Jacques Gaffarel

“ Receive therefore favourably this Discourse, Courteous Reader ; and remember what we all are : I will not say, thou shalt find all things perfect here, for I am no Angel : and if there be any Defects, we must accuse our Mortality, which renders all Mankind subject to Errour. ”

“ At Sneiberg in Germany, there was found in the Earth, a certaine little statue of a kind of unrefined Metall, naturally made, which represented, in a round Figure, a man having a little Child at his back : and whoever hath any where seen the picture of St. Christopher, may easily conceive the shape of this. It is not long since there was found, in the Hercinian Forest, a Stone that naturally represented the figure of an old man, with a long beard, and crowned with a Triple Crowne, as the Pope of Rome is. ”

“ And since we are fallen upon the Italians, have not Aurelius Augurellus, and Pantheus, both Priests, the one a Venetian, the other a Tarvisian, delivered the Fooleries of the Philosophers Stone, the one in his Chrysopæa, and the other in his Voarchadumia ? Marsilius Ficinus also, a Priest, how full of Superstition are his writings : yea what Superstition is there in the World, that he hath not published to open View ? Antonius Bernardus Mirandulanus, Bishop of Caserte, hath, after his example, maintained a world of things, cleane contrary to our Religion, in his book, De singulari certamine. ”