Book on the Universe

DE VNIVERSIT.

as much as can possibly be done: it is necessary that we be engaged in this study so far as we grasp the beginning, and heaven and earth, at least in a general understanding. Now, because few philosophers have taken care to turn the origins and causes of things they have treated toward the praise and love of providence, I have taken care to translate the Book of Formation Sefer Yetzirah from Hebrew into Latin and to illuminate it with a commentary. By this single work, there will be present the highest light and harmony both to the sacred doctrines and to those of the Platonists and Pythagoreans exposed in the Timaeus Plato's dialogue on nature, so that the highest authority and the highest reason may harmonize together, just as they were together instituted by God. For since no author of doctrine can be given to us more ancient than Abraham himself (who is affirmed as the first asserter of that doctrine regarding origins), his rational book will rightly be held in the highest esteem, for it is established as the parent of religious truth for us. For although Enoch is read to have written prophetically about divine origins before him: yet neither is his work read to be so instituted, nor does it exist in the Latin world. It remains, therefore, after I have handed down the principles and origins of the world from the doctrines of Abraham, to also hand down the Place of the world and its Time in such a way that, describing nothing fabulous or false therein, I may strive to show how God has hitherto held care for human affairs not only in one or another province, but in the universe: so that those who have not glorified Him as God are inexcusable in the whole world. Since, however, those things are to be placed in the first rank of Divine favor which were born first and are placed under the first and nobler parts of the Zodiac celestial belt of constellations, it is necessary that the first care of God for those peoples be shown,