Expositio vera harum imaginum olim Nurenbergae repertarum ex fundatissimo verae magiae Vaticinio deducta

which has devoted itself so entirely to such pride, arrogance, and such enormous lechery, that all decency and Apostolic holiness have departed from it. Since, therefore, they are on the broad and wide path and live in all malice, it follows that the Magus has the power to predict the end of their depravity, no differently than a surgeon predicts the end of a malady for a wounded man who is disobedient and not anxious for his own health, while the infirmity begins to dominate him; that is what the sufferer allows to be predicted. For the light of nature, along with experience and Magic, exhibit this presage.

Since, therefore, the magical work was demonstrated to the elders through figures, and through them the end of the perversity of the ecclesiastics also became known, they drew and exhibited the same images so that the full sum of their reward might be made manifest. A certain person, because he wanted to snatch the interpretation of the images too hastily and abruptly, and draw them to his own shore, and was purely partial—he is rightly to be concluded under their own marks—could uncover nothing from them other than what he himself knew, which was also nothing. It is a custom for those who fear them, and for this reason are among their number, to imitate the aforementioned interpretation as they please, and in order to blind men, they wash their hands and desire to appear innocent. But these explanations are very different from magical ones