規則之書 第 1 章

I. «Tyconius, an African by nation, sufficiently learned in the divine writings according to history, and not unacquainted with secular matters; diligent also in ecclesiastical affairs.» These are the words of Gennadius. Saint Augustine, having frequent occasion to speak of him—Augustine, who both knew him well and had read through many of his writings—says: «He was a man endowed with both keen intellect and abundant eloquence, but yet a Donatist. Who, at one time surrounded by the voices of the holy pages, awoke; so that for this reason he drew his pen against his very own people.

«This task, then, being undertaken,» the holy Doctor adds, «when Tyconius was disputing vehemently and copiously, and was stopping the mouths of his opponents with many, great, and manifest testimonies of the holy scriptures, he did not see what ought consequently to have been seen. Assuredly,» he says, «he wrote most unconquerably against the Donatists, although he was a Donatist; and there he is found to be of a most absurd heart, where he was unwilling to leave them on every side.» Thus the holy Doctor. The author flourished, according to Gennadius, in the age in which Rufinus did, while Theodosius and his Son were reigning. Concerning which matter the most learned Tillemont treats accurately, as he almost always does. II.

Of those things which Tyconius committed to writing, and which Gennadius enumerates with sufficient diligence, there remains one little work entitled 'On the Seven Rules'; by which, as it were by keys, as Saint Augustine says, the hidden things of the divine Scriptures might be opened.... These, indeed, when considered, as they were by him, are opened, and help not a little toward penetrating those things that have been read of the divine eloquences; nor yet can all things which are so written that they are not easily understood be found out by these rules, but by many other modes besides; which this man so far has not embraced in this sevenfold number, that he himself expounds many obscure passages in which he applies none of these rules, since there is no need.

And, a few things being interposed, he next adds this: «I thought this ought to be said for this reason, that the book itself may both be read by the studious, because it helps very much toward understanding the Scriptures, and that there be not hoped from it so much as it does not possess. It is indeed to be read with caution, not only on account of certain things in which, as a man, he erred, but most of all on account of those things which he speaks as a Donatist heretic.» These things being thus narrated, the holy Father weighs the same Rules of Tyconius; for which reason we have taken care that his review be printed below toward the end of this volume. III. Moreover, elsewhere too the same Saint Augustine makes mention of the Tyconian work. For writing to Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, he has this:

«Concerning Tyconius's seven rules or keys, as I have already often written, I await to learn what seems good to you.» But how greatly that holy Doctor esteemed a work of this kind is made known from this: that, in re-examining the Pauline passage concerning the vessels of gold and silver set in a great house, although he had previously, in expounding it, followed the sense of Saint Cyprian, then, his judgment being changed, he passed over into the interpretation of Tyconius: «But I rather approve,» he says, «what I afterwards found or noticed in Tyconius, that in both cases certain ones are to be understood unto honour—not only the golden or silver ones, namely—and again, in both cases certain ones unto dishonour, not only of course the wooden and earthen ones.» Thus he.

Nor did Cassiodorus and Saint Isidore of Seville judge otherwise concerning the excellence of Tyconius's Rules. And the former indeed, speaking of the introducers of the divine scripture, who, forming the modes of expression for the sake of explanation, by the diverse likenesses of examples cause to be understood those things which had previously remained closed, assigns the first place to Tyconius the Donatist, and joins him with Saint Augustine, Hadrian, Eucherius, and Junilius. And elsewhere besides he notes that this same writer discoursed more broadly and diligently in his books of Rules.

The latter, that is, Saint Isidore, is found to have held these same seven Tyconian Rules in such esteem that he wove them, reduced into a compendium, into his books of Sentences, and reckoned their author among the Wise. IV. As for what remains: Tyconius's book of Rules first appeared at Basel in the year 1569, in the Orthodoxographa of Grynaeus. Afterward, however, in the first Bignaean edition of the Library of the Fathers at Paris in the year 1575. Besides, the same Tyconian work, collated against manuscript codices, was published in the year 1622 by Andreas Schottus in the Supplement or Appendix of the Library of the Fathers at Cologne; and thus revised it appeared lastly woven into the Lyons edition. This edition of Schottus we have set in type;

we have marked beneath, for the benefit of the diligent, the passages of holy scripture; we have removed the numerous errors with which the copy previously teemed; and we have augmented it with some observations.