Coelum Terrae

can I then be expected to expose this mystery to every hand whatsoever, to proclaim it and cry it through the streets as oysters are cried for sale? These considerations, together with others which I would not commit to paper for the whole world, have almost made me displease my dearest friends, to whom I nevertheless owe a better satisfaction. Had my fortune been merely to know this matter, as most people do, perhaps I would have guarded it less carefully; but I have been instructed in all its secret circumstances, which few on earth understand. I do not speak for display: I speak a truth which my conscience knows very well. Reader, let me therefore ask your patience. I shall leave this disclosure to God, who, if it is his blessed will, can call to you and say: “Here it is, and this is how I work upon it.” I would not have said all this in my defence had I not been attacked, as it were, on this very point, and told to my face that I was obliged to disclose everything I knew; for this age expects dreams and revelations as the attendants of its invisible righteousness. I have now discussed the matter sufficiently; and if you are not fortunate enough to find it through what is written here, you nevertheless cannot be deceived by what I have said. I have deliberately avoided every term that might lead you to mistake