Textus Magistri
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/1/d/0/q/bon-sent-I-littera
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### THE MASTER'S PROLOGUE
#### *TO THE BOOKS OF SENTENCES*

Desiring to cast something out of our own poverty and slenderness, together with the poor widow, into the Lord's treasury, to climb steep places, we have presumed to undertake a work beyond our strength, placing the confidence of its completion and the wage of our labour in the Samaritan, who, when two denarii had been brought out for the healing of the half-dead man, promised to repay in full whatever should be spent beyond them. The truth of him who promises delights us, but the immensity of the labour affrights us: the desire of making progress exhorts us, but the weakness of falling short dissuades us — a weakness which zeal for the house of God overcomes. «Burning with which, we have striven to fortify our faith against the errors of carnal and animal men» with the shields of the tower of David, or rather to show it already fortified, and to open the hidden things of theological inquiries, and likewise to hand on a knowledge of the sacraments of the Church according to the little measure of our understanding, «not being able rightly to resist the desires of studious brethren, who demand that we serve their praiseworthy studies in Christ with tongue and pen, which two horses the charity of Christ drives in us».

«Although we do not doubt that every discourse of human speech has always been liable to the calumny and contradiction of rivals, since, when the motions of wills disagree, the sense of minds also comes to disagree», «so that, although every saying is perfect by the account of truth, yet, while one thing seems or pleases to some and another to others, the error of impiety strives against a truth either not understood or giving offence, and the envy of the will rebounds», «which *the god of this world works* in those *sons of diffidence*, who do not subject their will to reason nor spend study upon doctrine, but strive to fit the words of wisdom to the things they have dreamed, following the account not of the true but of the pleasing, whom an iniquitous will incites not to the understanding

of truth, but to the defence of the things that please them, not desiring to be taught the truth, but *turning their hearing away from it to fables*. Their profession is to seek out what pleases rather than what is to be taught, and not to desire the things to be taught, but to fit doctrine to the things desired. *They have an account of wisdom in superstition*: because a lying hypocrisy follows upon the failure of faith, so that there may be at least in words the piety which conscience has lost; and that very simulated piety they render impious by every mendacity of words, contriving to corrupt the sanctity of faith by the institutes of false doctrine, and thrusting upon others an itching of the ears under the new-fangled dogma of their own desire — men who, being zealous for contention, war against the truth without a treaty». «For between the assertion of the true and the defence of the pleasing there is a stubborn battle, so long as both truth holds its own and the will guards its error». Wishing therefore both to overturn the church of these men, hateful to God, and to stop their mouths, lest they be able to pour out the poison of their wickedness upon others, and to lift up the lamp of truth upon the lampstand, we have with much toil and sweat, God granting it, put together this volume out of the testimonies of truth founded unto eternity, divided into four books.

In it you will find the examples and the teaching of our forebears; in it, through a sincere profession of the Lord's faith, we have exposed the fraudulence of viperine doctrine, having embraced the approach of demonstrating the truth, yet not entangled in the peril of impious profession, using a moderation tempered between the two. But if anywhere our own voice has sounded too little, it has not departed from the paternal boundaries. «This labour, then, ought not to seem superfluous to anyone lazy or very learned, since it is necessary to many who are not lazy and to many unlearned, among whom I too am» — gathering into a short volume the sentences of the Fathers, with their testimonies set alongside, so that it need not be necessary for one who seeks to unroll a multitude of books, since the brevity here collected offers without labour what is sought. «But in this treatise I desire not only a devout reader, but also a free corrector, especially where a deep question of truth is handled, which — would that it had as many discoverers as it has contradictors». And that what is sought may come to hand the more easily, we have prefixed the titles by which the chapters of the several books are distinguished.

Here ends the prologue.

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