Scriptures. God, by His preventing grace, first awakened in bis heart a longing for the truth and for a right understanding of the prophecies, and then sent Philip to help him. The Ethiopian corresponded with grace, by humbly owning that he could not understand what he was reading, by begging Philip to explain it, and by accepting the instruction given him by the teacher whom God had sent to him. And as soon as he understood the necessity of Baptism, he did not postpone indefinitely the receiving of it, but seized the first opportunity that presented itself to be baptized. To him can be applied the words: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice, for they shall have their fill.”
The necessity and properties of grace. “If thou believest with all thy heart thou mayest be baptized (or born again to eternal life)”, replied Philip to the Ethiopian. And our Lord said: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (chapter LXXXIII). Faith is the root and ground of justification (Council of Trent); and he who does not believe cannot be justified or saved. We must, moreover, “believe with all our hearts”; we must grasp the doctrines of faith, not only with the understanding, but also with the heart and will, and shape our lives in accordance with our faith.
The chief Doctrine of Christianity is that of the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. When the Ethiopian declared: “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God”, Philip asked no more, but gave him holy Baptism on the strength of this confession of faith. He who believes in the divinity of our Lord, believes also in the Holy Trinity, and in all that Jesus taught. He especially believes that the Church was founded by Jesus Christ, and that He has sent to her the Spirit of truth.
Holy Scripture and the Infallible Teaching of the Church. The Ethiopian read the Holy Scriptures without prejudice and with a sincere desire to understand them; but he could not glean the truth from them, because there was nobody to expound them to him. The Scriptures are not clear, nor easy for everybody to understand. They form a divine and mysterious book, “in which (as St. Peter says about the Epistles of St. Paul) are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest to their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3, 16). Wherefore St. Augustine says: “From whence arise so many heresies, but because Holy Scripture, which is good in itself, is misunderstood?” But was the interpretation of Holy Scripture which Philip gave to the Ethiopian correct and reliable? Yes! And why was it so? Because Philip interpreted Holy Scripture as the apostles had taught it to him. But why was the interpretation of the apostles infallibly correct? Because they were instructed by the Holy Ghost in the right understanding of the Scriptures, and were by Him preserved from all error. Only the Holy Ghost, under whose inspiration the Holy Scriptures were written, can infallibly interpret their meaning. For that purpose the Holy Ghost was sent to the Church, that He might explain both Scripture and tradition to the faithful, and declare to them the true faith. The Holy
