The Works of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Part 2

...shortening. Filthy Pharmacists will drain me with enemas. Emasculating Surgeons will distrust my teeth and witnesses. Cruel anatomists will demand me for dissection. The unclean Veterinarian will lock me in a carriage-shed, and will blind my eyes with teamster's dust. The prevaricating Dietitian will finish me off with hunger. The thirsty Cook will thrust insipid offenses upon me. The prodigal Alchemist will forbid me from wealth and will banish me to the furnaces. Inexpugnable Jurists will overwhelm me with vast volumes of glosses. Haughty Leguleians will accuse me of lese-majesty. Arrogant Canonists will excommunicate me with dire execrations. Litigious Causidicians will attempt six hundred calumnies. The deceitful Proctor will collude with the adversary after abandoning the cause. The dubious Tabellion will subscribe to falsehoods. The inexorable Judge of the action will condemn me and deny the "Apostles" (as they are called) of appeal. The imperious Chancellor-Archiscriba will deprive me of a rescript. Obstinate Theosophists will cry out "Heresy," or compel me to follow their idols. Our supercilious Masters will clamor for a recantation, and the Sorbonic Atlantes will proscribe me with their great seals. Do you see now, Reader, what dangers I undergo? Yet there is hope of easily evading these insults if you, provided you are patient of the truth, having laid aside malice, approach the reading of these things with a candid mind. Moreover, I have that with which to defend myself: the word of God, which I, intrepid, shall oppose to these as a shield and buckler. And if indeed I, who for its sake have willingly incited such great enemies against me, shall even willingly succumb before I desert it, I want you to know that I have written these things not moved by hatred, not by ambition, not by deceit, not by error, nor has sacrilegious greed or the arrogance of a wicked mind impelled me to this; but rather a cause that is the most just and the most true of all: namely, because I see many who grow so insolent in human disciplines and sciences that they not only despise and spurn the eloquence of the sacred scriptures and the canonical writings of the Holy Spirit (because they lack the ornaments of words, the power of syllogisms, and affected persuasions, and the foreign erudition of the philosophers, but are instead founded simply in the operation of virtue and naked faith), but they also attack them as if with a certain contempt, as if they were rustic and idiotic. We also see others, although they seem more pious to themselves, who strive to prove and confirm the laws of Christ by the decree of the philosophers, attributing more to them than to the holy Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles of God, even though these are further removed from those than a diapason. Furthermore, in many and nearly all gymnasia, a perverse custom and damnable habit has taken root: they compel disciples to be initiated by an oath to Aristotle...