ut I must decrease."
[John 3:30] In this way every one may drink for himself from the
fresh spring, as all the Fathers have had to do when they wished
to produce anything worth while. Neither Fathers nor Councils nor
we ourselves will do so well, even when our very best is done, as
the Holy Scriptures have done; that is to say, we shall never do
so well as God Himself. Even though for our salvation we need to
have the Holy Spirit and faith and divine language and divine
works, nevertheless we must let the Prophets and Apostles sit at
the desk, while we sit at their feet and listen to what they say.
It is not for us to say what they must hear.

Since, however, I cannot prevent it, and, without my wish, they
are now bent on collecting and printing my books--small honor to
me--I shall have to let them put their energy and labor on the
venture. I comfort myself with the thought that my books will yet
be forgotten in the dust, especially when, by God's grace, I have
written something good. _Non ero melior patribus meis_.[4][1
Kings 19:4] The other kind will be more likely to endure. For
when the Bible can be left lying under the bench, and when it is
true of the Fathers and Councils that the better they were, the
more completely they have been forgotten; there is good hope
that, when the curiosity of this age has been satisfied, my books
too will not long remain; the more so, since it has begun to rain
and snow books and "Doctors," of which many are already forgotten
and gone to dust, so that one no longer remembers even their
names. They themselves had hoped, to be sure, that they would
always be in the market, and play schoolmaster to the churches.

Well, then, let it go, in God's Name. I only ask in all kindness
that the man who wishes at this time to have my books will by no
means let them be a hindrance to his own study of the Scriptures,
but read them as I read the orders and the ordures of the pope[5]
and the books of the sophists. I look now and then to see what
they have done, or learn from them the history and thought of
their time, but I do not study them, or feel myself bound to
conform to them. I do not treat the Fathers and the Councils very
differently. In this I follow the example of St. Augustine, who
is one of the first, and almost the only one of them to subject
himself to the Holy Scriptures alone, uninfluenced by the books
of all the Fathers and the Saints. This brought him into a hard
fray with St.