Chapter 7: On Sacred Scripture's sense and interpretation
CHAPTER SEVEN On Sacred Scripture's sense and interpretation
So far concerning clarity: next comes sense. Sense is Sacred Scripture's property by which its letter agrees most exactly with the Holy Spirit's intention.
Sacred Scripture's letter is like a body, or an outward bodily sign, by which God's kingdom — which is in power or virtue (1 Cor. 4:20) — is declared to our grasp. Sense is like the vital spirit and soul by which the author's mind is set, as it were, in the open and expressed to the life by a spiritual and effectual demonstration (1 Cor. 2:4). Apart from that sense, the letter of Scripture is not God's, but yourss — just as a king's image cast in gold is not the king's but a dog's, if that very gold is melted by fire and cast into a dog's image, as Irenaeus somewhere argues against heretical interpretations.
Here let the Enthusiast be kept far off — the one who utterly spurns Scripture, the sacred letter, and the outward word that is taught, and sets his own speculations and phantasms before it, not without an opinion of singular holiness. Blessed Luther prophesied of such in his Table Talk under the title on fanatics and sects, and the most learned Philip Marnix solidly refuted them.
Latin
CAPUT SEPTIMUM. De sensu & interpretatione sacrae Scripturae. Haec de claritate: sequitur sensus, qui est sacrae Scripturae proprietas, qua illius litera cum Spiritus sancti intentione exactissime congruit. LITERA Scripturae sacrae est instar corporis sive signi externi & corporei, quo regnum Dei, quod est in potentia seu virtute, 1. Cor. 4.20. ad captum nostrum declaratur: sensus vero est veluti spiritus vitalis & anima, qua auctoris mens quasi in aprico ponitur & ad vivum exprimitur per demonstrationem spiritualem & efficacem, 1. Cor. 2.4. Extra quam litera Scriptura non est Dei, sed tua, perinde ut imago regis ex auro conflata non est regis, sed canis, si ipsissimum illud aurum igne solutum in imaginem canis distinguatur, ut alicubi contra haereticas interpretationes Irenaeus disserit. Procul autem hic habeatur Enthusiastus, qui Scripturam, literamque sacram, externumque verbum, quod docetur, prorsus adspernatur & ante illud speculationes & phantasmata sua habet non sine opinione singularis sanctimoniae: de quo beatus Lutherus in convivalibus titulo de fanaticis & sectis vaticinatus est, quemque doctissimus Philippus Marnixius solide refutavit.