chastity, under whose guidance he soon deserved to enter the gate
of faith. O gracious love of books, which by the grace of
baptism transformed the child of Gehenna and nursling of Tartarus
into a Son of the Kingdom!

Let the feeble pen now cease from the tenor of an infinite task,
lest it seem foolishly to undertake what in the beginning it
confessed to be impossible to any.


CHAPTER XVI

THAT IT IS MERITORIOUS TO WRITE NEW BOOKS AND TO RENEW THE OLD

Just as it is necessary for the state to prepare arms and to
provide abundant stores of victuals for the soldiers who are to
fight for it, so it is fitting for the Church Militant to fortify
itself against the assaults of pagans and heretics with a
multitude of sound writings.

But because all the appliances of mortal men with the lapse of
time suffer the decay of mortality, it is needful to replace the
volumes that are worn out with age by fresh successors, that the
perpetuity of which the individual is by its nature incapable may
be secured to the species; and hence it is that the Preacher
says: Of making many books there is no end. For as the bodies of
books, seeing that they are formed of a combination of contrary
elements, undergo a continual dissolution of their structure, so
by the forethought of the clergy a remedy should be found, by
means of which the sacred book paying the debt of nature may