Preface and Catalogue of the Heresies

(printed p. 575)

Of Friar Sixtus of Siena, of the Order of Preachers: On those who have assailed the volumes of the New Testament, or, Against the destroyers of the new Scripture (De his, qui novi Testamenti volumina oppugnarunt, sive adversus novae scripturae destructores) — the Seventh Book of the Bibliotheca Sancta

PRAEFATIO [Preface]

Since in the foregoing books I have set in order the labors and all the monuments whereby the illustrious writers of the Church have illustrated the holy letters of the blessed Scripture, it has seemed good, in the two books that follow, to confute the errors and heresies brought forth by those who, from the ascension of Christ even unto this day, have attempted to obscure the glory of the sacred volumes, and — God’s grace favoring — to overthrow their impious endeavors against the holy writings. But since I perceived that my own exceedingly slender powers were far unequal to the labor marked out, I judged it best to approach the matter not with my own defenses, but with greater and far stronger ones. Accordingly, out of the various writings of the ancient fathers of the Church I first gathered the accusations, argumentations, and fallacious objections with which sundry heretics, in divers ages, have hostilely assailed the divine books of both Testaments; and then, to each several objection of the heretics, I subjoined the responses, solutions, and confutations of the fathers. And in collecting these I have, wherever I could and so far as I could, amassed the authors’ very words, sayings, and entire sentences and periods with the utmost fidelity and integrity — setting down, either within the body of the text or without, in the margins over against each sentence, not only the authors’ names but also the titles of their books, citing the chapters by number: so that whatever was taken from any author’s work, and from what place, might be denoted the more clearly, and as it were with a pointing finger. In those matters, however, whose confutations I could not find in the monuments of the ecclesiastical fathers, I have attempted, out of my slender poverty, to supply some things as best I might. And that each matter might be the more lucid and perspicuous, I have undertaken in the first place the defense of the New Testament in this seventh volume, purposely reserving the apology for the Old Instrument to the eighth volume. For although the writings of the New Instrument are, in the succession of time and in the order of things done, later than the Old Instrument, I have nevertheless judged that the beginning should be made from them, as from those which, in order of doctrine, in the constancy of their demonstrations, and in the excellence of their subject narration, far precede all the books of the Old Testament.

Now in refuting each several heresy I shall follow chiefly this order: first, I shall set forth, as briefly as may be, the depraved and pernicious assertions of the heretics, with the names of their assertors indicated; then, bringing to bear, on behalf of the Catholic truth, the reasonings of the ancient fathers, together with those testimonies of divine Scripture which the heretics themselves accept as certain and undoubted, I shall overturn the assertions they propose from their very foundations, as the saying is; in the third place, I shall bring forward the crafty arguments of the heretics according to a numbered series; lastly, repeating the same sequence of numbers, I shall dissolve their argumentations and, God favoring, lay prostrate all their assaults. These things therefore being thus disposed, and duly, as I judge, made ready, it remains that, divine grace assisting, I descend into the field and begin to join battle with the impious destroyers of the New Testament.

CATALOGUE OF THE HERESIES which are confuted in this seventh book (Haereseon, quae hoc septimo libro confutantur, Catalogus)

(printed p. 576)