Ioannis Vuieri medicarum observationum rararum Liber I

PIETY, LEARNING,
AND DISTINGUISHED REPUTATION
To the most noble man, Lord ANTONIUS HOVAEUS
of Ecmund, Abbot and Lord of Echternach,
eternal happiness in Christ.

A decorative initial letter V features floral scrollwork.

Since such a numerous frequency of disgraceful acts, both of our contemporaries and of the ancients, most noble Prelate, exists as a most fertile parent to us of varied, grave, and often unrecognized, or even new diseases; and since it irritates the most merciful God, the father of all mercies, countless times, so that he desires us to be not so much afflicted as recalled by a fatherly rod to obedience to his institution in this most ulcerated age, by an unheard-of and manifold type of plagues; no one could easily deny that this is testified to by the most evident arguments, unless he would rather be judged by all to have declared a most fractured war on the religion of truth. For we acknowledge the monsters of enormous crimes arising more and more each day, and we experience too daily the hydra of monstrous diseases born from that same seminary. But such is the clemency of our most kind heavenly Father, that although he has striven for some time to bring us into order by a certain harsher moderation of such chastisement, yet he liberally suggests to his own people, through the singular study of divine providence, many reasons by which those plagues can be warded off and overcome. We ought not only to confess this clemency and beneficence of his, but also to give perpetual thanks for it, in prayers, in the repentance of life, and in works of charity: by which we ought to declare to our neighbor, if there is anything in our power by which he, situated in calamity, might be relieved by a singular reason. It would be the duty of any person here to distribute the weight of the talent committed to him with interest for the use of a brother. But the minds of mortals are swept far and wide from this, while each one, affected too much by the itch of philautias self-love and too studious of himself, prefers to bury it for himself, lest he profit others without any detriment to his own affairs.