Sanctuarium profanis occlusum, sive, de ss. bibliorum prohibitione in lingua vulgari seu vernacula tractatus

mysteries, to be left to the judgment of everyone? And should this book of Religion, which the saints were accustomed to open only trembling and after many prayers, be a plaything of the common people, with which workmen might amuse themselves for the sake of wasting time?

Truly, while I intend here to keep the profane away from this Sanctuary, I do not wish on the other hand to be the cause of that shameful negligence which makes this sacred Code so little known in the world, and which bars most families of laypeople from reading it under the pretext of Christian veneration. I exhort the laypeople in turn, and if I close the gates of this Temple, it is to force them to knock, and to kindle all the more their desire to seek a Good that is not common to all.

It remained now to respond to certain slanders of the Ministers; but because this cause is common to me with the Church, which I also diligently defend in the third part of this book, I proceed to indicate the order and method I have maintained in this Work, which consists of three parts.

In the first, by many arguments and testimonies drawn from Holy Scripture and the Fathers, I show that Scripture is obscure, difficult, and dangerous for many, and that it contains many things that could be a stumbling block to weak minds; and lest I fall into the vice of those who, while pretending to heal, kill, I touch upon that difficulty from time to time without proclaiming it, and I declare it at other times at the same moment I propose them. I flow down sometimes over the abysses, and if it happens that some are deeply submerged at times, I do not descend there unless with a guiding leader who does not allow me to go astray, and who can guarantee safety to the Reader. If I seem diffuse at times, and give more license to my style than the subject requires, I hope to deserve excuse if the argument I treat is considered, which one of the Holy Fathers pronounces to be more vast and extensive than the Ocean itself, and which suffices so that the world could be filled with its commentaries. Next, I set forth the dispositions that the Fathers require to form a Reader

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