art of teaching (discentia as they may be called after Tertullian).
16. This was the origin of my treatise, which, as I trust, developes the subject more thoroughly than has hitherto been done. It was first composed in my mother tongue for the use of my people, and afterwards on the advice of several men of standing translated into Latin, in order that, if possible, it might be of universal use.
17. For, as Lubin says in his Didactic, Charity bids us not to niggardly withhold from mankind what God has intended for the use of all, but to throw it open to the whole world.
For it is the nature of all true possessions that they can be shared by all; and that they advantage all more and more in proportion as they are shared by greater numbers.
18. It is also a law of human existence that if any know of assistance lying close at hand to those who are struggling he should not withhold it from them; especially in a case, as in the one before us, where the matter concerns not one but many, and not individuals merely but towns, provinces, kingdoms, and in short the whole human race.
19. Should there be any man who is such a pedant as to think that the reform of schools has nothing to do with the vocation of a Theologian, let him know that I was myself thoroughly penetrated with this idea. But I have found that the only way in which I can be freed from it is to follow God’s call, and without digression to devote myself to that work to which the divine impulse directs me.
20. Christian readers, suffer me to speak with you confidentially! My more intimate friends know that I am a man of little ability and almost without literary training, but that, nevertheless, I lament the defects of the age, and make great endeavours to remedy these in any way that is possible, whether by means of my own discoveries or those of others (though this can only take place by the grace of God).
21. Therefore, if anything should find favour, it is not my work but His who is wont to win praise from the mouths
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