Teaching Christianity
pleasure (Prv 9:17). And these instances I have mentioned, of course, leave no doubts about their meaning, because to illustrate the point it was necessary to mention only clear cases.
There are others, however, where it is uncertain in what sense, good or bad, they should be taken, like: A goblet of pure wine in the hand of the Lord is full and mixed. It is uncertain whether it signifies the wrath of God, but not down to the final punishments, that is down to the dregs, or whether it rather signifies the grace of the scriptures passing from the Jews to the nations, because he turned it this way and that, while there remained with the Jews the observances which they understand in a carnal, literal sense, because its dregs have not been emptied out (Ps 75:8). But as an example of a thing put to signify, not contraries, but simply diverse realities, we have water signifying the people, as we read in the Apocalypse,[55] and the Holy Spirit in the text, Rivers of living water shall flow from his belly (Jn 7:38), and anything else that water can be taken to signify in other places where it is mentioned.
37. In the same way there are other things which, considered not in their general use, but in any particular instance, signify not only two different things but sometimes even several, depending on the place the sentence occurs in. [56]
26. But wherever their meaning is clear, there we must learn how they are to be understood in obscurer places. After all, there is no better way of understanding what was said to God in the verse, Take up arms and shield, and arise to help me (Ps 35:2), than from that other place where we read, Lord, you have crowned us as with the shield of your good will (Ps 5:12). This does not mean, however, that wherever we read of a shield as some kind of defense we should only take it to mean God's good will; it says elsewhere, after all, And the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the