BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

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chapter 14
What faith is, who the faithful are, the foundations
of faith de¢ned, and faith de¢nitively
distinguished from philosophy
[1] For a true knowledge of faith it is above all necessary to acknowledge
that the Bible is adapted to the understanding not only of the prophets but
also of the ¢ckle and capricious common people among the Jews. No one
who studies this point even casually can miss this. Anyone who accepts
everything in Scripture indi¡erently as God’s universal and absolute doctrine
and cannot correctly identify what is adapted to the notions of the
common people, will be incapable of separating their opinions from divine
doctrine. He will put forward human beliefs and fabrications as God’s
teaching and thereby abuse the authority of the Bible. Who does not see
that this is the principal reason why sectaries teach so many mutually
contradictory beliefs as doctrines of faith, and support them with many
examples from Scripture, so much so that the Dutch long ago produced a
saying about it: ‘every heretic has his text’ For the sacred books were not
written by one man alone, nor for the common people of a single period,
but by a large number of men, of di¡erent temperaments and at di¡erent
times, and ifwe calculate the period from the earliest to the latest, it will be
found to be around two thousand years and possibly much longer.
We do not mean to charge these sectarians with impiety for adapting
the words of the Bible to their own beliefs. Just as it was once adapted to
the understanding of the common people, so also anyone may adapt it to
his own beliefs if he sees that in this way he can obey God with fuller
mental assent in matters concerning justice and charity. We do accuse
them, however, of refusing to grant the same liberty to others. They
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