On the Restraint of the First Electors of Saxony in Adopting and Establishing Luther's Doctrine, Volume 2

to move me to choose another subject of writing. But these arguments, brought forward by me, were pulled from me by great men in the Academies of Leipzig and Wittenberg, who incited me more sharply while I was still hesitating to pursue the proposal I was contemplating in my mind; and they thus compelled me so that, at last, among other labors to be undertaken by the cultivators of literature, this study might be born, by which—in these and the following academic exercises—I shall strive to demonstrate, as much as my modest powers allow, that the first Elector Princes of Saxony practiced great abstinence in embracing the purer religion.

XI

Before, however, I come to the proposal, it seems necessary that we briefly examine the meaning of the word ABSTINENCE, which we have placed immediately at the front of our dissertation, having followed as guides especially ANTONIUS SCHORUS, a) LAURENTIUS VALLA, b) and AUSONIUS POPMA. c) Not a few, who are indeed little acquainted with the Latin language, persuade themselves that ABSTINENCE and CONTINENCE are one and the same virtue, and under the name of ABSTINENCE they designate those things which, strictly speaking, CONTINENCE designates. Thus, in VALERIUS MAXIMUS d) there exists an inscription concerning ABSTINENCE and CONTINENCE, where the examples of these virtues are indiscriminate. But these different words also signify different things. Hence QUINCTILIAN: e) If continence is a virtue, then surely also abstinence. And TULLIUS [Cicero]: f) In nothing can those who rule the republic more easily reconcile the goodwill of the multitude than by ABSTINENCE and CONTINENCE. How, therefore, does each word differ from the other? Briefly, yet distinctly, the two men already praised, Valla and Popma, answer: CONTINENCE exists in a temperate man, ABSTINENCE is attributed to an innocent one. TO CONTAIN (continere) is to restrain oneself from the desires and enticements of pleasures; TO ABSTAIN (abstinere) is to keep one's hands and mind from the property of others, by offering violence to no one, by snatching anything from no one. Therefore, CONTINENCE is a virtue restraining lusts and subjecting them to the command of reason, or the virtue by which reason tempers the commotions of the mind, especially regarding the pleasures of the body, called ἐγκρατεια (enkrateia) by the Greeks. But ABSTINENCE is the virtue by which we refrain from that which belongs to others, and it is opposed to AVARICE and RAPACITY. Thus CICERO: We conduct ourselves in the province, as far as concerns ABSTINENCE, that not a single farthing is spent on anyone. g) Thus CORNELIUS NEPOS: Aristides so excelled in ABSTINENCE...