For
we enquire one way about the making of the creature, what is true;
another way, what Moses, that excellent minister of Thy Faith, would
have his reader and hearer understand by those words. For the first
sort, away with all those who imagine themselves to know as a truth,
what is false; and for this other, away with all them too, which
imagine Moses to have written things that be false. But let me be
united in Thee, O Lord, with those and delight myself in Thee, with
them that feed on Thy truth, in the largeness of charity, and let us
approach together unto the words of Thy book, and seek in them for Thy
meaning, through the meaning of Thy servant, by whose pen Thou hast
dispensed them.
But which of us shall, among those so many truths, which occur to
enquirers in those words, as they are differently understood, so
discover that one meaning, as to affirm, "this Moses thought," and
"this would he have understood in that history"; with the same
confidence as he would, "this is true," whether Moses thought this
or that? For behold, O my God, I Thy servant, who have in this book
vowed a sacrifice of confession unto Thee, and pray, that by Thy mercy
I may pay my vows unto Thee, can I, with the same confidence wherewith
I affirm, that in Thy incommutable world Thou createdst all things
visible and invisible, affirm also, that Moses meant no other than
this, when he wrote, In the Beginning God made heaven and earth? No.
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