PROSPERITY OF GERMANY

by expanding, it might affect our Fatherland with detriment. In it, I taught how the greatest abundance of Wine and Grain can be concentrated so that, being preserved and conserved with little effort, it may serve common use with the highest profit during future times of scarcity. I also showed the rationale and method of certain other arts, very useful to the common Fatherland, among which not the least is the knowledge of how to prepare Saltpeter potassium nitrate from old and rotten wood, which is enough to provide a huge quantity of it. While this zeal for being of good service to the Fatherland and to all good things keeps me occupied, behold, Satan, most impatient of peace, in order to place an obstacle to the effort of carrying out such a great work to its effect, and to be an impediment to the common safety of men, immediately excited two most evil instruments, by whose aid he attempted to suppress such useful things and subtract them from the human race. I speak of Farner and Hartprecht, who falsely arrogated to themselves the name of the son of Sendivogius, who, having first brought up wagons of abuse, disparaged the First Part of the Prosperity of Germany, along with my other writings filled with utility and doctrine, and refuted them with lies and fallacies, driven by envy alone, and by hatred alone, with which they were inflamed against me.

And although I opposed them, and demonstrated the goodness and truth of my writings clearly enough