Proeve vant ware ende valsche gheloove, ... / Sebastianus Castellio ; Uyt 't Lat. overgh. d...

...attempted to besmirch this writer's name with bitter libel, so that even good, yet unthinking hearts fear to read this, and meanwhile might deprive themselves of its fruitfulness. This causes me to set down the testimony of those in Basel itself, where Castellio was accustomed to live, and has died and is buried, which testimony of Castellio's conduct, above anyone else, indeed above his hateful persecutors, deserves to be believed, considering they are eyewitnesses, and what they say they have seen daily, whereas Castellio's enemies testify only from hearsay, and that from the mouths of their own kind: certainly, if Castellio had been such an evil and wicked man as his enemies' angry pens depict him, who does not see that the citizens of Basel themselves would have been publicly shamed? As they would have also read that they describe Castellio as such a pious, innocent Israelite in a very large book titled Theatrum vitæ humanæ Theater of Human Life, for the Basellers themselves state there: Fol. 1225. Sebastianus Castellio, a Savoyard highly renowned for his knowledge of languages and pure translation of the Bible, also because of his learning and holiness of life, an exquisite ornament of the school in Basel, fell in the year of Christ 1563 into a consumption, which he had brought upon himself through incessant studying, worries, and vigils, and also abstaining from wine, and on the 27th of January journeyed to the Lord, whom he had...