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

but a full, clear, and perfect knowledge and science of these mysteries. Hence natural reason serves only, but does not hold dominion in Theology, and we can declare the deep mysteries of faith to the grasp of a rational man, yet we are by no means able to clearly and evidently elicit and prove their possibility, existence, and truth from the principles of natural reason; indeed, if it is right to speak the truth, natural reason serves the Theologian not so much to declare the mysteries of faith as to compress the madness of perverse men and the sophisms they bring forth against these very Mysteries. For that end, the Apostle St. Paul wished his Titus to be equipped with these arms, chapter 1, verses 13 and 14, saying: for which cause rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men that turn themselves away from the truth. From this also, the Theologian must especially call upon natural reason for assistance, that he may be able to exhort in sound doctrine and to convince the gainsayers, for there are also many disobedient, vain talkers and seducers... whose mouths it is necessary to stop: who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not (Titus, chapter 1, v. 9, 10, 11). By this reason, natural reason does not hold the last place in Theology or in treating the Mysteries of faith, but is applied everywhere and in everything rightly and usefully, and with great increment of such truths. For as the Most Reverend Melchior Canus concludes in On Theological Sources, book 9, chapter 4: neither let the intelligence of human things hinder the knowledge of divine things, nor the knowledge of divine things hinder the intelligence of human things: we ought not to reject either in the other's proper function, unless we wish to be fools. Furthermore, he who institutes Theology in such a way that it has nothing conjoined with the reason of nature, and measures all the dogmas of excellent discipline by the sole faith of the Scriptures, if he persists in that opinion, and is not sometimes overcome by the goodness of nature, neither cultivates Theology