dy and true interpretation of Scripture, the principle that it is in
every passage true and divine. Such a doctrine should be reached only
after strict scrutiny and thorough comprehension of the Sacred Books
(which would teach it much better, for they stand in need of no human
fictions), and not be set up on the threshold, as it were, of inquiry.

As I pondered over the facts that the light of reason is not only
despised, but by many even execrated as a source of impiety, that human
commentaries are accepted as divine records, and that credulity is
extolled as faith; as I marked the fierce controversies of philosophers
raging in Church and State, the source of bitter hatred and dissension,
the ready instruments of sedition and other ills innumerable, I
determined to examine the Bible afresh in a careful, impartial, and
unfettered spirit, making no assumptions concerning it, and attributing
to it no doctrines, which I do not find clearly therein set down....

FOOTNOTES:

[1] From the Preface to the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_.

CHAPTER II

OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE[2]

When people declare, as all are ready to do, that the Bible is the Word
of God teaching men true blessedness and the way of salvation, they
evidently do not mean what they say; for the masses take no pains at all
to live according to Scripture, and we see most people endeavoring to
hawk about their own commentaries as the word of God, and giving their
best efforts, under the guise of religion, to compelling others to think
as they do: we generally see, I say, theologians anxious to learn how to
wring their inventions and sayings out of the sacred text, and to
fortify them with Divine authority. Such persons never display less
scruple and more zeal than when they are interpreting Scripture or the
mind of the Holy Ghost; if we ever see them perturbed, it is not that
they fear to attribute some error to the Holy Spirit, and to stray from
the right path, but that they are afraid to be convicted of error by
others, and thus to overthrow and bring into contempt their own
authority. But if men really believe what they verbally testify of
Scripture, they would adopt quite a different plan of life: their minds
would not be agitated by so many contentions, nor so many hatreds, and
they would cease to be excited by such a blind and rash passion for
interpreting the sacred writings, and excogitating novelties in
religion. On the contrary, t