MEDITATION I.

...than men who are sick in spirit; but a physician does not beat the sick with lashes, but brings medicine that can pull the evil out by its roots. Nor do I know whether they serve the Christian Religion well who advise that everyone who attacks the principles of the Christian Religion should be subjected to the heaviest punishments. I speak, however—and this should be noted well—of those who merely inquire into truths otherwise accepted by common consent through reasons and arguments alone, and who communicate their doubts to the Learned with the modesty that is proper. In place of arguments, I will set before those who think otherwise the words of one who, writing against the Manichaeans A major dualistic religious movement of the late Roman Empire that taught a struggle between light and darkness. regarding what they call the Foundation (Chapter II, Tome VIII, and Benedictine Edition, Column 151), speaks thus: Augustine, a man most pleasing to that class of people with whom we are dealing. “Let those be harsh toward you who do not know with what labor truth is found, and how difficult it is to avoid errors. Let those be harsh toward you who do not know how rare and arduous it is to overcome carnal phantasms by the serenity of a pious mind. Let those be harsh toward you who do not know with what difficulty the eye of the inner man is healed so that it may gaze upon its Sun. Let those be harsh toward you who do not know with what sighs and groans it is achieved that God may be understood even in the smallest part. Finally, let those be harsh toward you who have never been deceived by such an error as they see has deceived you.”

(3.) When it is said that such books ought neither to be read nor refuted, because the principles of the Christian Religion are commonly accepted and built upon the firmest foundations, one must respond to this with a distinction. The question is not whether the reading of such books is to be recommended to everyone indiscriminately. No one is so foolish as to suggest this. For we admit that the reading of such books has cast many—who are not sufficiently trained in the higher disciplines and the art of thinking—into the gravest errors; indeed, as we shall prove in what follows, we count such reading among the causes of growing Unbelief original: "Incredulitatis". But the question is this: whether such books should not even be read or publicly refuted by those who are sufficiently trained in Philosophical and Theological disciplines, and who, in everyone's judgment, are able to weigh the importance of objections. And we assert that this not only can be done, but that it is the duty of public Teachers to attack and tear down pestilential errors that would harm the salvation of men with heavy arguments. “But these articles,” (you say) “which the Unbelievers attack, are accepted by all consent and rest upon firm foundations.” I do not deny it; but does it follow from this that the truth itself should not be defended? Truly, I seem to hear a man devoted to the rites of the Romanists The author's term for Roman Catholics. thundering against the reading of books published by the Reformed, even on the grounds

ON THE CAUSES OF UNBELIEF.

on the grounds that the One, Holy, and Catholic Church has already made manifest through public decrees what is false and true, what is to be believed and what is not to be believed; and that they are therefore rash, proud, and even wicked men who, after so many infallible decrees of the most holy Mother Church, wish to submit the most evident and certain articles to examination, and to that end even wish to unroll the books of the Reformers. What, I ask, would men devoted to our sacred rites Meaning the Protestant/Reformed readers of this text. say to such a speech? Would they not cry out that such a Romanist man sins against the rule of Logicians which forbids begging the question original: "το ἐν ἀρχῃ λαμβανειν" (to en archē lambanein)? Would they not repeat that men devoted to the Religion of the Romanists who spend time reading our books would be out of danger of error, if the Catholic faith were built upon such evident, solid, and unshakable reasons? I know there is a very great difference between the decrees of the Christian Religion itself and the opinions held by the Roman Church; but that is not the point. The question is merely whether, in the argument of those who proscribe the examination of the books of Unbelievers because the truth of the Christian Religion has been sufficiently proven, there is not the same lack of logical reasoning original: "ἀσυλλογισία" (asyllogisia) that exists in the reasoning of the Catholic Teacher who proscribes the reading of Protestant books on the grounds that the Catholic Religion has been sufficiently proven? Certainly, in the method of reasoning, there is no difference. And what, I ask, prevents learned men from publicly defending the cause of our most holy Religion against the objections of Unbelievers? Shall it be permitted for Unbelievers to attack all the most holy things with impunity, but not for those who love truth and right to defend the same?

The Christian Religion is true, I confess, and built upon certain foundations. But are all who are called Christians persuaded and convinced of it? Oh, how we wish this were true! How we wish that most Christians, indeed all, were not just able to repeat the sounds of their Teachers, but rather to give the reasons for their faith with the weightiest arguments! How I wish they could dispel the objections of Unbelievers without effort! But since this is not the case, and on the contrary it is clear that many have admitted the Articles of Religion without examination, it must be the work of public Teachers to prove the divine Origin of the Christian Religion—without which persuasion no one can rightly be called a Christian—with the most evident and weightiest arguments on every given occasion, and to tear down the errors of Unbelievers which lay snares for truth and piety. In a word: either it must be said that the decrees of the Christian Religion are contrary to the principles of right reason, destitute of all foundation, and unable to withstand the objections of Unbelievers...