g if they see any
danger of their ignorance on any point coming to light. But I am
confident that here, too, all will go well as soon as the knowledge of
the three languages [Greek, Latin and Hebrew] becomes accepted publicly
in the schools, as it has begun to be.... The humblest share in this
work has fallen on me, as is fitting; I know not whether I have
contributed anything of value; at all events I have infuriated those who
do not want the world to come to its senses, so that it seems as if my
poor efforts also have not been ineffective: although I have not
undertaken the work in the belief that, I could teach anything
magnificent, but I wanted to open a road for others, destined to attempt
greater things, that they might with greater ease ascend the shining
heights without running into so many rough and quaggy places. Yet this
humble diligence of mine is not disdained by the honest and learned, and
none complain of it but a few so stupid that they are hissed off the
stage by even ordinary persons of any intelligence. Here not long ago
someone complained tearfully before the people, in a sermon of course,
that it was all over with the Scriptures and the theologians who had
hitherto upheld the Christian faith on their shoulders, now that men had
arisen to emend the Holy Gospel and the very words of Our Lord: just as
if I was rebuking Matthew or Luke instead of those whose ignorance or
negligence had corrupted what they wrote correctly. In England one or
two persons complain loudly that it is a shameful thing that _I_ should
dare to teach a great man like St. Jerome: as if I had changed what St.
Jerome wrote, instead of restoring it!

Yet those who snarl out suchlike dirges, which any laundryman with a
little sense would scoff at, think themselves great theologians ... Not
that I want the kind of theology which is customary in the schools
nowadays consigned to oblivion; I wish it to be rendered more
trustworthy and more correct by the accession of the old, true learning.
It will not weaken the authority of the Scriptures or theologians if
certain passages hitherto considered corrupt are henceforth read in an
emended form, or if passages are more correctly understood on which up
till now the mass of theologians have entertained delusions: no, it will
give greater weight to their authority, the more genuine their
understanding of the Scriptures. I have sustained the shock of the first
meeting, which Terence calls the sh