Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/302

296 subjects, and whose chief purpose in all this is to find mis- takes in the sacred writings and so to shake and weaken their authority. Some of these writers Display not only extreme hostility but the greatest unfairness; in their eyes a profane book or ancient document is accepted without hesitation, whilst the Scripture, if they only find in it a suspicion of error, is set down with the slightest possible discussion as quite untrustworthy. It is true, no doubt, that copyists have made mistakes in the text of the Bible; this question, when it arises, should be carefully considered on its merits, and the fact not too easily admitted, but only in those passages where the proof is clear. It may also happen that the sense of a passage remains ambiguous, and in this case good hermeneutical methods will greatly assist in clearing up the obscurity. But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of those difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind when saying it— this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical are written holly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being; possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration,that inspiration not only is essentialy incompatible with error but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossi- ble that God Himself, the Supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solenmly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican. These are the words of the last: "The books of the Old and New