Consensus and monuments

Use in the book

As the second Trumpet of Truth, page 27 brings ancient, old, and new writers together. They agree, Khunrath says, about the subject, preparation, manifestations during work, and uses. The required reader has looked through, read, and at least partly understood them; the margin warns that reading without understanding neglects the matter. Page 28 adds a moral presumption: men credited in other subjects should not be casually supposed to lie deliberately in a way that injures their neighbours and dishonours themselves. Consensus is thus supported both by concordance of teaching and by the supposed character of witnesses.

The appeal is immediately selective. A truthful company of competent philosophers and workers outweighs a handful speaking wrongly or a multitude of the ignorant. Later, at page 82, the sense and consent of Nature and the unanimous teaching of the Philosophers join in the regenerative-field argument. Agreement matters because it is understood to express the same natural order, rather than because numbers alone create truth.

Pages 109–112234 then impose an important limit. The authorities themselves warn against literalism; their books are accepted insofar as their sense accords with Nature. Page 111 directs attention to what is said, not who says it. Page 142 goes further: Khunrath says he does not greatly base his proof on human authorities, and recalls the first Philosopher's lack of written predecessors. These passages do not erase the second trumpet. They define the work it can do. The inherited corpus supplies testimony and interpretive guidance, while Nature supplies the standard by which the corpus is understood and judged. The resulting relation is deliberately unequal: authorities are witnesses to truth, not its makers.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 27The surviving monuments of ancient and recent Philosophers form the second trumpet through their alleged agreement.
2. 1599 p. 28A presumption of truthful conduct supports trust in writers credited on other subjects.
3. 1599 p. 29Competent truthful witnesses are preferred to both a hostile handful and an ignorant multitude.
4. 1599 p. 82Nature's sense and consent join unanimous philosophical teaching in the regeneration argument.
5. 1599 p. 111The reader is instructed to judge what is said rather than the identity of the speaker.
6. 1599 p. 142 · marginKhunrath disclaims heavy reliance on human authorities for the proof of Magnesia.

Translation in this edition

The translation keeps Monuments, which can sound architectural to a modern reader. Here the governing context is inherited writing and testimony. The source's orthodoxè means rightly in the announced philosophical judgement; it must not be silently converted into agreement with one modern chemical account or one Christian confession.