Chapter 6.—The Sacred Writers
Unite Eloquence with Wisdom.
9. Here, perhaps, some one
inquires whether the authors whose divinely-inspired writings
constitute the canon, which carries with it a most wholesome
authority, are to be considered wise only, or eloquent as well. A
question which to me, and to those who think with me, is very
easily settled. For where I understand these writers, it seems to
me not only that nothing can be wiser, but also that nothing can be
more eloquent. And I venture to affirm that all who truly
understand what these writers say, perceive at the same time that
it could not have been properly said in any other way. For as
there is a kind of eloquence that is more becoming in youth, and a
kind that is more becoming in old age, and nothing can be called
eloquence if it be not suitable to the person of the speaker, so
there is a kind of eloquence that is becoming in men who justly
claim the highest authority, and who are evidently inspired of
God. With this eloquence they spoke; no other would have been
suitable for them; and this itself would be unsuitable in any
other, for it is in keeping with their character, while it mounts
as far above that of others (not from empty inflation, but from
solid merit) as it seems to fall below them. Where, however, I do
not understand these writers, though their eloquence is then less
apparent, I have no doubt but that it is of the same kind as that I
do understand. The very obscurity, too, of these divine and
wholesome words was a necessary element in eloquence of a kind that
was designed to profit our understandings, not only by the
discovery of truth, but also by the exercise of their
powers.
10. I could, however, if I had
time, show those men who cry up their own form of language as
superior to that of our authors (not because of its majesty, but
because of its inflation), that all those powers and beauties of
eloquence which they make their boast, are to be found in the
sacred writings which God in His goodness has provided to mould our
characters, and to guide us from this world of wickedness to the
blessed world above. But it is not the qualities which these
writers have in common with the heathen orators and poets that give
me such unspeakable delight in their eloquence; I am more struck
with admiration at the way in which, by an eloquence peculiarly
their own, they so use this eloquence of ours that it is not
conspicuous either by its presence or its absence: for it did not
become them either to condemn it or to make an ostentatious display
of it; and if they had shunned it, they would have done the former; if they had made it prominent, they might have appeared to be doing the latter. And in those passages where the learned do note its presence, the matters spoken of are such, that the words in which they are put seem not so much to be sought out by the speaker as spontaneously to suggest themselves; as if wisdom were walking out of its house,—that is, the breast of the wise man, and eloquence, like an inseparable attendant, followed it without being called for.