1. The Sacred Scripture, or Word, Is Divine Truth Itself

Everyone says that the Word comes from God, is Divinely inspired, and so is holy. But even so, no one has known before this wherein the Divinity in it lies. For in its letter the Word appears as though written in the ordinary way, in a foreign style, neither as sublime or nor as lucid as writings of the present age seem to be.

As a result, a person who worships nature as God, or in preference to God, and so thinks prompted by self and his own self-interest, and not prompted by heaven in response to the Lord, may easily fall into error regarding the Word, and into scorning it, and when reading it, saying to himself, “What is this? What is that? Is this Divine? Can God, whose wisdom is infinite, speak so? Where is the holiness in it, and what makes it holy, other than some teaching of religion and so conviction?”

60. The opposite is the case with people who read the Word in the light of a false religion’s doctrine, and still more with people who use the Word to defend that doctrine and have an eye then to their own glory and to the world’s riches. In their case the Word’s truth exists, so to speak, in the dark of night, and falsity in the light of day. They read something true, but do not see it, and if they see some shadow of it, they falsify it. These are the people of whom the Lord says that they have eyes but do not see, and ears but do not understand (Matthew 13:14-15). For nothing so blinds a person as his own self-interest and affirmation of falsity. A person’s self-interest is his love of self and his consequent conceit in his own intelligence. And an affirmation of falsity is thick darkness masquerading as light. Their light is a merely natural one, and their sight like that of one seeing apparitions in the dark.