BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

chapter 7 97
On the interpretation of Scripture
[1] All men are ready to say that Holy Scripture is the word of God that
teaches us true happiness or the way of salvation, but their actions betray
a quite di¡erent opinion. For the common people, the last thing that
they appear to want is to live by the teaching of Scripture. We see them
advancing false notions of their own as the word of God and seeking to
use the in£uence of religion to compel other people to agree with them.
As for theologians, we see that for the most part they have sought to
extract their own thoughts and opinions from the Bible and thereby
endow them with divine authority. There is nothing that they interpret
with less hesitation and greater boldness than the Scriptures, that is the
mind of the Holy Spirit. If they hesitate at all, it is not because they are
afraid of ascribing error to the Holy Spirit or straying from the path of
salvation, but rather of being convicted of error by others and seeing
themselves despised and their authority trodden underfoot.
If people truly believed in their hearts what they say with their lips
about Scripture, they would follow a completely di¡erent way of life.
There would be fewer di¡erences of opinion occupying their minds,
fewer bitter controversies between them, and less blind and reckless
ambition to distort our interpretation of the Bible and devise novelties in
religion. On the contrary, they would not dare to accept anything as
biblical teaching which they had not derived from it in the clearest possible
way. Sacrilegious persons, who have not been afraid to corrupt the
Scriptures in so many places, would have been careful to avoid committing
such a dreadful o¡ence and kept their impious hands o¡ them. But
vice and ambition have in the end exercised so much in£uence that religion
has been made to consist in defending purely human delusions
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