PREFACE.

to resist the contagion of popular and common Errors, have easily allowed themselves to be won over by the persuasion of all these calumnies, which are maintained today against the innocence and the good life of those whom the sole consideration of their merit was more than sufficient to deliver from such suspicion, if only these Writers who publish them did not properly resemble cupping-glasses original: "cornets & ventouſes" — medical instruments used in bloodletting to draw out "corrupt" fluids, which are only fit for drawing the bad blood from the part where they are applied. But if you come to consider that that heavy and ponderous mass of stone which was near the city of Harpasa in Asia A reference to the "Rock of Harpasa," a famous balancing stone mentioned by Pliny the Elder that could be moved with a finger but not by force moved easily with the tip of a finger; that it takes only one of the birds from the Island of Cyprus to make a thick cloud of locusts and grasshoppers vanish and dissipate; and that the only means of remedying the croaking of frogs is to place a light in the place where they are: I believe that you will hope for no less an effect from this Apology term: Apology — here meaning a formal written defense of a position or belief, and that you will not deny your consent to the truth that I wish to teach and establish herein, to make it serve as a high-raised Lighthouse, greatly necessary to all those who allow themselves to be carried away with so little