in their proper force, or are understood with great difficulty,
l?yC) ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. [bOOK IV.
exercise and train the minds of their readers, and to break in upon the satiety and stimulate the zeal of those who are willins to learn, and with a view also to throw a veil over the minds of the godless either that they may be converted to piety or shut out from a knowledge of the mysteries, from one or other of these reasons they have expressed themselves with a useful and wholesoiiie obscurity. They have indeed expressed themselves in such a way that those who in after ages understood and explained them aright have in the Church of God obtained an esteem, not indeed equal to that with which they are themselves regarded, but coming next to it. The expositors of these writers, then, ought not to express themselves in the same way, as if putting forward their expositions as of the same authority ; but they ought in all their deliverances to make it their firsthand chief aim to be understood, using as far as possible such clearness of speech that either he will be very dull who does not understand them, or that if what they say should not be very easily or quickly understood, the reason will lie not in their manner of expression, but in tlie difficulty and subtilty of the matter they are trying to explain.
CuAP. IX. How, and with icJiom, dijjicidt passages are to be discussed.
23. For there are some passages which are not understood in their proper force, or are understood with great difficulty, at whatever length, however clearly, or with whatever eloquence the speaker may expound them ; and these should never be
brought before the people at all, or only on rare occasions when there is some urgent reason . In books, however, which are written in such a style that, if understood, they, so to speak, dniw tlieir own readers, and if not understood, give no trouble to those who do not care to read them, and in private conversations, we must not shrink from the duty of bringing the trutli wliich we ourselves have reached within the com-
])rehensi()n ot" others, however difficult it may be to understand it, and whatever labour in the way of argument it may cost us. Only two conditions are to be insisted upon, that our h(\arcr or conq^^nion should have an earnest desire to learn the truth, and should have capacity of mind to receive it iu