The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil According to the Holy Scriptures

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assistance of the Holy Spirit promised to it and to it alone, teaches us certain truth everywhere in those things that pertain to faith and morals, and keeps us from the poisoned pastures of errors and of unhealthy and fabricated doctrine. Hence, that most provident mother most wisely decreed in the Council of Trent, session 4:

that no one, relying on his own prudence in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, twisting sacred Scripture to his own senses, dare to interpret the holy Scripture itself against that sense which holy Mother Church has held and holds, whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures, or even against the unanimous consent of the Fathers, even if such interpretations were never intended to be brought to light. Those who contravene shall be declared by the ordinaries and punished by the penalties established by law.
With these four rules observed and stabilized in the interpretation of sacred Scripture and its literal sense, this very sense provides the Theologian with the most firm and solid argument; whatever of the divine Scriptures, concludes the beautiful St. Augustine in Letter 147, no. 4,
namely those which are called canonical in the Church, is confirmed by perspicuous authority, must be believed without any doubt.

§. 5.

The Fathers also provide a solid argument in Theology.

Besides Scripture and its authentic literal sense, the theological doctrine of the Fathers must also be kept continually before the eyes, for they, after Scripture, tradition, and the definitions of the Church, are those most rich and pure fountains from which the Theologian may draw the most limpid water of doctrine, both for defending the faith and for establishing morals. In them is found declared and clarified whatever was hidden in Scripture and doubtful in tradition; what kind of doctrine of faith existed in the Church uninterrupted through the Ages; or what kind of discipline of morals and economy of rites and ceremonies existed in it from antiquity. By this doctrine of the Fathers