Question II continued: reasons II–III; seven points on salutary understanding
II. What converts, sanctifies, and saves us apprehends our soul, draws it, and possesses it. But Scripture on outward tablets without the Holy Spirit's cooperation neither apprehends nor draws nor possesses our soul. Therefore Scripture without the Holy Spirit's cooperation does not convert, sanctify, and save souls.
III. Those who assert the contrary seem to understand little: (1) how salutary understanding comes about; (2) what the requisites are, given which salutary understanding is given, and denied which it is denied; (3) what that intelligible idea is in which the thing to be understood is intimately represented to the intellect; (4) that the thing to be understood and the intellect become one in knowing; (5) that whatever consists in the mind is spiritual and abstracted from every bodily mass and letter; (6) how all these things are at last comprehended in a certain point as in the mind's eye; (7) that faith, hope, love, and that whole chorus of virtues lie hidden implicitly in that spiritual seed — more penetrating than any two-edged sword — as a great oak in an acorn, are preserved, and by a prolific spiritual power, the Lord's Spirit breathing, unfold their branches in the inward and outward man, so that the whole kingdom of God is within us, which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17).
Latin
II. Quod nos convertit, sanctificat & salvat, id animam nostram apprehendit, trahit, eamque possidet. Atqui Scriptura in externis tabulis sine Spiritus sancti cooperatione animam nostram neque apprehendit neque trahit neque possidet. Ergo Scriptura sine Spiritus sancti cooperatione animas non convertit, sanctificat & salvat. III. Qui contrarium afferunt, parum intelligere videntur, 1. Quomodo fiat intellectio salutaris. 2. Quanam sint requisita, quibus positis intellectio salutaris ponitur, & quibus negatis, illa negatur. 3. Quanam sit idea illa intelligibilis, in qua res intelligenda intime intellectui repraesentatur. 4. Quod res intelligenda & intellectus in cognoscendo fiant unum. 5. Quod quaecunque in mente consistunt, spiritualia sint, & ab omni corporea mole & litera abstracta. 6. Quomodo haec omnia in puncto quodam tanquam oculo mentis tandem comprehendantur. 7. Quod fides, spes, charitas, & totus ille virtutum chorus, implicite in semine illo spirituali, quovis gladio ancipiti penetrantiori, veluti in glande magna quercus, lateat, conservetur, perque vim spiritualem prolificam afflante spiritu Domini, ramos suos in interiori & exteriori homine explicet, ut totum regnum Dei intra nos sit, quod est justitia, pax et gaudium in Spiritu sancto, Rom. 14.17.