"Among these people there is scarce one who has read my books. They were afraid for their power, some even for their gain, if the world should begin to grow wiser. What they themselves really think I know not, but they try to make the uneducated crowd believe that a knowledge of the languages and what they call good letters are opposed to the study of theology, whereas there is no science to which they are a greater help and adornment. These men, born under the wrath of the Muses and the Graces, are fighting ceaselessly against learning, which in these our days is just rising to greater fruitfulness. Their chief hope of victory is in slanderous trickery. If they come out in books they simply betray their folly and ignorance. If they are met by reasoning, the evident truth overcomes them at once. So they confine themselves to making an uproar with the ignorant mob and among foolish women, who are easy to impose upon, especially under the pretext of religion, which these people are wonderfully clever in assuming. They put forth terrible words--'heresy!' 'Antichrist!' They keep declaring that the Christian religion is in danger and already toppling over, and pretend that they are holding it up on their shoulders; and in all these hateful charges they mingle the names of the languages and of polite literature. These horrible things, they say, have sprung from 'poetry'--for so they call whatever belongs to elegant learning--that is, whatever they themselves do not understand. Such nonsense as this they do not hesitate to blather out in public sermons, and then ask to be called heralds of apostolic doctrine! They abuse the name of the Roman pontiff and of the Roman see, a thing sacred to everyone, as it ought to be.