other Apostles preaching to the Jews, who despised philosophy, similarly,
adapted themselves to the temper of their hearers (see Gal. ii. 11), and
preached a religion free from all philosophical speculations. (57) How blest
would our age be if it could witness a religion freed also from all the
trammels of superstition!




CHAPTER XII - OF THE TRUE ORIGINAL OF THE DIVINE LAW, AND
WHEREFORE SCRIPTURE IS CALLED SACRED, AND THE WORD OF GOD.
HOW THAT, IN S0 FAR AS IT CONTAINS THE WORD OF GOD,
IT HAS COME DOWN TO US UNCORRUPTED.

(1) Those who look upon the Bible as a message sent down by God from Heaven
to men, will doubtless cry out that I have committed the sin against the
Holy Ghost because I have asserted that the Word of God is faulty,
mutilated, tampered with, and inconsistent; that we possess it only in
fragments, and that the original of the covenant which God made with the
Jews has been lost. (2) However, I have no doubt that a little reflection
will cause them to desist from their uproar: for not only reason but the
expressed opinions of prophets and apostles openly proclaim that God's
eternal Word and covenant, no less than true religion, is Divinely inscribed
in human hearts, that is, in the human mind, and that this is the true
original of God's covenant, stamped with His own seal, namely, the idea of
Himself, as it were, with the image of His Godhood.

(3) Religion was imparted to the early Hebrews as a law written down,
because they were at that time in the condition of children, but afterwards
Moses (Deut. xxx:6) and Jeremiah (xxxi:33) predicted a time coming when the