I shall therefore say that Holy Scripture can never lie or err, and that its declarations are of absolute and inviolable truth. But it is necessary that those who interpret it, though it be true in itself, do not attach to it this or that meaning which they would then have to maintain, at any price, as certain. For although it is contrary to the nature of Scripture to lie, it is nevertheless not contrary to its nature to have many senses beneath a single word, so that beneath one and the same word it may designate not one meaning alone, but several, all of them true.

I believe that the authority of Holy Scripture was intended only to persuade men of those truths that are necessary for their salvation, and which, surpassing all human reason, could not be made credible by any science other than the very voice of the Holy Spirit. But I do not believe that this same God, who has given us senses, reason, and intellect, wished us to abandon their use, so that we might content ourselves with what others teach us about things we could examine by means of the faculties he has conferred upon us. Hence, the conclusions demonstrated in the sciences of nature must first be presented to us by our own senses or by necessary demonstrations, and only then should we use them to examine those passages of Scripture that seem to say otherwise.

Two truths cannot contradict one another. Therefore, if in Scripture we encounter some statement which, by the appearance of its words, contradicts a demonstration made with certainty by our senses or by necessary reasons, we must by no means conclude that the demonstration is false, but rather that the meaning of those words is other than what first appears to us. God has revealed to us in Scripture what it is necessary for us to know and which, surpassing our powers, our reason could not acquire by its natural means; it does not follow that we should forbid what our senses and our intelligence demonstrate, nor, by a literal interpretation of the words, cast doubt upon what our senses show us.

Nature, indeed, is constituted so admirably in its works, and divine legislation has so well ordered it, that it never transgresses the laws prescribed to it; it concerns itself not with whether its hidden causes and modes of operation are accessible to men or explained to them in words. For this book—I mean nature—is written in a language other than that of letters. We know that in human works the judgment of the master may differ from that of the workman; but God, the supreme legislator of nature, understands this book better than we do, and it is clear that his decrees are always accomplished with the greatest perfection.

One may answer in another way the objection drawn from the miracles performed by the Lord: that if all the effects of nature depended upon her alone, and she produced them without divine intervention, then from the immutability of her laws it might perhaps follow that God could work no miracles. But since it is true that God governs the actions of nature and gives her her decrees, and that nature faithfully and invariably executes his commands, we should not be scandalized if, at times, God does things contrary to the common order of nature, nor conclude that nature is subject to variation in her constant actions, nor seek in Scripture testimonies to support or refute conclusions that reason has first demonstrated.

It seems to me that natural discourse, on the one hand, and Holy Scripture, on the other, have for their respective ends the one to speak in the manner most absolutely conforming to physical realities, and the other to speak in the manner best suited to the capacities of the common understanding of ordinary people. Holy Scripture, though dictated by the divine Spirit, proposes to speak according to the ordinary appearance of men, who are accustomed to judge by their senses; for it has no other aim than to make intelligible and grasped by the common people those things necessary for salvation. Hence it follows that the intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how one goes to heaven, and not how heaven goes: neither how it was made, nor how it moves, nor what are its figures and positions.

Finally, I cannot refrain from observing that the defects found in the sacred writers arise not from Scripture itself, which is infallible, but from its interpreters, who, driven by passion and by the vanity of appearing wiser than the common run of men, give to those texts meanings their authors never had, and which are afterward refuted by true philosophy. Let each one, therefore, before passing judgment upon the things of nature, listen to nature herself, who does not lie, and let him know that it is more honest to confess one's ignorance than to hasten to affirm what one does not know.