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

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the Great Augustine himself used to repel the errors of the Pelagians and other enemies of the Church, while in Against Julian, book 2, chapter 9, he speaks thus: but we have proven this by the authority of the holy catholics, who also assert this... and therefore it does not follow that this is false because those things are true. For such and so great Men confirm both this and those things to be true according to the Catholic faith, which has been spread throughout the world from antiquity, so that your fragile, and as it were subtle novelty, may be crushed by the sole authority of theirs. Hence, our Mother Church again most providently decreed in the Council of Trent, Session 4, that in questions of faith and morals this very Theological Doctrine of the Fathers should always be used as a support or defense.

(§. 4.) Moreover, the footsteps of those fathers must always be held or pressed who wrote by design on a similar matter to that which is undertaken to be treated. For the holy Fathers often concerned themselves with many and various things in their books; frequently they do not treat many things exactly and precisely, but touch upon them only lightly; other things they exaggerate thoroughly according to all breadth and perfection, because they were compelled and driven to treat these or those things according to the nature of the times and the vicissitude and various arising of heresies. In the present matter, we choose the greatest light and Doctor of the Church, Augustine, not out of some filial affection, which I owe most greatly to my First Parent a reference to the author's own spiritual lineage or perhaps a specific patronymic as an unworthy son, but because no one labored more and more amply in this matter than Augustine, as one who studied the books of Genesis against the Manichaeans and Pelagians by design. Therefore, in order to observe the rules of sound criticism, it is necessary that we follow the footsteps of this leader and Great Master, as the same holy Father exhorts, while in his book On the Utility of Believing to Honoratus, Chapter 17, he speaks thus: if every discipline, however vile and easy, requires a Teacher or Master to be grasped, what is more full of rash pride than to refuse to know the books of the divine Sacraments from their interpreters?