On the Consideration of the Quintessence

[One] should know how to contemplate, without human adornment, easily and clearly, and without noble expenses, [how] divine benevolence [can] heal one's bodily miseries and human infirmities; wondrous things, that is to say, of prayers and of a new meditation, miraculously put to flight even the temptations of the demon, which resists through certain infirmities in iron, so that [one] may be freed in [all one's] members and, with all one's strength, most devotedly serve our Lord Jesus Christ. And for that work, [they] are ready, the water having been made by the commanding work of God, it receives all good things; it clearly excludes that which [comes] from mere benefit, prayers, and merits, which it does more through the aid of this book by the command of Christ and His great precept, whether they will it or not, because He Himself is the cause of causes and the causing cause. And thus, [though] many expenses are taken for many [things], the vanity of the world [will cease], and new wonders will cease, not only concerning all sublunary things considered, but [reaching] more than a thousand years before the end of the danger of the statutes. Therefore, the reason is the method by which experienced time, ill-spent and lost, can be restored. [I praise] that most merciful Lord who revealed [this] to me, an unworthy and most vile, frail sinner.