ii THE BIBLE'S TEACHING 299 



Therefore they do not threaten punishment or promise 

 reward for good or evil that results in them y but for 

 that committed on peoples and in the human societies 

 which they foster by their divine laws and statutes, since 

 human laws do not suffice. The gods do not seek the 

 reverence, fear, love, worship, or respect of men, for 

 any other end or utility than that of men themselves. 

 Glory cannot be added to the gods from without ; they 

 have made their laws not to receive glory but to 

 communicate glory to men. The sole sphere of justice 

 is the moral actions of men with regard to other men ; 

 inward sins are sins only so far as they have outward 

 effect, and inward justice is not justice without out- 

 ward practice. 1 In the Cena Bruno had already made 

 practical use of this principle in maintaining that the 

 Scriptures teach not science, but an ideal of conduct, n e ot Bible > 

 and therefore that any argument from them as to the science but 

 actual constitution of the world is devoid of com- 

 pelling force, while, on the other side, no scientific 

 theory or hypothesis can be ruled out simply because 

 it is contradicted by any statement in the Scriptures. 

 They were written, not in the service of our intellect 

 to instruct us in philosophy, but for the grace of our 

 mind and heart, ordaining by their laws what should be 

 our behaviour in the moral life. The Scriptures were 

 written in the language and adapted to the intelligence 

 of the vulgar, the people of the time. U A historian 

 making use of words which the ordinary man could 

 not understand, would be absurd ; and still more so 

 would be one who desired to give to a whole people a 

 law and model of life, if he were to employ terms 

 which he alone or very few could understand, and 

 should waste time over matters indifferent to the end 



1 Lag. 463. 464. 



