Canto XXIV

As baccalaureate arms himself, and speaks not Until the master doth propose the question, To argue it, and not to terminate it, So did I arm myself with every reason, While she was speaking, that I might be ready For such a questioner and such profession. “Say, thou good Christian; manifest thyself; What is the Faith?” Whereat I raised my brow Unto that light wherefrom was this breathed forth. Then turned I round to Beatrice, and she Prompt signals made to me that I should pour The water forth from my internal fountain. “May grace, that suffers me to make confession,” Began I, “to the great centurion, Cause my conceptions all to be explicit!” And I continued: “As the truthful pen, Father, of thy dear brother wrote of it, Who put with thee Rome into the good way, Faith is the substance of the things we hope for, And evidence of those that are not seen; And this appears to me its quiddity.” Then heard I: “Very rightly thou perceivest, If well thou understandest why he placed it With substances and then with evidences.” And I thereafterward: “The things profound, That here vouchsafe to me their apparition, Unto all eyes below are so concealed, That they exist there only in belief, Upon the which is founded the high hope, And hence it takes the nature of a substance. And it behoveth us from this belief To reason without having other sight, And hence it has the nature of evidence.” Then heard I: “If whatever is acquired Below by doctrine were thus understood, No sophist’s subtlety would there find place.” Thus was breathed forth from that enkindled love; Then added: “Very well has been gone over Already of this coin the alloy and weight; But tell me if thou hast it in thy purse?” And I: “Yes, both so shining and so round That in its stamp there is no peradventure.” Thereafter issued from the light profound That there resplendent was: “This precious jewel, Upon the which is every virtue founded, Whence hadst thou it?” And I: “The large outpouring Of Holy Spirit, which has been diffused Upon the ancient parchments and the new, A syllogism is, which proved it to me With such acuteness, that, compared therewith, All demonstration seems to me obtuse.” And then I heard: “The ancient and the new Postulates,