A decorative horizontal woodcut headpiece featuring symmetrical scrolling foliage, floral motifs, and scrollwork.

TO GOD

THE BEST AND GREATEST,

An ornate square woodcut initial 'T' decorated with detailed vine and leaf patterns.It is yours, O Nature-naturingoriginal: "Natura naturans" — a philosophical term referring to God as the active, creative force behind the natural world, rather than the created world itself., infinite and glorious, to regenerate my soul, which is wasting away in ignorance, by the power of your splendor. It is yours, O Holy Spirit of discipline, by your admirable clarity, to awaken, bring to life, and elevate to the true peak or summit of knowledge those sparks of reason that survived after the Fall of AdamThe biblical event where humanity lost its original perfection; the author suggests that human reason is a "spark" left over from that lost state., and which have been most miserably submerged for a long time in the abyss of bodily darkness. May your will be done in the celestial and immortal part of me, a man, just as it is in the earthly and mortal part, so that whatever is produced by them and in them may all, through due consideration, be a sharer in your goodness. Thus shall this heartfelt offering, consecration, and, as it were, sacrifice of mine be pleasing to your sacrosanct divinity: thus the fruit of your goodness in me, receiving the rays of its own growth—flowed in from your lucid fountain of all and unique goodness—shall, with your divine Spirit leading the way, fly upward in a true resurrection with its whole transfigured self, and shall rejoice to visit its super-celestial fatherland, in which you, Highest Prince and greatest Emperor, live and reign perpetually. Turn the hearts of malevolent readers toward better things, I beseech you; let them distinguish with open eyes your true light from the darkness of the Devil. Be, O good God, favorable and propitious to me, you who live forever.