to a like
judgment as to Arabic in numerous astronomical treatises, and as to
Hebrew as regards the text of the Holy Bible, which deficiencies,
indeed, Clement V. provides for, if only the bishops would faithfully
observe what they so lightly decree. Wherefore we have taken care to
provide a Greek as well as a Hebrew grammar for our scholars, with
certain other aids, by the help of which studious readers may greatly
inform themselves in the writing, reading, and understanding of the
said tongues, although only the hearing of them can teach correctness
of idiom.

CHAPTER XI

WHY WE HAVE PREFERRED BOOKS OF LIBERAL LEARNING TO BOOKS OF LAW

That lucrative practice of positive law, designed for the dispensation
of earthly things, the more useful it is found by the children of this
world, so much the less does it aid the children of light in
comprehending the mysteries of holy writ and the secret sacraments of
the faith, seeing that it disposes us peculiarly to the friendship of
the world, by which man, as S. James testifies, is made the enemy of
God. Law indeed encourages rather than extinguishes the contentions of
mankind, which are the result of unbounded greed, by complicated laws,
which can be turned either way; though we know that it was created by
jurisconsults and pious princes for the purpose of assuaging these
contentions. But in truth, as the same science deals with contraries,
and the power of reason can be used to opposite ends, and at the same
the human mind is more inclined to evil, it happens with the practisers
of this science that they usually devote themselves to promoting
contention rather than peace, and instead of quoting laws according to
the intent of the legislator, violently strain the language thereof to
effect their own purposes.

Wherefore, although the over-mastering love of books has possessed our
mind from boyhood, and to rejoice in their delights has been our only
pleasure, yet the appetite for the books of the civil law took less
hold of our affections, and we have spent but little labour and expense
in acquiring volumes of this kind. For they are useful only as the
scorpion in treacle, as Aristotle, the sun of science, has said of
logic in his book De Pomo. We have noticed a certain manifest
difference of nature between law and science, in that every science is
delighted and desires to open its inward parts and display the very
heart of its principles, and to show forth the