By the aid of books
we remember things that are past, and even prophesy as to the
future; and things present, which shift and flow, we perpetuate
by committing them to writing.
The felicitous studiousness and the studious felicity of the
all-powerful eunuch, of whom we are told in the Acts, who had
been so mightily kindled by the love of the prophetic writings
that he ceased not from his reading by reason of his journey, had
banished all thought of the populous palace of Queen Candace, and
had forgotten even the treasures of which he was the keeper, and
had neglected alike his journey and the chariot in which he rode.
Love of his book alone had wholly engrossed this domicile of
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.
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