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All which things being heard and well considered, I will not
strive about words: for that is profitable to nothing, but the
subversion of the hearers. But the law is good to edify, if a man
use it lawfully: for that the end of it is charity, out of a pure
heart and good conscience, and faith unfeigned. And well did our
Master know, upon which two commandments He hung all the Law and the
Prophets. And what doth it prejudice me, O my God, Thou light of my
eyes in secret, zealously confessing these things, since divers things
may be understood under these words which yet are all true, -what, I
say, doth it prejudice me, if I think otherwise than another
thinketh the writer thought? All we readers verily strive to trace out
and to understand his meaning whom we read; and seeing we believe
him to speak truly, we dare not imagine him to have said any thing,
which ourselves either know or think to be false. While every man
endeavours then to understand in the Holy Scriptures, the same as
the writer understood, what hurt is it, if a man understand what Thou,
the light of all true-speaking minds, dost show him to be true,
although he whom he reads, understood not this, seeing he also
understood a Truth, though not this truth?
For true it is, O Lord, that Thou madest heaven and earth; and it is
true too, that the Beginning is Thy Wisdom, in Which Thou createst
all: and true again, that this visible world hath for its greater part
the heaven and the earth, which briefly comprise all made and
created natures.
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