Sacred Demonstrations, or the Christian Euclid, Book II

To the most holy magistracy of the Church of Jesus Christ, the supreme Pontiff, and the college of cardinals and pontiffs,

Guillaume Postel wishes peace in the Lord.

An ornate decorative initial Q featuring stylized floral and scrollwork patterns.
Since the holy Gospel, having been announced in various parts of the world from the times of Jesus Christ, has very few followers anywhere among the nations, and those it does have possess either a teaching that is not sufficiently sincere or a life that is not sufficiently praiseworthy, the cause of this, in my opinion, is that mortals have arrived at such a state of blindness through the luxury and apathy of their pastors that the words of salvation are rendered worthless to them, or that, because they were not sufficiently firmly persuaded at the beginning and mixed with error, they have gradually turned into fables, errors, and heresies. Indeed, the fact that they are all but despised by many in the Christian world, and received by very few foreigners, is caused, in my view, by their appearing to rely solely on authority against reason. Therefore, in this time, when even the most certain truths are wont to be called into doubt by many, nothing seems to me more necessary than that the sum of the matters on whose faith the salvation of human nature depends should be inculcated as the basis of religion, and this primarily by reasons drawn from the store of philosophers, so that men might imbibe this through faith and demonstration: that no human can attain salvation unless God had been made man. For if this foundation is admitted, whether by faith or by proof or by both together, the reasons why this was necessary will be conceived, and thus anything else will be easily persuaded to the Jews, the Muhammedans, and the Gentiles, whereas otherwise they cannot be overcome by authorities. And although (most holy order) I have already touched upon this argument in the first edition of the first book On the Concord of the World original: "De Orbis Concordia", and enriched it in the second, nevertheless, because the hinge of all truth turns on this point: that the death of the God-man is necessarily required for the salvation of man, I therefore wished to persuade this with ten or twelve very strong reasons.