1. Sacred Scripture is a mirror. — Sacred Scripture is set before the eyes of the mind as it were a kind of mirror, that our inward face may be seen in it. For therein we come to know our foul things, therein our fair things. Therein we perceive how far we advance, therein how far we are distant from progress. It narrates, moreover, the deeds of the saints, and rouses the hearts of the weak to imitation. And while it commemorates their victorious deeds, against the battles of the vices it strengthens our feeble ones; and it comes to pass by its words that the mind trembles the less amid the conflicts, the more it beholds the triumphs of so many valiant men set before it. Sometimes indeed it not only sets forth to us their virtues, but also makes known their falls;
that both in the victory of the strong we may see what to lay hold of by imitating, and again in their lapses may see what we ought to fear. For behold, Job is described as increased by temptation, but David as laid low by temptation; that both the virtue of our elders may cherish our hope, and the fall of our elders may gird us to the caution of humility; so that, while the former, rejoicing, lift us up, the latter, fearing, press us down; and the mind of the hearer, instructed on the one side by the confidence of hope, on the other by the humility of fear, may neither grow proud through rashness, because it is pressed down by dread, nor, pressed by fear, despair, because it is strengthened unto the confidence of hope by the example of virtue.