Commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologiae

The intention of St. Thomas in this Prologue, as manifested both on the part of the office of the teacher and on the part of the beginners, seems at first glance to stand against my own intention, since the text is constructed for beginners, yet is believed by me to be filled with the subtleties of the learned. But if we examine more carefully the reasons of the Author given here, my purpose will not appear to have gone astray. For this work is said to suit beginners not by reason of its ease, or of being a superficial or epilogical or introductory treatise; but by reason of its avoidance of superfluities, its omission of repetition, and the most beautiful order discovered by him; for as appears in its course, all theological difficulties, even those arising from proper principles, are here treated distinctly. And since this work sometimes falls to interpreters who are less perspicacious and unequal to it, and since it has had many assailants, it would have many more followers were it made perspicuous; I have judged it necessary, for those advancing in theology, to expound this work; and to set forth not greater things, but later ones, and less known to the moderns, according to the powers of my intellect; admonishing all that they should see and examine only the reasons of what is said, and so either acquiesce or refute. For I am not so important nor so arrogant as to put forward my own authority: but I speak here and everywhere only insofar as the reason rendered bears witness. Therefore, where I fall short, I give thanks to the corrector as to a helper. The words "error," "falsity," "deception," "ignorance," and others of this kind, I wish to be understood as directed not against persons but against opinions, and even then insofar as these are less solid or seem so: for I intend to oppose persons in no way whatever, but opinions only insofar as they disagree.