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| Of the Method in Which Grammarians and Professional Speakers are to Be Dealt with.
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Chapter 9.—Of
the Method in Which Grammarians and Professional Speakers are to Be
Dealt with.
13. There are also some who come
from the commonest schools of the grammarians and professional
speakers, whom you may not venture to reckon either among the
uneducated or among those very learned classes whose minds have
been exercised in questions of real magnitude. When such persons,
therefore, who appear to be superior to the rest of mankind, so far
as the art of speaking is concerned, approach you with the view of
becoming Christians, it will be your duty in your communications
with them, in a higher degree than in your dealings with those
other illiterate hearers, to make it plain that they are to be
diligently admonished to clothe themselves with Christian humility,
and learn not to despise individuals whom they may discover keeping
themselves free from vices of conduct more carefully than from
faults of language; and also that they ought not to presume so much
as to compare with a pure heart the practised tongue which they
were accustomed even to put in preference. But above all, such
persons should be taught to listen to the divine Scriptures, so
that they may neither deem solid eloquence to be mean, merely
because it is not inflated, nor suppose that the words or
deeds of men, of which we read the accounts in those books,
involved and covered as they are in carnal wrappings,1388
| 1388 Carnalibus integumentis
involuta atque operta | are not to
be drawn forth and unfolded with a view to an (adequate)
understanding of them, but are to be taken merely according to the
sound of the letter. And as to this same matter of the utility of
the hidden meaning, the existence of which is the reason why they
are called also mysteries, the power wielded by these intricacies
of enigmatical utterances in the way of sharpening our love for the
truth, and shaking off the torpor of weariness, is a thing which
the persons in question must have made good to them by actual
experience, when some subject which failed to move them when it was
placed baldly before them, has its significance elicited by the
detailed working out of an allegorical sense. For it is in the
highest degree useful to such men to come to know how ideas are to
be preferred to words, just as the soul is preferred to the body.
And from this, too, it follows that they ought to have the desire
to listen to discourses remarkable for their truth, rather than to
those which are notable for their eloquence; just as they ought to
be anxious to have friends distinguished for their wisdom, rather
than those whose chief merit is their beauty. They should also
understand that there is no voice for the ears of God save the
affection of the soul. For thus they will not act the mocker if
they happen to observe any of the prelates and ministers of the
Church either calling upon God in language marked by barbarisms and
solecisms, or failing in understanding correctly the very words
which they are pronouncing, and making confused pauses.1389
| 1389 Or = confusing the sense by false
pauses: perturbateque distinguere. | It is not
meant, of course, that such faults are not to be corrected, so that
the people may say “Amen” to something which they plainly
understand; but what is intended is, that such things should be
piously borne with by those who have come to understand how, as in
the forum it is in the sound, so in the church it is in the desire
that the grace of speech resides.1390
| 1390 Ut sono in foro, sic voto in
ecclesia benedici | Therefore that of the forum may
sometimes be called good speech, but never gracious speech.1391
| 1391 Bona dictio, nunquam tamen
benedictio | Moreover,
with respect to the sacrament which they are about to receive, it
is enough for the more intelligent simply to hear what the thing
signifies. But with those of slower intellect, it will be necessary
to adopt a somewhat more detailed explanation, together with the
use of similitudes, to prevent them from despising what they
see.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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