjLaTo) are the signs of sounds made by the articulate voice with which we speak. Now of some of these figures of speech we fmd in
Scripture not only examples (which we have of them all), but the very names as well : for instance, allegory, enigma, and parahlc. However, nearly all these tropes which are said to be learnt as a matter of liberal education are found even in the ordinary speech of men who have learnt no grammar, but are content to use the vulgar idiom. For who docs not say,
" So may you flourish ? " And this is the figure of speech