precisely the thing for which our lives are lengthened out, namely, to cherish and watch over the young? I truly think that, of outward sins, there is none, for which the world is so culpable, and for which it merits such severe condemnation, as this which we are guilty of with regard to our children, in not giving them a right training. Woe to the world, ever and forever! Children are daily born, and are suffered to grow up among us, and there is, alas! no one to take the poor young people to himself, and show them the way in which they should go; but we all leave them to go whither they will. But, you say, "all this is addressed to parents; what have councilmen and magistrates to do with it?" "This is very true, I grant you; but how if parents should not do it,-what then?" Who, I ask, will? Shall it be left undone, and the children be neglected? Will magistrates and councilmen then plead that they have nothing to do in the matter? There are many reasons why parents do not deal as they should by their children. And, first, there are some who are not so pious and well-meaning as to do this, even when they have the ability; but, like the ostrich, which leaveth her eggs in the dust, and is hardened against her young ones, so they bring children into being, and there is an end of their care. But these children are to live among us, and to be of us in one common city. And how can you reconcile it with reason, and especially with Christian love, to permit them to grow up uncared for and untaught, to poison and to blast the morals of other children, so that at last these too will become utterly corrupt; as it happened to Sodom, Gomorrah, Gaba and many other cities? And again, the majority of parents are, alas! entirely unfit to educate their children, knowing neither what to teach them, nor how to teach it. For they have learned nothing themselves, save how to provide for the body; and they must look to a special class, set apart for the purpose, to take their children and bring them up in the right way. In the third place, there are quite a number of parents who, though both willing and capable, yet, by reason of their business or the situation of their families, have neither the time nor the place, convenient; so that necessity compels them to get teachers for their children. And each would be glad to have one entirely to himself. This, however, is out of the question, for it would be too great a burden for men of ordinary means to bear; and thus, many a fine boy would be neglected, because of poverty. Add, that so many parents die, and leave orphans behind them; and what care guardians commonly give to them, if observation did not teach us, yet we could judge from what God calls himself, in Psalm 68: 6, "a father of the fatherless," which is as much as to say that they are forsaken by all others. There are some, again, who have no children themselves, and who, on this account, take no interest at all in the welfare of the young. In view of all this, it becomes councilmen and magistrates to watch over youth with unremitting care and diligence. For since their city, in all its interests, life, honor, and possessions, is committed to their faithful keeping, they do not deal justly by their trust, before God and the world, unless they strive to their utmost, night and day, to promote the city's increase and prosperity. Now, a city's increase consists not alone in heaping up great treasures, in building solid walls or stately houses, or in multiplying artillery and munitions of war; nay, where there is great store of this, and yet fools with it, it is all the worse, and all the greater loss for the city. But this is the best and the richest increase, prosperity and strength of a city, that it shall contain a great number of polished, learned, intelligent, honorable, and well-bred citizens; who, when they have become all this, may then get wealth and put it to a good use. Since, then, a city must have citizens, and on all accounts its saddest lack and destitution were a lack of citizens, we are not to wait until they are grown up. We can neither hew them out of stones, nor carve them out of wood; for God does not work miracles, so long as the ordinary gifts of his bounty are able to subserve the use of man. Hence, we must use the appointed means, and, with cost and care, rear up and mould our citizens. Whose fault is it, that now in every city there is such a dearth of intelligent and capable men, but that of the magistrates, who have left the young to grow up like the trees of the forest, and have not given a thought to their instruction and training? You see how wild the trees grow; they are only good for fences or for fire-wood, and are by no means fit for the use of the builder. Yet, we must have governments here upon the earth. And how wild and senseless 432 is the hope, if clods and addle-brains rule us, that somehow they will get wis- "This may be so," you reply; "but, though we ought to have schools, and must have them, still what will it profit us to have Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and your other liberal arts taught in them? Will not German suffice to teach us all of the Bible and the Word of God that is essential to salvation? Alas, I wonder that I fear me, that we Germans must ever be and continue to be mere brutes and wild beasts, as our neighbors with such good reason style us. you do not say, "what have we to do with silks, wine, spices, and other productions of foreign lands; inasmuch as we have wine, corn, wool, flax, wood, and stone here in Germany, not only to supply our wants, but enough and in variety enough to minister either to comfort, dignity or luxury?" And yet, these languages and these arts, which do us no harm, but are agreeable and useful alike, sources both of honor and profit, throwing light upon the Scriptures, and imparting sound wisdom to rulers, these we despise; while the productions of other lands, which do us no good whatever, we fret and worry ourselves after to that degree that even success ofttimes proves no better to us than failure. Of a truth, we are rightly called German fools and beasts! Surely, were there no other good to be got from the languages, the bare thought that they are a noble and a glorious gift from God, wherewith he has visited and enriched us, almost beyond all other nations, this thought, I say, ought to be a powerful motive, yea, an allurement to cultivate them. The cases are rare, indeed, where the devil has suffered the languages to be in repute in the universities and the cloisters; nay, these have almost always raised a hue and cry against them in the past ages, as likewise they do now. For the prince of darkness is shrewd enough to know that, where the languages flourish, there his power will soon be so rent and torn that he can not readily repair it. But now, since he can not keep them from expanding into a vigorous growth, and from bearing fruit, he is at work, devising how he may render them dwarfed and sickly, if so be that they may decay and die of themselves. If an unwelcome guest comes to his house, he sets before him so meagre an entertainment, that he is forced to shorten his visit. Few of us, my good friends, perceive this craft and snare of the devil. Wherefore, my beloved countrymen, let us open our eyes, and, thanking God for this precious jewel, let us keep fast hold of it, lest it be filched away from us, and the devil see his malicious purposes accomplished; for, though the gospel came in former times as now, day by day it comes to us, by the Holy Spirit alone, yet we can not deny that at the first it was received through the languages, that its blessings are now spread abroad by their means, and by their means that it is to be kept in the world. For when God, by the apostles, sent the gospel to men, he sent the gift of tongues with it; and, before that time, he had used the Roman power as an instrument to diffuse the Latin and Greek languages far and wide over the whole world, in order that the gospel might spread rapidly through all the nations. And, in the same manner, he has worked at the present day. No man understood the reason why God caused the languages again to put on bloom and vigor, until now, at last, we see that it was for the sake of the gospel, which he purposed to bring to light and thereby make manifest, and overthrow the kingdom of Anti-Christ. For that cause it was that he gave Greece into the hands of the Turks, in order that the Greeks, hunted out of their own land and scattered over the face of the earth, might carry with them out amongst the nations the knowledge of the Greek language, and thereby cause a beginning to be made of learning the other languages also. Now, since the gospel is so dear to us, let us hold fast to the languages. Nor should it be in vain to us that God has caused his Scriptures to be written in two languages only,-the Old Testament in the Hebrew, and the New Testament in the Greek. These languages God has not despised, but has chosen them for his word, to the exclusion of all others; and we too ought therefore to honor them above all others. And St. Paul glories in this, as a special honor and advantage of the Hebrew, namely, that God's word was written therein. "What advantage then hath the Jew? Much every way; chiefly because unto them were committed the oracles of God.”—Romans, 3: 1, 2. King David, too, bestows a like praise upon it, in Psalin, 147: 19.— "He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation,' 22 66 nor to any nation revealed his judgments;" as though he would say, "God hath, in this, consecrated and set apart the Hebrew tongue." And St. Paul, in Romans, 1: 2, calls the Scriptures holy; doubtless, because the Holy Word of God, is contained therein. In like manner, also, may the Greek be called a sacred language, in that it was chosen before all other languages as that one in which the New Testament should be written, and out of which it should flow, as out of a fountain, into other languages by the means of translations, thus consecrating these too. And let us bethink ourselves, that haply we may not be able to retain the gospel without the knowledge of the languages in which it was written. For they are the scabbard, in which this sword of the spirit is sheathed; they are the casket, in which this jewel is enshrined; the vessel, in which this drink is kept; the room, where this meat is stored. And, as we are taught in the gospel itself, they are the baskets, in which were gathered this bread, these fishes, and these fragments. Yea, should we overlook all this, and (which God forbid!) let go our hold on the languages, then we would not only lose the gospel, but would finally fall away to that degree, that we should be able neither to speak nor to write either German or Latin. And in this, let us take a lesson and a warning by the sad example of the universities and cloisters, where they have not only let the gospel slip away from their grasp, but have also either lost or corrupted both Latin and German, so that the creatures have become but little better than brute beasts, knowing neither how to read nor write, and, more than this, have well-nigh lost even their native intellect too. For this reason, the apostles themselves felt constrained to enclose and bind up, as it were, the New Testament in the Greek language; without doubt, to preserve it for us safe and intact, as in a holy ark. For they saw all that, which was to come to pass, and which even now has been fulfilled; namely, if it were committed to tradition alone, that, amid many a wild, disorderly, and tumultuous clash and commingling of opinions, Christianity would become obscured; which event it would be impossible to guard against, and equally impossible to preserve the plain and simple truth, unless the New Testament were made sure and immutable by writing and by language. Hence, we may conclude that, where the languages do not abide, there, in the end, the gospel must perish. That this is true, is manifest, moreover, from history; for soon after the apostles' time, when the gift of tongues ceased, the knowledge of the gospel, faith in Christ, and the whole system of Christianity, fell away more and more; and later, since the time that the languages went into disrepute, there has very little transpired in Christendom that has been worthy of note; but a vast number of frightful enormities have, on the other hand, been engendered, in consequence of ignorance of the languages. And now, that the languages have again dawned upon us, they have brought such light with them, and they have accomplished such mighty results, that all the world is lost in amazement, and is forced to confess that we have the gospel in as great purity almost as did the apostles; nay, that it has come again in its pristine purity, and is, beyond all comparison, purer than it was in the time of St. Jerome or St. Augustine. And, in fine, the Holy Spirit understands this matter: he does not employ any light or needless means for his work; and he has deemed the languages of such importance, that he has often brought them with him, from heaven. Which fact alone ought to be a sufficient inducement to us to cultivate them with diligence and to pay them due honor; and not, by any means, to despise them, now that he is again breathing into them the breath of life throughout the world. "But," you will say, "many of the Fathers have died without the languages, and they nevertheless have been saved." Very true. But what do you say to this, that they so often missed wide of the true sense of the Scriptures? How often is St. Augustine at fault in his commentaries on the Psalter, and elsewhere; and No. 11.-VOL. IV., No. 2.]—28. Hilary, too; yea, and all who, without the aid of the languages, have undertaken to expound the Scriptures? And, though they perhaps may have spoken the right thing, yet have they not betrayed an uncertainty, whether the passage in hand would bear the construction that they have put upon it? But, if we thus, with our own doubtful arguments and our stumbling references, approach to the defense of the faith, will not Christians be contemned and derided by such of their antagonists as are well-versed in the languages? And will not these become more stubborn in their unbelief, inasmuch as they will have good reason to conclude our faith a delusion? To what is owing, that religion is now so generally scandalized? To the fact alone, that we are ignorant of the languages; and there is no help for it, but to learn them. Was not St. Jerome constrained to translate the Psalms anew from the Hebrew, solely because when there came up any controversy with the Jews, they silenced their opponents with the sneering remark, that the passage cited did not read thus and so in the Hebrew. Now, all the expositions of the ancient fathers, who treated the Scriptures without the aid of the languages, (though perhaps they advocated no unsound doctrines,) are nevertheless quite often based upon doubtful, inaccurate or inappropriate renderings. And they groped about, like a blind man at a wall, quite often failing altogether of the right text, and stupidly overlooking it in their enthusiasm, so that even St. Augustine himself was obliged to confess, in his treatise on the Christian doctrines, that a Christian teacher, who would interpret the Scriptures, must understand not only Latin and Greek, but Hebrew likewise; "for otherwise, it is impossible but that he will stumble on all hands." And truly, there is need of labor enough, even when we do know the languages. For this reason, it is one thing with the unlettered preacher of the faith, and quite another with the interpreter of the Scriptures, or the prophet, as St. Paul calls the latter. The unlettered preacher has at his command such a number of clear and intelligible texts and paragraphs in the vernacular, that he can understand Christ and his doctrine, lead a holy life himself, and preach all this to others; but, to set forth the sense of the Scriptures, to put one's self in the van, and to do battle against heretics and errorists, this can never come about, except with the help of the languages. And, accordingly, we must ever, in the Christian church, have such prophets, who shall study and expound the Scriptures, and, besides, shall be stalwart champions of the faith; for all which, a holy life and sound precepts are not enough. Hence, the languages are of the first necessity to a pure Christianity, as they are the source of the power that resides in prophets or commentators; although, we ought not to require every Christian or preacher to be such a prophet, as also St. Paul admits, in 1st Cor., 12: 8, 9, and Eph., 4: 11. We thus see how it is that, since the apostles' time, the Scriptures have remained so obscure; for, nowhere have any sure and reliable commentaries been written upon them. Even the holy fathers, as we said before, have often fallen into error, and, because they were ignorant of the languages, they very seldom agree, but one says one thing, and another another. St. Bernard was a man of great genius; so much so, that I would place him above all the eminent doctrinists, both ancient and modern. But yet, how often does he play upon the language of the Scriptures, (albeit in a spiritual sense,) thus turning it aside from its true meaning. Hence, the sophists averred that the Scriptures were obscure, and that the word of our God was couched in perplexing and contradictory terms. But they did not see that all that was wanted, was a knowledge of the languages in which it was recorded. For nothing is more plain-spoken than God's word, when we have become thorough masters of its language. A Turk might well seem obscure to me, because I do not understand his speech, when a Turkish child of seven shall easily discern his meaning. Hence, it is a rash undertaking, to attempt to learn the Scriptures through the expositions of the Fathers, and through reading their numerous treatises and glosses. For this purpose you ought to go direct to the language yourself. For the beloved Fathers, because they were without the languages, have at times descanted at great length upon a single verse, and yet cast such a feeble glimmer of light upon it, that their interpretation was, at last, but half right, and half wrong. And yet you will persist in painfully running after them, when, with the languages, you might be yourself in a position rather to lead than to follow. For, as the light of the sun dispels the shadows of the night, so do the languages render useless all the glosses of the Fathers. Since now, it becomes Christians to regard the Scriptures as the one only book, which is all their own, and since it is a sin and a shame for us not to be familiar with our own book, nor with the language and the word of our God;-so it is a still greater sin and shame, for us not to learn the languages, especially now that God is bringing to us and freely offering us learned men, and suitable books, and every thing which we need for this purpose, and is, so to speak, urging us to the task, so desirous is he to have his book open to us. O, how joyful would those beloved Fathers have been, if they could have come to the knowledge of the Scriptures, and have learned the languages so easily as we now may do it! How great was their labor, how constant their diligence in picking up but a few of the crumbs, while we may secure half, yea, even the whole of the loaf, with scarce any trouble at all. And how does their diligence put our inactivity to the blush? Yea, how severely will God punish this our apathy and neglect! Again, in order to follow Paul's precept, in 1 Cor., 14: 29, to the effect that we must judge of every doctrine of Christianity, we must, of necessity, first learn the languages. For it may chance that the teacher or preacher shall go through with the whole of the Bible, explaining it as seemeth to him good, whether that be right or wrong, and none of his hearers can dispute him, if none of them is competent to judge of his truth or error. But, to judge, we must know the languages, else we shall have nothing to guide us. Hence, though the faith of the gospel may be set forth in a certain measure by the unlettered preacher; yet such preaching is weak at the best, and we soon become wearied and discouraged, and we faint for lack of nutriment. But, where the languages are well understood, there all is freshness and strength, the Scriptures are thoroughly winnowed, and faith is renewed day by day. Nor should we suffer ourselves to be led astray, because some magnify the spirit, while they despise the letter. So, too, some, like the Waldensian brethren, deem the languages of no account whatever. But, my good friends, the spirit is here, the spirit is there. I too have been in the spirit; and, I too have seen spirits, (if I may glory of myself.) And my spirit has proved some things, while your spirit has been quietly sitting in a corner, and doing little more than making a vain-glorious boast of its existence. I know, as well as another, that it is the spirit alone which does almost every thing. Had I passed my days in obscurity, and had I received no aid from the languages toward a sure and exact understanding of the Scriptures, I might yet have led a holy life, and in my retirement have preached sound doctrine; but then I should have left the pope and the sophists, together with the whole body of Anti-Christ, just where I found them. The devil does not regard my spirit of near so much account as my thoughts, and my writings upon the Scriptures. For my spirit takes nothing from him, save myself alone; but the Holy Scriptures, and the sayings therein contained, make the world too narrow for him, and strip him of his power. Therefore, I can not accord my praise at all to my Waldensian brothers, for the low esteem in which they hold the languages. For, though their precepts square with the truth, yet they can not but fail often of the right text, and they must necessarily ever be unprepared and unequipped for the defense of the faith, and the uprooting of false doctrines. And for this reason are they so obscure; and their speech is so warped from the standard of the Scriptures, that I greatly fear they are not or else will not abide in a pure faith. For it is very dangerous to speak of the things of God otherwise, or in other words, than God himself employs. In a word, it may be that they have the witness of a holy life and sound doctrine among themselves; but, while they remain without the languages, they will fail precisely where others have failed, namely, in not searching the Scriptures with thoroughness and care, in order thereby to render themselves useful to others. But, since they now have the opportunity to do this, and yet will not do it, let them consider how they will answer for themselves before God. Thus far I have spoken of the usefulness and the necessity of the languages in their bearing on spiritual concerns and on the welfare of the soul. Now let us look to the body and ask, were there no soul, no heaven, nor hell, and were temporal affairs to be administered solely with a view to this world, whether these would not stand in need of good schools and learned teachers much more even than do our spiritual interests? Nor hitherto have the sophists interested themselves in this matter at all, but have adapted their schools to the spiritual order |