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For if he takes up rashly a meaning which the author whom he is reading
did not intend, he often falls in with other statements which he cannot
harmonize with this meaning. And if he admits that these statements
are true and certain, then it follows that the meaning he had put upon
the former passage cannot be the true one: and so it comes to pass,
one can hardly tell how, that, out of love for his own opinion, he
begins to feel more angry with Scripture than he is with himself. And
if he should once permit that evil to creep in, it will utterly destroy
him. "For we walk by faith, not by sight." Now faith will totter
if the authority of Scripture begin to shake. And then, if faith
totter, love itself will grow cold. For if a man has fallen from
faith, he must necessarily also fall from love; for he cannot love
what he does not believe to exist. But if he both believes and loves,
then through good works, and through diligent attention to the precepts
of morality, he comes to hope also that he shall attain the object of
his love. And so these are the three things to which all knowledge and
all prophecy are subservient: faith, hope, love.
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