PREFACE

...I was standing upright, he was still writing to a certain friend in Paris original: "Parisios", and among other things wrote these following words; Praise and glory to God forever, to whom it has pleased to call me from this world; and as I conjecture, no more than twenty-four hours of life remain; for today I endure the first attack of Fever original: "Febris" because of the weakness of my life and its failing, by which I must reach my end. This followed exactly as he said, after he had bestowed a special blessing upon me, which I consider a huge legacy. I do not expand here at length upon the specific nature of his disease because of the shortage of time; especially since I must mention it in my Compendium on All Things to One original: "Compendio meo de Omnibus ad Unum", which, God willing, I am striving to publish shortly.

A few days before his death, he said to me: “Take all my writings, as well those raw and uncorrected as those thoroughly purged, and join them together; I now commit them to your care; perform everything according to your judgment. It has so pleased the Almighty Lord, who attacks all things strongly and directs all things kindly.” Therefore, attentive Reader original: "Lector", I ask that you do not judge me unfairly at first glance because I have seen to the printing of the rawer writings mixed with the more mature ones, without restoring or correcting them. Know that a great and laborious desire to advance this work was the cause: Nevertheless, you will finally find that the eager reader will be satisfied in every way in this and the aforementioned things, and then you will judge that I have performed all things rightly and faithfully, seeking nothing for my own profit, which will shine more fully from this preface of mine. I call God to witness, to whom my vow to tend to the help of my neighbor is known. Therefore read and reread this writing, and you will not regret it forever: for in the highest truth I tell you, I have brought these things forth out of mercy alone, noticing that men, because of their own self-importance, have so little at heart the salvation original: "salvationem" of eternal and temporal life.

Halt your old inner-outer steps, enter the eternal royal way; discard those innumerable bypasses which I myself have worn down with great labor and difficulty while seeking where I might arrive at the knowledge of truth, meanwhile striving to find the ordering of all created things and their harmony original: "harmoniam", and that by all internal and external means which I could imagine. I then directed all my senses so that I might become known to those called Wise Men original: "Sapientibus", hoping at last to find some untaught Wise Man original: "Sapientem", in whatever places I might stay, whatever nations I might call upon, and of whatever profession or condition they might be. I spoke according to their appetite, so that I might bind them to me in conversation, and I shared the whole cause to the best of my ability. By this and other ways, I attained several clear fundamental insights and arts, all of which I deliberately pass over here: And when I understood them individually and universally, I discovered only the highly esteemed handiwork original: "opificium" of man, which the more foreign, vain, and futile it was, the more...