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| Recapitulation.
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Chapter I.—Recapitulation.
After we have, not with violence, burst through
the labyrinth1034
| 1034 [This
word is an index of authenticity. See on the “Little
Labyrinth,” Bunsen, i. p. 243, and Wordsworth, pp. 100, 161, and
his references to Routh, Lardner, etc.] | of heresies, but
have unravelled (their intricacies) through a refutation merely, or, in
other words, by the force of truth, we approach the demonstration of
the truth itself. For then the artificial sophisms of
error will be exposed in all their inconsistency, when we shall succeed
in establishing whence it is that the definition of the truth has
been derived. The truth has not taken its principles from the
wisdom of the Greeks, nor borrowed its doctrines, as secret mysteries,
from the tenets of the Egyptians, which, albeit silly, are regarded
amongst them with religious veneration as worthy of reliance. Nor
has it been formed out of the fallacies which enunciate the incoherent
(conclusions arrived at through the) curiosity of the Chaldeans.
Nor does the truth owe its existence to astonishment, through the
operations of demons, for the irrational frenzy of the
Babylonians. But its definition is constituted after the
manner in which every true definition is, viz., as simple and
unadorned. A definition such as this, provided it is made
manifest, will of itself refute error. And although we
have very frequently propounded demonstrations, and with sufficient
fulness elucidated for those willing (to learn) the rule of the truth;
yet even now, after having discussed all the opinions put forward by
the Greeks and heretics, we have decided it not to be, at all events,
unreasonable to introduce, as a sort of finishing stroke to the (nine)
books preceding, this demonstration throughout the tenth
book.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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