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4. Wherefore, our Lord God helping, we will undertake to render,
as far as we are able, that very account which they so importunately
demand: viz., that the Trinity is the one and only and true God,
and also how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are rightly
said, believed, understood, to be of one and the same substance or
essence; in such wise that they may not fancy themselves mocked by
excuses on our part, but may find by actual trial, both that the
highest good is that which is discerned by the most purified minds, and
that for this reason it cannot be discerned or understood by
themselves, because the eye of the human mind, being weak, is dazzled
in that so transcendent light, unless it be invigorated by the
nourishment of the righteousness of faith. First, however, we must
demonstrate, according to the authority of the Holy Scriptures,
whether the faith be so. Then, if God be willing and aid us, we may
perhaps at least so far serve these talkative arguers more puffed up
than capable, and therefore laboring under the more dangerous disease
as to enable them to find something which they are not able to doubt,
that so, in that case where they cannot find the like, they may be led
to lay the fault to their own minds, rather than to the truth itself or
to our reasonings; and thus, if there be anything in them of either
love or fear towards God, they may return and begin from faith in due
order: perceiving at length how healthful a medicine has been provided
for the faithful in the holy Church, whereby a heedful piety, healing
the feebleness of the mind, may render it able to perceive the
unchangeable truth, and hinder it from falling headlong, through
disorderly rashness, into pestilent and false opinion. Neither will
I myself shrink from inquiry, if I am anywhere in doubt; nor be
ashamed to learn, if I am anywhere in error.
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