Note 232 — Chapter XIV

The image is taken from St. Gregory, who compares secular letters to the smiths’ tools which were to be found in the hands, not of the Israelites, but of the Philistines. Nevertheless, he says, as the Israelites went down to the Philistines and borrowed their tools to sharpen their own instruments, so Christians may and ought to use the liberal arts in order to explain and defend the truths of religion. And those who seek to prohibit the faithful from the study of the liberal sciences are like the Philistines who did not suffer the children of Israel to have smiths among them, “lest they should make them swords or spears.” (S. Greg. in 1 Reg. lib. v. c. iii. No. 30.)