TO MAXIMILIAN

...fy the Grammarians original: "testificabuntur Grammatici"; this completes the word from the previous page's catchword "fica-": while they will see themselves reminded here that reasons must be given for the shapes of letters, their positions, their places in alphabetical order, their various ligatures, their numerical values, and many other matters (which ought to be considered regarding the primary alphabets of the Three Languages Dee refers to Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, considered the three "sacred" languages of scholarship and scripture in the Renaissance). Just as elsewhere, we once argued in an apology that a Grammarian who can precisely defend Grammar as a SINGLE Science, to be learned from a SINGLE Man, is just as rare as that most rare person we have demonstrated above on Earth.

Year 1557. In the Mirror of Unity, or the Apology for Roger Bacon the Englishman. Dee refers to his own now-lost work, Speculum Unitatis, where he defended the medieval scientist Roger Bacon from accusations of conjuring demons, arguing instead that Bacon's "miracles" were the result of natural science and mathematics.

But such great Mysteries concerning these things are certain to me—mysteries which have the most solid foundations laid in the Holy Scriptures of ALMIGHTY GOD (both concerning that Art of Grammar and those mysteries which are extracted with its help)—that I could not explain them even in a large book; nor does this present place seem to require it now.