Epistle

"Let heretics only notice that no place of Scripture can be understood as it ought, unless the authority of the Church approaches, which is the judge of all controversies that can be moved concerning religion. To which, if you do not recur, what will you answer me when I say that a place of Scripture is to be understood otherwise than you and others commonly understand it?" etc.

Col. 2. v. 6.

These are his words. To which I, led by the truth, answer that the true Church is not a gathering of Roman ecclesiastics, but that very rock or stone which the Patriarch called the house of God and consequently the church, inasmuch as it is the most true spiritual rock and the mansion of the Catholic Christ, who is also God himself. Wherefore, without having requested the permission of Marin Mersenne, the use of the literal scriptures is granted by God to me as much as to him, or to any other Christian, or indeed even to a gentile, so that the spiritual mystery under them, or the secret of the spiritual rock, may be gathered by them, seeing that, as it is the mystical wisdom of the Prophets and Apostles, or that Catholic and universal rock, it has denied access and approach to no one to this fountain of its own, which overflows with all abundance. This, therefore, is that reason why we follow the authority of the Holy page through the entire thread of this treatise of ours, and I am compelled to apply it to this purpose of ours, and not those testimonies of others, whether Philosophers, Cabalists, or Theosophists, insofar as they themselves, or at least the greater part of them, are repudiated and damned by that Nugipolyloquide A fabricated term for a "trifling chatterer".

Finally, why I did not come out sooner, and before this time, into the camp against this public enemy of truth and true Wisdom, when he himself published that volume of his in the year 1623, I will show briefly and in a word.

On the 18th day of July in the year 1626, I received these admonitory letters from a certain friend of mine, to whom I certainly confess that I owe great thanks, because of his signal benevolence toward me and his diligence in defending and preserving my good name: You have here a copy of these letters, faithfully and verbatim transcribed, just as it was truly written to me:

"Perhaps Your Excellency (most learned Lord) will wonder why I have not written sooner, once permission to write was granted by Your Excellency, or why I do so now at last. I certainly would have wanted to do so sooner, but until now, not experiencing that lucid ray illuminating my darkness—I speak concerning the contemplation of Macrocosmic principles—sufficiently abundantly in my mind, I preferred to remain silent, rather than to do anything against, as they say, Minerva. But now, although that light does not shine upon me, yet having found an occasion to write to Your Excellency, I will explain what the cause is: Running through Theological books, as happens at Oxford, I fell upon a certain author who seems to me to inveigh too sharply against the person and writings of Your Excellency, and so, for the sake of my affection toward Your Excellency and your writings, I thought it worth the effort, if perhaps this escapes Your Excellency, to annotate the name of that author, the book, and the places where he makes mention of Your Excellency, since I am not unmindful of that Apology which Your Excellency published against Kepler for the reason of calumny, so that now also, if Your Excellency thinks it advisable and the business requires it (which I certainly judge it does altogether), Your Excellency may defend your person and writings against the provocations of this man. The name of the author and the title of the book is this: MARIN MERSENNE, Quæstiones celeberrimæ in Genesin [Most Celebrated Questions on Genesis], folio, Paris, 1623. The principal places, as far as I could observe by running through the whole book according to the marginal lemmas and here and there, where MERSENNE (not MARSENNE, as I had written above) makes mention of Your Excellency, are the following. The first place is column (for he distinguishes the page into two columns, and assigns ciphers to each) 714, the second 716, the third 1208, the fourth 1561, the fifth 1838, the sixth 1696, the seventh 1743, the eighth 1750. Among these places, the most principal of all is that which I have underlined. Nor indeed, if Your Excellency has not seen this author before, should you neglect to inspect this book under the pretext that it is not fitting for a grave man to lend an ear to any Calumnies, especially those of common men and those among the plebecula [common folk] of learned wise men, since this man is of much reading and, as can be seen, is not superficially learned, whence it is to be feared if his provocations (for he provokes Your Excellency) are not answered as soon as possible, it is to be feared (I say) lest he sing a triumph and the dignity of Your Excellency's person and fame be traduced among outsiders.
These things I had for the present, Reverend Sir, to indicate to Your Excellency. I ask one thing: that you take it in good part, and do not disdain to respond to me through the one by whose labor these letters of mine are carried to Your Excellency.
Given at Oxford, July 11, 1626.
Yours in the Lord, A. B."