De locis theologicis

I have often wondered to myself, excellent reader, whether the greater benefit has been brought to humankind by the man who introduced an abundance of subjects into the disciplines, or by the one who prepared a method and a way by which the disciplines themselves might be taught in an orderly fashion more easily and conveniently. For we cannot deny that we owe much to those who discovered things, and certainly we owe much to those who adapted what had been discovered to common use by method and art. Indeed, when I consider the learning of the ancients and gather in my mind the varied store of knowledge they possessed, I see that no small share of our benefits was introduced through them. But when I set out to revisit the work and care of the younger school, I understand that many advantages have been achieved through the aid and diligence of this new art. And reason itself, after I had pondered the matter for a long time, leads me above all to this judgment: I think that both groups have deserved equally well of the liberal arts. For although the ancient founders of the disciplines supplied the most learned and diligent men with a great abundance of riches, the poverty of the moderns is offset by their facility in teaching: through it they influence the minds of the untrained and inactive more artfully, and, by stating point by point and concisely what was once discussed at length and freely, they shed no little light on the more obscure discoveries of the ancients. In this one respect, as far as I can judge from my own opinion, the younger scholars will be found either equal or even superior to the ancients; in all other respects they are far inferior. Certainly, after those earlier men, later writers can claim scarcely anything for themselves in the discovery of things. But if they claim order, arrangement, and clarity for themselves, they seem in a way to assert a rightful claim to them. Therefore, by reading both groups, the theologian will undoubtedly make scholastic disputation more complete. For, borrowing from the former, as it were, the matter, and from the latter, as it were, the form of discourse, he will surely be able to encourage sound doctrine and refute those who contradict it. This is, as Paul says to Titus, the chief duty of a Christian teacher. The desire to explain this duty moved me altogether to undertake a disputation on the theological loci, one not, unless I am mistaken, entirely unsuited to learned men, but greatly necessary for the unlearned. I undertook it all the more willingly because, so far as I know, no theologian has yet taken up this kind of argument for treatment, even though, besides the common art of discourse that we have received from the Dialecticians, a theologian must have another art and likewise other loci for disputation, from which he may draw arguments not as common and extraneous, but as his own, both to confirm his doctrines and to refute the opinions of his adversaries. I begin this work at once, difficult though it is, after first fleeing as a suppliant, with a humble and lowly mind, to the aid of Jesus Christ. For I undertake it relying not on my own talent or learning, but on the help and favor of the Holy Spirit. If the Father and the Son grant me the Spirit's aid in completing this book, I hope I shall render no small service to theologians, for whose benefit above all this little work is published.