whose divinely-inspired writings constitute the canon, which
12G ox CIIRISTIAX DOCTRINE. [BOOK IV.
someness ? For the sweeter we try to make such things, the easier it is to make their wholesomeness serviceable. And so there are writers of the Church who have expounded the Holy
Scriptures, not only with wisdom, but with elo(|uence as well and there is not more time for the reading of these than is sufficient for those who are studious and at leisure to exhaust them.
Chap. vi.— The sacred writers unite eloquence with wisdom.
9. Here, perhaps, some one inquires whether the authors whose divinely-inspired writings constitute the canon, which carries with it a most wholesome authority, are to be considered wise only, or eloquent as well. A question which to me, and to those who think with me, is very easily settled.
For where I understand these writers, it seems to me not only that notliing can be wiser, but also that nothing can be more eloquent. And I venture to affirm that all who truly understand what these writers say, p)erceive at the same time that it could not have been properly said in any other way. For as there is a kind of eloquence that is more becoming in youth, and a kind that is more becoming in old age, and nothing can be called eloquence if it be not suitable to the person of the speaker, so there is a kind of eloquence that is becoming in men who justly claim the highest authority, and who are evidently inspired of God. With this eloquence they spoke ; no otlier would have been suitable for them ; and this itself would be unsuitable in any other, for it is in keepincr with their character, wliile it mounts as far alcove that of others (not from empty inflation, but from solid merit) as it seems to fall below them. Where, however, I do not understand these writers, tliough their eloquence is then less apparent, I have no doubt but that it is of the same kind as that I do understand. Tlie very obscurity, too, of these divine and wholesome words was a necessary element in eloquence of a kind that was designed to profit our understandings, not only by the discovery of truth, but also by the exercise of their powers.
10. I could, however, if T had time, show those men wlio cry up their own form of language as superior to that of our authors (not because of its majesty, but because of its infla-