bless the soul, then the glory of the Holy Spirit appears; for it was He who first granted the
particular grace of Scripture, and then also that of faith.
This is the reason why the arguments for the truth of the Scripture never avail anything.
419A person endowed with faith gradually will accept Scripture; if not so endowed he will
never accept it, tho he should be flooded with apologetics. Surely it is our duty to assist
seeking souls, to explain or remove difficulties, sometimes even to silence a mocker; but to
make an unbeliever have faith in Scripture is utterly beyond man’s power.
Faith and Scripture belong together; the Holy Spirit intended the one for the other. The
latter is so arranged as to be accepted by the sinner endowed with faith. And faith is a dis-
position, completely reconciling the consciousness and the Scripture. Hence the “testimonium
Spiritus Sancti” should be taken, not in the rationalistic or Ethical sense of being the operation
upon a certain universal disposition, but as a real testimony of the Holy Spirit, who dwells
in the consciousness, and gives us to experience the adaptation—like that of the eye to col-
or—of Scripture to faith.
XL. Faith in the Saved Sinner Alone