I. PROB. taken from the letter, which etc.

that those who are shod should not be received into the Church. SS. Hilary, Gregory, and other Fathers show that it is not the words that make Scripture, but the intelligence, which they confirm with various places of Scripture. St. Jerome (ch. 11, Isaiah) produces an example where it is said that at the coming of the Messiah the lamb will dwell with the wolf; this has neither been seen nor fulfilled literally. And in chapter 29 of Isaiah, turning to the Jews, he says: I wish, indeed, that these good lovers of simple history, who seek nothing but leaves while despising the fruits, and are content with the shadow of words which vanishes in a moment, would explain to us how Lebanon, which is a mountain of Phoenicia, was changed into Mount Carmel, and Carmel, so delicate and fertile, into a sterile and unfruitful desert. The same, speaking of the captive woman and the conditions of that marriage (which are explained in Deut. 7), says: If these are understood according to the letter, are they not ridiculous? St. Gregory the Great brings forward (l. 4. Moral. c. 1. & 2.) the text from Job 3, where the holy man wishes that the day on which he was born had perished; which seems absurd and impossible. One may add that from Judges 9, where it is said that the trees in an assembly chose a King, and countless others, to which St. Augustine's saying is rightly applied: If these are not understood spiritually, are they not fables? If they do not have something of a secret, are they not unworthy of God? Certainly, they do not differ from fables and lies except through the mysteries they contain. The juice and truth is in the marrow, not in the surface and the bark: and when you have separated the marrow from the bark, nothing will remain but dryness and falsehood. For thus you will truly fashion for yourself a God composed of many members and disagreeing parts, which are subject to human imperfections: namely, a God who repents of his deed, who is weary of not having done otherwise, who is stirred by fury, envy, fear, jealousy, and other passions that usually disturb the tranquility and happiness of the human mind: in a word, you will make for yourself an idol in place of GOD. Whence Julian the Apostate (according to Niceph. l. 10. c. 32. and Sozom. l. 5. c. 25.) attempted to draw the Jews to Idolatry through the simple text of Scripture. And to return to that unhappy and incredulous people, was not the Letter a stone of stumbling to them, which precipitated them into blindness and ruin, because of the Christ they despised and the Law they abused? This was that veil, says St. Augustine (l. 2. contra advers. Legis c. 7.), with which their face was covered, represented by that which Moses (Exod. 34) had placed over his shining face. For, as St. Gregory Nazianzen observes in his Orat. de S. Basil., Moses established a double law for the Jews: one interior and spiritual, the other exterior and literal. The former was represented by the luminous face of that Prophet; the latter by the veil, by which the sight was removed from the common people; and because the Jews did not penetrate this veil, they did not recognize the luminous face of the eternal Father