H. VAUGHAN. ON BUYING THE BIBLE 'Tis but a folly to rejoice or boast How small a price thy well-bought Pen'worth cost: Until thy death thou shalt not fully know Whether thy purchase be good cheap, or no; And at that day, believe 't, it will appear If not extremely cheap, extremely dear. F. QUARLES. _Divine Fancies._ 'I READ ONLY THE BIBLE' Read the most useful books, and that regularly, and constantly. Steadily spend all the morning in this employ, or, at least, five hours in four-and-twenty. 'But I read only the Bible.' Then you ought to teach others to read only the Bible, and, by parity of reason, to hear only the Bible. But if so, you need preach no more. 'Just so,' said George Bell. 'And what is the fruit? Why, now he neither reads the Bible, nor anything else. This is rank enthusiasm.' If you need no book but the Bible, you are got above St. Paul. He wanted others too. 'Bring the books,' says he, 'but especially the parchments,' those wrote on parchment. 'But I have no taste for reading.' Contract a taste for it by use, or return to your trade.--J. WESLEY. _Minutes of Some Late Conversations._ A MAN OF ONE BOOK I want to know one thing,--the way to heaven; how to land safe on the happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. For this very end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me the book! At any price, give me the book of God. I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be _homo unius libri_. Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone; only God is here. In His presence I open, I read His book.... And what I thus learn, that I teach.--J. WESLEY. _Preface to Sermons._ HOMO UNIUS LIBRI When St. Thomas Aquinas was asked in what manner a man might best become learned, he answered, 'By reading one book.' The _homo unius libri_ is indeed proverbially formidable to all conversational figurantes.--R. SOUTHEY. _The Doctor._ THE SCRIPTURES: WHAT ARE THEY? I remember he alleged many a scripture, but those I valued not; the scriptures, thought I, what are they? A dead letter, a little ink and paper, of three or four shillings price. Alas! What is the scripture? Give me a ballad, a news-book, George on horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me some book that teaches curious arts, that tells of old fables; but for the holy scriptures I cared not.--J. BUNYAN. _Sighs from Hell._ 'THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS' I know of no book, the Bible excepted, as above all comparison, which I, according to my judgement and experience, could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the _Pilgrim's Progress_. It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best _summa theologiae evangelicae_ ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired.