Basil Valentine: Last Will & Testament (1671)

The Preface.

man is able to outrun. Keep a good intention; let not your greedy mind run on how you may get an abundance of gold and silver riches and vanity, but before all things that are written herein, let this be your chiefest aim: how you may appear helpful in word and deed to promote the health of your neighbour Christian. Then you have given and brought an offering of thanks, and God will bestow more upon you, and such revelations will come to you more than ever you would have believed.

Therefore, instead of a perfect physick book Medical textbook., I have annexed at the end those precious medicines with which, even to this hour, I have cured successfully many difficult symptoms and diseases held by others to be incurable. These I recommend unto you, with the rest of the things contained in these writings, to your conscience to be wary and not to abuse any of them, as much as your life and soul is near and dear unto you.

If you receive this faithful admonition and warning, which I give unto you here and there at the beginning, middle, and end—and in other places also—and act accordingly, then you cannot be too thankful for these things, which through God’s permission shall be intimated and made known to you out of this book.

But in case you will strive against my faithful warning and fatherly admonition—and if you suffer these mysteries, which were hidden from the learned, to come into strange hands—look to yourself; blame not me. Think not that there is any reconciliation for you, being cut off from all those who live and die in Christ.

Thus I let it rest, committing the execution to the Highest, who dwells in Heaven, who punishes and avenges all manner of sin, vices, and iniquities,