To the most reverend and illustrious Prince and Lord, Lord Johann Schweikhard, elected Archbishop of the holy see of Mainz, Archchancellor throughout Germany of the Holy Roman Empire, Prince-Elector, etc., his most gracious lord.
Those who have departed from the Church of God are accustomed, most reverend and illustrious Prince and Lord, to carp at and tear apart everything in Catholics, even the smallest matters, things plainly grammatical and childish. For they think that, if they can seem more learned in small matters, they will be regarded as more learned in great ones too.
And if Catholics are thought to err in grammar, those same men must also be condemned for error in theology.
Thus a heretical man of letters once reproached the great Doctor of the Church, St. Augustine, because, contrary to the inflections of the Latin language, he said “Donatists” rather than “Donatians”; and because, in a single little word, he used the comparative degree in place of the positive.
Such men are, in truth, very like that pampered youth who, as Cicero writes, found an oarlock while walking on the shore and for that reason wanted to build a ship. For as one oarlock is to the building of a great ship, so is a little expertise in one or another word to the knowledge of the greatest and divine matters.
Again, those who criticize such things in great matters are like, says St. Augustine…
[margin: Augustine, Contra Cresconium, bk. 2, ch. 1; bk. 3, ch. 72; bk. 4, ch. 55. Cicero, De claris oratoribus. Augustine, Contra Faustum, bk. 22, ch. 24.]
…unskilled schoolboys who, when they have learned as some great thing that a singular noun must receive a singular verb, criticize the most learned author of the Latin tongue because he wrote, Pars in frusta secant. “He ought,” they say, “to have said secat.” And because they know that one says religio, they blame him because he wrote Relligione patrum.
Similarly in our own time, how many things have ecclesiastical writers written well, gravely, and learnedly, which certain petty grammarians, imbued with new opinions, mock with great haughtiness and boldness, and with no less rashness and ignorance? I have already noted somewhere those who reject Iesus Salvator and want only Servator; who sing not Agnus Dei, but only Agne Dei.
[margin: Aeneid 1. Aeneid 2. Ser., bk. 1, de Ios. [abbrev. uncertain]. De Litaniis, no. 44.]
Recently, moreover, men have come forth from Frisia and Holland who are displeased with those who in the sacred Scriptures are called Asidaeans, and in the ancient Fathers Essenes; and they altogether command and order that, both in speech and in writing, they be called Hasidaeans or Aschidaeans, and Hesseni or Hessaei.
These men, certainly, since in a slight labor the glory of Christ is slight too, might seem fit to be neglected, were it not in their own and others’ interest that their arrogance be checked. “Grammarians,” says the same St. Augustine quoted before, “must be carefully admonished that, clothed with Christian humility, they learn not to despise those whom they have found to avoid faults of morals more than faults of words.”
For nothing is worse, says Quintilian, than those who, having advanced only a little beyond the first letters…
[margin: 1 Macc. 2:42; 7:13; 2 Macc. 14:6. Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus, ch. 9. Quintilian, Institutio, bk. 1, c. 10.]
…have clothed themselves in a false persuasion of knowledge. For they even disdain to believe those skilled in the matter when they give instruction; and, as if by some right of authority, by which this sort of person generally swells up, they become domineering and, at times raging, teach their own folly thoroughly.
Therefore it matters, as I said, that they be publicly reproved for the sake of others as well: lest, from trifles of that sort, half-lettered men gather among themselves an excessive opinion of superior learning, and be thought to know some great thing in religion and theology too, and not wrongly or undeservedly to despise and mock the Church and the ancient Fathers.
And for this reason that most serious and most holy Doctor, Blessed Augustine, did not disdain to answer the grammarian Cresconius carefully and learnedly concerning the inflection of the name “Donatists” and concerning the degrees of comparison.
[margin: In the places cited.]
To imitate him in some measure, I have set this dissertation of mine on the Jewish sects against Johannes Drusius, who is treating of the Hasidaeans, especially since weighty matters, not unworthy to be inquired into and known, entered into that dispute, as the attached synopsis of chapters indicates; and since he is already being called by his own people:
The phoenix and sun of learned men, who opens hidden things and brings forth what lies concealed, and sees things seen by no one. What before had been things seen by no one, he offers to all to be seen.
But as for this, whatever little work of mine it is, the reasons that made me dedicate it to Your Highness, most reverend and illustrious Prelate, were partly those very reasons which seven days ago, when on the day after…
[margin: In his own book of Hebrew Questions.]
…on the day after your happy election to that most ample dignity, when I congratulated you in our church, both in my own name and in the name of all my colleagues; and partly also other reasons, among which is that solemn oath which your citizens of Mainz today render to Your Highness as a pledge of their faith and obedience.
For I too was eager to offer to that same Your Highness the duty and due observance of myself and of my companions, and, through these little books as through forerunners, to promise you five others, which I recently gathered on Mainz affairs down to the death of your most reverend and illustrious predecessor, Johann Adam, of pious memory, a truly pious and Christian man.
Finally, I also wished to indicate this: nearly sixty years ago, on the very night that followed the day appointed for Your auspicious election, Luther…
[margin: Year 1546; 18 February.]
…after dining splendidly and eating his fill, was taken from here by a sudden and unforeseen death, by divine agency; so that it may seem an omen that, in the souls of all the sheep entrusted by the supreme Shepherd, Christ Jesus, to Your pastoral care, he will henceforth die out through you.
To this matter I apply what that holy Father and Doctor of mine named above once wrote to the Bishop of Carthage: “So far as we are able, we devote ourselves to prayers, that the Lord may deign to sustain with you the flock entrusted to you, and never abandon you anywhere, but be present as your helper in times of need, showing mercy to his Church through Your priesthood; such mercy as spiritual men beseech him with tears and groans to show.”
Mainz, from Your Archiepiscopal College of the Society of Jesus…
[margin: Lib. 2 de Lutheri Magistro, ch. 9. 1 Pet. 5:4. Augustine, Epistle 64.]
…on the day after the Chair of St. Peter at Antioch, in the year of the Lord 1604.
Of Your most reverend and illustrious Highness,
the most unworthy servant,
Nic. Serarius.