An Exhortation to Scholars to Requite Us by Pious Prayers

Time now clamours for us to terminate this treatise which we have composed concerning the love of books; in which we have endeavoured to give the astonishment of our contemporaries the reason why we have loved books so greatly. But because it is hardly granted to mortals to accomplish aught that is not rolled in the dust of vanity, we do not venture entirely to justify the zealous love which we have so long had for books, or to deny that it may perchance sometimes have been the occasion of some venial negligence, albeit the object of our love is honourable and our intention upright. For if when we have done everything, we are bound to call ourselves unprofitable servants; if the most holy Job was afraid of all his works; if according to Isaiah all our righteousness is as filthy rags, who shall presume to boast himself of the perfection of any virtue, or deny that from some circumstance a thing may deserve to be reprehended, which in itself perhaps was not reprehensible. For good springs from one selfsame source, but evil arises in many ways, as Dionysius informs us. Wherefore to make amends for our iniquities, by which we acknowledge ourselves to have frequently offended the Creator of all things, in asking the assistance of their prayers, we have thought fit to exhort our future students to show their gratitude as well to us as to their other benefactors in time to come by requiting our forethought for their benefit by spiritual retribution. Let us live when dead in their memories, who have lived in our benevolence before they were born, and live now sustained by our beneficence. Let them implore the mercy of the Redeemer with unwearied prayer, that the pious Judge may excuse our negligences, may pardon the wickedness of our sins, may cover the lapses of our feebleness with the cloak of piety, and remit by His divine goodness the offences of which we are ashamed and penitent. That He may preserve to us for a due season of repentance the gifts of His good grace, steadfastness of faith, loftiness of hope, and the widest charity to all men. That He may turn our haughty will to lament its faults, that it may deplore its past most vain elations, may retract its most bitter indignations, and detest its most insane delectations. That His virtue may abound in us, when our own is found wanting, and that He who freely consecrated our beginning by the sacrament of baptism, and advanced our progress to the seat of the Apostles withou............