Gregory IX, 1227-1241

erred concerning the faith" [cf. I Tim. 6:20 f.]. "O foolish and slow of heart in all things" which the protectors of divine grace, namely "the prophets" the evangelists and the apostles "have spoken" [cf. Luke 24:25], since nature in itself cannot (work) anything for salvation unless it is helped by grace [see n. 105, 138]. Let presumers of this kind speak, who embracing the doctrine of natural things offer the leaves and not the fruit of words to their hearers, whose minds as if fed with husks remain empty and vacant; and their soul cannot be "delighted in fatness" [Isa. 55:2], because thirsty and dry it cannot drink "from the waters of Siloe running with silence" [cf. Isa. 8:6] but rather from those which are drawn from the philosophical torrents, of which it is said: "The more they are drunk, the more the waters are thirsted for, because they do not bring satiety, but rather anxiety and labor. And while by extorted, nay rather distorted, expositions they turn the sacred words divinely inspired to the sense of the doctrine of philosophers who are ignorant of God, "do they not place the ark of the covenant by Dagon" [I Kings 5:2], and set up the image of Antiochus to be adored in the temple of the Lord? And while they try to add to faith by natural reason more than they ought, do they not render it in a certain way useless and empty since "faith does not have merit for one to whom human reason furnishes proof?"¹ Finally, nature believes what is understood, but faith by its freely given power comprehends what is believed by the intelligence, and bold and daring it penetrates where natural intellect is not able to reach. Will such followers of the things of nature, in whose eyes grace seems to be proscribed, say that "the Word which was in the beginning with God, was made flesh, and dwelt in us" [John 1] is of grace or of nature? As for the rest, God forbid that a "most beautiful woman" [Cant. 5:9], with "eyes painted with stiblic" [IV Kings 9:30] by presumers, be adorned with false colors, and that she who "girded with clothes" [Ps. 44:10] and "adorned with jewels" [Isa. 61:10] proceeds splendid as a queen, be clothed with stitched semi-girdles of philosophers, sordid apparel. God forbid that "cows ill favored" and consumed with leanness, which "give no mark of being full would devour the beautiful" [Gen. 41:18 ff.] and consume the fat.

443. Therefore, lest a rash and perverse dogma of this kind "as a canker spreads" [II Tim. 2:17], and infects many and makes it necessary that "Rachel bewail her lost sons" [Jer. 31:15], we order and strictly command by the authority of those present that, entirely forsaking the poison mentioned above, without the leaven of worldly knowledge, that you teach theological purity, not "adulterating the word of God" [II Cor. 2:17] by the creations of philosophers, lest around the altar of God you seem to wish to plant a grove contrary to the teaching of the Lord, and