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15. What has been said relates to the words of the apostle, that
"we see now through a glass;" but whereas he has added, "in an
enigma," the meaning of this addition is unknown to any who are
unacquainted with the books that contain the doctrine of those modes of
speech, which the Greeks call Tropes, which Greek word we also use
in Latin. For as we more commonly speak of schemata than of figures,
so we more commonly speak of tropes than of modes. And it is a very
difficult and uncommon thing to express the names of the several modes
or tropes in Latin, so as to refer its appropriate name to each. And
hence some Latin translators, through unwillingness to employ a Greek
word, where the apostle says," Which things are an allegory," have
rendered it by a circumlocution Which things signify one thing by
another. But there are several species of this kind of trope that is
called allegory, and one of them is that which is called enigma. Now
the definition of the generic term must necessarily embrace also all its
species; and hence, as every horse is an animal, but not every animal
is a horse, so every enigma is an allegory, but every allegory is not
an enigma. What then is an allegory, but a trope wherein one thing is
understood from another? as in the Epistle to the Thessalonians,
"Let us not therefore sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be
sober: for they who sleep, sleep in the night; and they who are
drunken, are drunken in the night: but let us who are of the day, be
sober." But this allegory is not an enigma. for here the meaning is
patent to all but the very dull; but an enigma is, to explain it
briefly, an obscure allegory, as, e.g., "The horseleech had
three daughters," and other like instances. But when the apostle
spoke of an allegory, he does not find it in the words, but in the
fact; since he has shown that the two Testaments are to be understood
by the two sons of Abraham, one by a bondmaid, and the other by a
free woman, which was a thing not said, but also done. And before
this was explained, it was obscure; and accordingly such an allegory,
which is the generic name, could be specifically called an enigma.
16. But because it is not only those that are ignorant of the books
that contain the doctrine Of tropes, who inquire the apostle's
meaning, when he said that we "see now in an enigma, but those,
too, who are acquainted with the doctrine, but yet desire to know what
that enigma is in which "we now see;" we must find a single meaning
for the two phrases, viz. for that which says, "we see now through a
glass," and for that which adds, "in an enigma." For it makes but
one sentence, when the whole is so uttered, "We see now through a
glass in an enigma." Accordingly, as far as my judgment goes, as by
the word glass he meant to signify an image, so by that of enigma any
likeness you will, but yet one obscure, and difficult to see through.
While, therefore, any likenesses whatever may be understood as
signified by the apostle when he speaks of a glass and an enigma, so
that they are adapted to the understanding of God, in such way as He
can be understood; yet nothing is better adapted to this purpose than
that which is not vainly called His image. Let no one, then,
wonder, that we labor to see in any way at all, even in that fashion
of seeing which is granted to us in this life, viz. through a glass,
in an enigma. For we should not hear of an enigma in this place if
sight were easy. And this is a yet greater enigma, that we do not see
what we cannot but see. For who does not See his own thought? And
yet who does see his own thought, I do not say with the eye of the
flesh, but with the inner sight itself? Who does not see it, and who
does see it? Since thought is a kind of sight of the mind; whether
those things are present which are seen also by the bodily eyes, or
perceived by the other senses; or whether they are not present, but
their likenesses are discerned by thought; or whether neither of these
is the case, but things are thought Of that are neither bodily things
nor likenesses of bodily things, as the virtues and vices; or as,
indeed, thought itself is thought of; or whether it be those things
which are the subjects of instruction and of liberal sciences; or
whether the higher causes and reasons themselves of all these things in
the unchangeable nature are thought of; or whether it be even evil,
and vain, and false things that we are thinking of, with either the
sense not consenting, or erring in its consent.
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