can neither defend faith nor humanity. Not humanity, for it must often be said that humanity is extirpated without reason: original: "qui autem rationales disciplinas Theologo auferunt, hi suam illi rationem eripiunt" those who take rational disciplines away from the Theologian, they snatch his reason from him. If you remove reason from the truth that is discerned in the disciplines and in the intelligence of man, it will surely lie flat, or rather it will be nothing at all. Nor can faith, in turn, protect itself alone without doctrine and reason. For once Philosophy and every method of disputing are removed, rusticity remains with holy faith: this, as Jerome writes to Paulinus, benefits as much by the merit of life as it harms by simplicity, if it does not resist adversaries. Therefore, faith will waver unless the faithful person, as Peter says, is prepared to render an account, which cannot be done by faith alone without reason. Finally, Theology does not stand without the reason of nature. Since man is a rational being, reasoning is innate to him, whether he acts alone, or with another, or wishes to know human or divine things. Therefore, when men differ, they neither should nor can reject natural reason unless they have ceased to be men. With these rules established for our present undertaking of interpreting Scripture, and stabilized according to the canons of sound criesis judgment/criticism, we set out to treat our question itself, for no other end than that God may be continuously more glorified in us, and His most holy law and word, manifested to us in the Holy Scriptures, may appear to everyone most pure and immune from every stain of error or vice.

ONLY QUESTION

Concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

ARTICLE I.

Concerning the existence of this tree in Paradise.

Moses was a Prophet sent by God.

About to approach the history of Creation manifested to us through Moses, we fall into a great and most dire labyrinth of adversaries, for many thinking perversely proclaim Moses not as a Prophet and Leader of his people sent by God, but as the supreme pseudo-politician, impostor, and forger, who proposed and instilled such things as are read in his books into the Israelite people, not from divine inspiration and revelation, but for the sole purpose that he might keep them, still surrounded on all sides by simplicity and the darkness of ignorance, within the limits of his discipline and obedience. Truly, that such vain talkers and seducers might be thoroughly convinced in this part, there would not be so much need to compress their madness with the express letter of Scripture, constant and uninterrupted tradition, and the continuous doctrine of the Church and the Fathers—inasmuch as they recognize neither God with the Atheists, nor the things of God with the Deists, crying out with the foolish: there is no God (Psalm 13)—but rather that this mission of Moses might be proven to them by signs and prodigies, just as God already proved this in the time of Moses His servant against the wicked Blasphemers and those of the same ilk, namely Dathan and Abiron (Numbers 16, v. 8), where it is read: And Moses said: In this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all things that you see, and that I have not brought them forth out of my own heart: if these men die the common death of all men, and if they shall be visited with the plague, wherewith others also are wont to be visited, the Lord did not send me. But if the Lord do a new thing, and the earth opening her mouth swallow them down, and all things that belong to them, and they go down alive into hell, you shall know that they have blasphemed the Lord. And immediately as he had made an end of speaking, the earth broke asunder under their feet and opening her mouth devoured them with their tents and all their substance. For if the princes and Kings of the world have the virtue and power of manifesting their will and the reason for their actions to their subjects through servants and Ministers, on what sound and reasonable foundation should we deny the same to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, since He is infinitely powerful, to whom from eternity and