Vita clarissimi viri D. Iosiae Simleri Tigurini, S. Theologiae in Schola Tigurina Professoris fidelissimi

by weaving them together most excellently, acutely, and expeditiously. But what he was accustomed to do, leaning on his outstanding memory and talent, does not seem to be something that should be commonly done or imitated by others. Rather, I persuade everyone that whatever book or writer they propose for themselves to read, if it is useful and adapted to their purpose, they should never lay it down from their hands unless it has been read through diligently and in order, with its principal places noted and caught by the pen. But our Simler benefited the Church not only by teaching, but also by writing. For when the heavy and troublesome disease of gout, with which he labored, taking on greater increments daily, would most frequently interrupt and break off his public course of teaching, and would compel him within private walls as if into a certain prison, he did not lie idle at home in his bed, to which he was often affixed, but applied his efforts to most useful commentaries and writings. For how often did we see and hear him, when he was so constricted by the bonds and most bitter shackles of that gout that no limb of his body was free to move except his tongue, and even sometimes during the very bites of pain, with all books removed, dictating from memory and extemporaneously to some boy for the press, things which, soon printed and brought into the light, were an object of admiration for learned men? And so that most troublesome interrupter of his exceptional studies and efforts, as much as it assiduously took away from the agility and strength of his body, so much it seems to have added to the power and speed of his talent. These exceptional monuments of his letters and talent were partly theological, partly mathematical, and partly historical. And first, as far as theological matters are concerned, the works that he produced—which are indeed very appropriate to these our times, in which, among countless other superstitions and errors, two in particular are rampant in many places and are subtle and pernicious—testify sufficiently and more than sufficiently to how great a knowledge he had of that theology, the queen and mistress of all arts. For when that perennial and monstrous enemy of God and men saw in these our last and lost times that, by the singular benefit of God, Christ—true God and man, and that which is consequent, the only mediator of God and men, the sequestrator, the intercessor, the only rock of our salvation, the foundation, the way, and the gate—was being most clearly preached and celebrated by men most outstanding in doctrine and piety in continual sermons and writings, moved by that capital hatred, malevolence, and envy of his toward Christ and the church, he [raised up] two