Didascalicon, Book VI: how Scripture is to be read
Chapter XI. On the sentence
The divine sentence can never be absurd, never false; but whereas in the sense, as has been said, many contraries are found, the sentence admits no contradiction, is always congruous, always true. Sometimes of one statement there is one sentence, sometimes of one statement there are several sentences, sometimes of several statements there is one sentence, sometimes of several statements several sentences. When, therefore, we read the divine books, in so great a multitude of ancient understandings, which are drawn out of few words and are fortified by the soundness of the Catholic faith, let us choose above all that which shall appear certain to have been the meaning of him whom we read. If this is hidden, then surely that which the circumstance of the writing does not hinder and which agrees with sound faith. But if even the circumstance of the writing cannot be examined and discussed, at least that alone which sound faith prescribes. For it is one thing not to discern what the writer chiefly meant, and another to err from the rule of piety. If both are avoided, the fruit of the reader is perfect. But if both cannot be avoided, even if the will of the writer is uncertain, it is not useless to have drawn out a sentence consistent with sound faith. Likewise in obscure matters, and those most remote from our eyes, if we read anything written there, even divine, which can, with faith unharmed, yield to one sentence and another, let us not so cast ourselves upon any of them by precipitate affirmation that, if perhaps the truth, more diligently discussed, shakes it, we fall; contending not for the sentence of the divine Scriptures but for our own, so that we wish that to be of the Scriptures which is ours, whereas we ought rather to wish that which is of the Scriptures to be ours.