Biblia Sacra (Gutenberg Bible)

to sound like history, and it covers the infancy of the nascent church; but if we know that the writer of them, Lucas Luke, is a physician, whose praise is in the gospel, we notice equally that all his words are medicine for the languishing soul. Iacobus James, Petrus Peter, Iohannes John, and Iudas Jude have edited seven epistles, as mystical as they are succinct, and equally brief and long: brief in words, long in meanings, so that he is rare who does not linger in their reading. The Apocalipsis Apocalypse of Iohannes John has as many sacraments as it has words. I have said too little, and all praise is inferior to the merit of the volume. In individual words, multiple intelligences lie hidden. I pray to you, dearest brother, among these things, to meditate on these, to know nothing else, to seek nothing else. Does not the dwelling of the heavenly kingdom seem to you to be already here on earth? I do not want you to be offended in the holy scriptures by the simplicity and, as it were, the vileness of the words, which were set forth thus either by the fault of the translators or by design, so that they might more easily instruct the rustic common people, and in one and the same sentence the learned might feel one thing, the unlearned another. I am not so petulant or dull that I promise myself to know these things and to pluck the fruits of those whose roots are fixed in heaven, but I confess that I desire them; I prefer myself as one sitting, refusing the master, I promise the companion. To him who asks, it is given; to him who knocks, it is opened; he who seeks finds. Let us learn on earth those things whose knowledge may persevere for us in heaven. I will receive you with open hands, and so that I may pour out with timidity something inept to do with you, whatever you have asked, I will strive to know with you.

Large blue Lombardic initial 'H' with extensive red pen-flourishing extending vertically into the margin and horizontally between paragraphs.

Here you have my most beloved brother Eusebius, who has doubled for me the degree of your letters, reporting the honesty of your morals, the contempt of the world, the faith of friendship, and the love of Christ. For the letter itself presented the prudence and

the charm of eloquence even without him. Make haste, I pray you, and cut the rope of your ship that clings to the salt sea rather than untie it. No one can sell well what he has renounced for the world, which he despised in order to sell. Whatever you have taken for expenses from your own, count as gain. It is an ancient saying: "The miser lacks as much what he has as what he does not have." To the believer, the whole world is of riches. The infidel, however, lacks even an obol a small coin. Let us live as if possessing nothing and possessing all things. Food and clothing are the riches of Christians. If you have your property in your power, sell it; if you do not have it, cast it away. To him who takes your tunic, your cloak is also to be left. Unless, of course, you are always procrastinating and dragging day by day, cautiously and step by step selling your little possessions, Christ has nothing from which to feed his poor. He gave everything to God who offered himself. The apostles left only their boat and nets; the widow sends two mites into the treasury, and she is preferred to the riches of heaven. He easily despises all things who always thinks he is about to die.

The beginning of the prologue to the Pentateuch of Moses

A large, square, decorated initial 'D' in red and blue. The letter 'D' contains intricate white scrollwork on a divided background of red and blue, with a square frame decorated with line patterns.

DEsired letters of my desire I have received, who with a certain presage of future things, since with Daniel, sleep is a name, entreating that I might translate the Pentateuchum Moysi Pentateuch of Moses from the Hebrew language into the Latin tongue for the ears of our people. A dangerous work, certainly, and open to the barkings of my detractors, who assert that I am forging new things for old in the correction of the seventy interpreters, thus proving my talent as if it were wine, when I have very often testified that I offer what I can for the humble portion of the pig in the tabernacle of God, and that I do not suffer the wealth of another to be defiled by the poverty of another. That I might dare this, the study of Origenes Origen