ad not ploughed with their heifer? What, unless again
and again he had read somewhat of Parthenius and Pindar, whose
eloquence he could by no means imitate? What could Sallust, Tully,
Boethius, Macrobius, Lactantius, Martianus, and in short the whole
troop of Latin writers have done, if they had not seen the productions
of Athens or the volumes of the Greeks? Certes, little would Jerome,
master of three languages, Ambrosius, Augustine, though he confesses
that he hated Greek, or even Gregory, who is said to have been wholly
ignorant of it, have contributed to the doctrine of the Church, if more
learned Greece had not furnished them from its stores. As Rome,
watered by the streams of Greece, had earlier brought forth
philosophers in the image of the Greeks, in like fashion afterwards it
produced doctors of the orthodox faith. The creeds we chant are the
sweat of Grecian brows, promulgated by their Councils, and established
by the martyrdom of many.

Yet their natural slowness, as it happens, turns to the glory of the
Latins, since as they were less learned in their studies, so they were
less perverse in their errors. In truth, the Arian heresy had all but
eclipsed the whole Church; the Nestorian wickedness presumed to rave
with blasphemous rage against the Virgin, for it would have robbed the
Queen of Heaven, not in open fight but in disputation, of her name and
character as Mother of God, unless the invincible champion Cyril, ready
to do single battle, with the help of the Council of Ephesus, had in
vehemence of spirit utterly extinguished it. Innumerable are the forms
as well as the authors of Greek heresies; for as they were the original
cultivators of our holy faith, so too they were the first sowers of
tares, as is shown by veracious history. And thus they went on from
bad to worse, because in endeavouring to part the seamless vesture of
the Lord, they totally destroyed primitive simplicity of doctrine, and
blinded by the darkness of novelty would fall into the bottomless pit,
unless He provide for them in His inscrutable prerogative, whose wisdom
is past reckoning.

Let this suffice; for here we reach the limit of our power of judgment.
One thing, however, we conclude from the premises, that the ignorance
of the Greek tongue is now a great hindrance to the study of the Latin
writers, since without it the doctrines of the ancient authors, whether
Christian or Gentile, cannot be understood. And we must come