 Shaftesbury’s point is not that scripture should be ignored (although see Stuart-Buttle 2019: 93). It is that any use anyone ever makes of scripture will necessarily involve “his own Discernment, and Understanding”—either one’s own judgment of which text to privilege and how best to interpret it, or one’s own judgment that somebody else’s judgment about those things is best (C 3.72). Shaftesbury maintains, as well, that the best interpretations will be those that are deeply informed by extra-scriptural knowledge of the history, tradition, and language—“collateral Testimony of other antient Records, Historians, and foreign Authors”—of the times in which scriptural texts were first composed and complied (C 3.236). To truly understand scripture, we must approach it the way we would approach any other ancient text. The result will be