Sacred Demonstrations, or the Christian Euclid, Book II

A large ornamental woodcut initial 'Q' containing foliate scrollwork and acanthus motifs.
Since I have endeavored as diligently as I could in the first book On the Concord of the World to hand down those things whose knowledge pertains not only to a simple speculation of things or to an ostentation of talent in the manner of natural obscurity, but which relates most greatly to the salvation of individuals and of all together, now, so that it may be liquidly clear how true those things are and the countless things that are deduced from them, and how necessary they are for the order and perfection of the universe, although to this day they could not be persuaded to the worldlings, who are covered in the densest darkness of their own larvae and blind by their own will, I have decided to treat them again with a new and most familiar manner of teaching. But in order that the impiety and apostasia defection/apostasy of our time, which wishes for the faith of all to be made almost ocular, may be satisfied, I shall take those elements which, if one denies them, one must clearly not deal with, but rather provoke from his stiff-necked madness to the consensus of the whole world. For he will then deservedly be condemned for madness or fury when, having known these things in the comparison of all notions rather by assent than by reason, he refuses to believe them once they have been brought into reason and demonstrated without any vain suspicion of authority. O the madness of the most wretched of living creatures. For since in all disciplines and cognitions and the assertions of any men one must give assent by authority before one comes to the reasons of things, which we conceive by the aforementioned faith, the impious, believing all mortals, withhold their assent from those things which the whole world has approved in the name of the divine to this day, led, as I think, by the reason of many false persuasions.