II. Partial obscurity admitted; human causes; hard places in Paul; Spirit's wise mixture
II. Next, we do not deny that Sacred Scripture is in some part, somewhere, and for someone obscure — whether we look at sublime matters full of mysteries, or at phrases proper to that ancient time, and also tropic and figured locutions that in this age make some difficulty for us.
That obscurity is increased by human prejudices, ignorance of tongues and of things, vain confidence, negligence, hatred, envy, ambition, avarice, lust of wrangling, and every depraved affection by which the mind is blinded.
Hence Peter also (2 Peter 3:16), concerning Paul's letters, affirms that they contain some things hard to understand (some things difficult to grasp) — to tame pride by labor, and to remove the intellect from distaste, for what is easily investigated often becomes cheap to it.
For magnificently and wholesomely the Holy Spirit so shaped the Scriptures that by the clearer places he meets hunger, and by the obscurer ones he wipes away distaste — as Augustine wisely writes (On Christian Doctrine book 2 chapter 6).
Latin
II. DEINDE non negamus sacram scripturam aliqua ex parte alicubi & alicui obscuram esse, sive res sublimes & mysteriorum plenas, sive phrases antiqui illius temporis proprias, tropicas item figuratasque spectemus locutiones, quae hoc tempore nobis difficultatem aliquam pariant. Quam obscuritatem augent hominum praejudicia, linguarum & rerum ignorantia, vana confidentia, negligentia, odium, invidia, ambitio, avaritia, altercandi libido, omnisque pravus affectus, quo mens excaecatur. Hinc & Petrus epist. 2. cap.3.v.16. de epistolis Paulinis affirmat, quod δυσνόητά τινα contineant, ad domandam labore superbiam, & intellectum a fastidio removendum, cui facile investigata plerunque vilescunt. Nam magnifice & salubriter Spiritus sanctus ita scripturas modificavit, ut locis apertioribus fami occurreret, obscurioribus fastidia detergeret, ut sapienter scribit Augustinus lib. 2. de doctrina Christiana cap. 6.