The Highest Good

Of the Supreme Good, etc.

...opens the way for us, and shows us how to find this very rock made flesh.

6. Therefore, all traditions are vain, and the election of a specific Cephas The Aramaic name for Saint Peter, meaning "Rock." Fludd is arguing against the Catholic doctrine of Petrine supremacy. as the foundation of the universal Church of God is also vain and a usurpation.

7. Since God promises to place his tabernacle among mortals, the figments of men must be left behind, and we must return with all our strength to investigate that spiritual instrument, the Aben Aben: The Hebrew word for "Stone" (אבן). In Fludd's mystical philosophy, this represents Christ as the spiritual cornerstone and the goal of the "Great Work.". Pay heed, (says the prophet) look back to the rock from which you were cut.

We conclude, therefore, that since according to Apostolic doctrine the weapons of our mind's warfare must become spiritual, I have not unwisely deployed this unique spiritual instrument, the Aben, against Mersenne, the enemy of truth. If he is ignorant of this Aben, or at least understands it only superficially and on the surface, how (I ask) will he perceive the remaining dogmas of the Cabalists so exactly that he might so easily refute, correct, condemn, and reject them as nothing, as can be seen in his previously cited texts?

Because of his great arrogance toward the Venetian Francesco Giorgio of Venice (1460–1540), a Franciscan friar and Christian Cabalist whom Mersenne had harshly criticized. and other Cabalists, I have directed this single Cabalistic javelin (which is worth all others)—namely the Aben—against him. I warn those who do not understand this Aben according to the mind of the faithful Cabalists to beware and repent in the future, for such is the condition of this stone that it shall crush whoever is ignorant of it when it falls upon him. The Royal Prophet King David, traditionally regarded as the author of the Psalms. seems to speak of such ignorant ones: Who are you that you have dared to take my word into your mouth, etc.

But as for you, O Mersenne, it is not necessary (in my opinion) for me to pour out further words on this matter, since I have observed that you are only well-versed in the "second-order" Cabala—that is, the spurious kind—and not at all in the true one.

Therefore, I would like you to pay attention to what Reuchlin Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), a pioneering German humanist who introduced Cabala to Christian scholars. says about that Cabala, and even about such a sophisticated Cabalist as you are. Sophists, (he says) worthy of derision for their own rashness—or, if you prefer, their negligence—falsely assert in their defense that a Cabalist is a diabolical man and a heretic, and from this conclude that all Cabalists are heretics. Restrain yourselves (if you can) from laughing, though it is a great joke; but I would wish to stop laughing at these human monsters and portents, for the true Cabala is to be sought neither by the crude touch of the senses, nor by the arguments of unskilled logical artifice. Thus he spoke: as if he had said in a single word that no one is an enemy of knowledge except the ignorant. For whoever is ignorant of this our Aben (however much he may seem rich in the vain knowledge of the world), he in truth knows nothing, because the Aben is one and all,