Rules 5–11: explicit/implicit; heresy; doctors after Apostles; second notions

5. Certain things in Sacred Scripture are explicitly stated; others are present, even if not directly mentioned. Hence Nazianzen, Theology book 5: For, he says, in Scripture re set down as to words and sense together; some as to sense only. 6. Mutual collation should attend that some things are contained in Scripture explicitly; but some only implicitly. 7. Testification is twofold — dogmatic, which is made concerning the heads of our faith; and historical, which is made concerning the divine books.

8. Even if some heresy has not been condemned in a public council: yet it ought to be judged and refuted from God's Word, according to that of 1 John 4:1Hence Athanasius, letter on the Synod of Ariminum: In vain, he says, those running about pretend that they demand synods for the faith, since divine Scripture is more powerful than all. 9. Carefully beware lest the conclusions of doctors after the Apostles' age rashly pass into norms of faith. For the Apostle teaches (1 Corinthians 2:4) often that my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power or virtue — that is, confirmed (1) by testimonies already long ago brought forth by the Spirit and power of God (2 Peter 1:20-2 Peter 1:21); (2) peculiarly then also by the visible outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and by various miracles of divine power — all of which he opposes to the demonstrations of human philosophy; (3) by the affection of charity and the strength of patience, from which the speech arose, with which it was spoken, and to effecting which powerfully it uniquely tended — which he opposes to affected eloquence and human persuasion. Compare 1 Corinthians 4:19; 1 John 3:4, 1 John 3:24; 1 John 4:7; Colossians 1; 1 Timothy 1:5.

He therefore, proving his words from the Scriptures, with such signs and such affections evidently added, and so fitting spiritual things to spiritual that (1) both God's presence of which he spoke, and the speech by which he spoke, was rather spiritual and powerful than outwardly specious to the age's sense; (2) the proved conclusion and the proving testimony breathed the same force — further deduced such conclusions from principles as are themselves principles for us. But we, speaking neither with such signs nor with like affection, content with the principles necessarily set in Scripture, gather conclusions firm only insofar as, compared with the said principles, it has been made evident that they conform to them and flow from them.

10. Doubtful, obscure, difficult, or false consequences are not to be turned into axioms beyond all exception, nor all controversies into necessary dogmas. 11. Although second notions ought not to be plainly proscribed on account of the other genus of legitimate common and dialectic proofs: yet the true and sober use of the organon and the perfection of logical judgment even in theological controversies consists more in distinguishing analytic and dialectic proofs — to which rhetorical ones are also akin — than in abusing either of the opposed deceptive, pseudographic, sophistic, and heterogeneous proofs. For since most mysteries, and certain spiritual and divine things, plainly reject the voices of genus, species, difference, accident, subject, form, and other like second notions — if you wish to use them in such mysteries only analogically against heretics, it can easily happen that you open them hiding-places of refuge in which to conceal their errors.