On the Consideration of the Quintessence

I will humbly adorn these secrets beyond worldly physics with a devout soul, and I pray that you will not permit this book to reach the hands of the unworthy, the tyrants, and the avaricious, who would wish to use these remedies of the gods—unless they do so with a view toward the salvation of the soul and their own piety, adhering to the aforementioned holy gospels and to worthy, good, and just works. And may God and our Lord Jesus Christ hinder those who wish to act otherwise, so that the effect may not follow as the avaricious one desires, lest it be for evil and reach the hands of these worldly men to the notoriety of tyrants and the profit of the reprobate. For the saints were able to fear this book in this way, because by the divine virtue of Christ, they knew that it could be used through perverse usage for evil. But as far as it lies within me, I have written this book for the sake of the holy alone, and I ask that you guard it for the sake of the common good without end, for others to attend to the revelation of the secrets according to the order of the titles to be written below.

The first secret which God has bestowed, through the virtue of created nature and the mystery subjected to humanity, for the infirmities of health and for the senses, which were most slight to the ancients.