digging up the bones of the dead, to use them to Superstition or Sorcery; what may he then think the World may judge him guilty of, for uncovering the Dormitories of the deceased, not to abuse their bones, but to throw their Souls into the deepest pit of Hell? A wickedness certainly beyond the greatest wickedness, that he can believe is committed by Witches. It is manifest, that he hath not published this meerly as a true relation of the matter of fact, and so to leave it to others to judge of; but that designedly he hath laboured to represent _Dee_ as a most infamous and wicked person, as may be plainly seen in the whole drift of his tedious Preface. But his design to make _Dee_ a Converser with evil Spirits was not all, he had another that concerned himself more nearly. He had before run in a manner (by labouring to make all that which he called Enthusiasm, to be nothing else but imposture or melancholy and depraved phantasie, arising from natural causes) into the censure of being a Sadducee or Atheist. To wash off which he thought nothing was so prevalent, as to leap into the other end of the balance (the mean is hard to be kept) to weigh the other down, by publishing some notorious Piece that might (as he thought) in an high degree manifest the existence of Spirits good and bad, and this he thought would effect it sufficiently, or at least wipe off the former imputation that he had contracted. But that I may not be too tedious, I shall sum up briefly some others, by which it may be made clear, that those dauntless Spirits that have adventured to cross the current of common opinion, and those that have handled abstruse Subjects, have never wanted opposition and scandal, how true or profitable soever the things were that they treated or writ of. _Trithemius_ that Honour and Ornament of _Germany_ for all sorts of Literature, wanted not a _Bouillus_ to calumniate and condemn him of unlawful Magick, from which all the Learned in _Europe_ know he is absolved, by the able and elegant Pen of him that styles himself _Gustavus Silenus_, and others. _Cornelius Agrippa_ run the same Fate, by the scribling of that ignorant and envious Monk _Paulus Jovius_, from whose malicious slander he is totally acquitted by the irrefragable evidence of _Wierus_, _Melchior Adams_, _Nandæus_, and others. Who almost have not read or heard of the horrid and abominable false scandals laid upon that _totius Germaniæ decus_, _Paracelsus_, by the malevolent Pen of _Erastus_, and after swallowed up with greediness by _Libanius_, _Conringius_, _Sennertus_, and many others? for not only labouring to bring in a new Theory and Practice into the Art of Medicine, but also for striving to purge and purifie the ancient, natural, laudable, and lawful Magick from the filth and dregs of Imposture, Deceit, Ceremonies, and Superstitions: yet hath not wanted most strong and invincible Champions to defend him, as _Dorne_, _Petrus