John Faustus, born at Kundling, a little village, learning Magic at Gracovia, where he was openly taught, and exercised it. In sundry places of Germany, with the admiration of many and with manifold lies, fraud, and illusions, with vain vaunting and promises but could do nothing: one example I will shew to the Reader, upon this condition, that he will pass his faith first to me that he will not imitate him: Then rehearseth he one of his knaveries, how he took upon him to make no hair grow upon a man’s face, and took away with a powder which I will not name, both the beard that he had and all the skin, causing such inflammations in his face that it burned all over cruelly. This he committed being taken at Batoburg upon the bank of the river Mosa hard upon the bounds of Gelderland: Another (saith this learned Physician) not unknown to me, having a black beard, the rest of his face somewhat dark and swarthy, witnessing melancholy (for he was splenetic) when he came to Faustus, who readily said: Truly I thought you had been my Familiar, straightway marking your feet, whether long and crooked nails stuck out of them: So likening this man to the Devil, which he thought had come unto him, which Devil he was wont to call Sorarius. VII For his death in the same place, thus saith he: At length he was found in a Village of the Duchy of Wittenberg by his bedside stark dead, and his face turned backwards, and the midnight before, the house was shaken as it is reported. Thus far he, an Author not to be doubted of, and approved through Christendom of singular and exact judgment, as appeareth by his writings of the like argument confutation. VIII More in the same place he saith: That a schoolmaster amongst the Goslaryens, instructed of Faustus the Magician, or rather Infaustus his evil doctrine, learned a way how the Devil might be bound by spell on a glass, who as you may there read was so affrighted, that lying one whole year speechless, at the end he spake of his fear and Devil’s appearance, and then having received his Christian rites died. As for the Author this Doctor Wier, doubt you not of his credit, for he is alleged of the very singularest scholars, as the best that ever wrote in that argument. We have a Gentleman of our own country, master Reignold Scot, Esquire,[43] that doth universally quote him as his chief and especial help in his discovery of Witchcraft, yea and he testifieth of him not without good desert, saying: J. Bode[44] in his lawyerly Physic reasoneth contrarily, as though Melancholy were farthest off from these old women whom we call Witches. And the most famous and noble Physician John Wier for his opinion in that behalf: Lo, where he calleth him the most famous Physician as he was then certainly, in the discovery of Witchcraft, _lib. 3. Cap. 7._ IX Thus far I have set down that you may know and persuade yourselves so far as you see just cause by the reasons. VALE.