of Joseph Scaliger,
"impiam dicam magis, an jocularem audaciam quae et dominum stellarum
stellis subjecerit, et natum eo tempore putarit, quod adhuc in lite
positum est, ut vanitas cum impietate certaret,"[284] declares that it was
chiefly from the publication of this horoscope that Cardan incurred the
suspicion of blasphemy; but, with his free-thinking bias, abstains from
adding his own censure. He rates Scaliger for ignorance because he was
evidently under the impression that Cardan was the first to draw a
horoscope of Christ, and attacks Cardan chiefly on the score of plagiary.
He records how divers writers in past times had done the same thing.
Albumasar, one of the most learned of the Arabs, whose _thema natalium_ is
quoted by Roger Bacon in one of his epistles to Clement V., Albertus
Magnus, Peter d'Ailly the Cardinal of Cambrai, and Tiberius Russilanus who
lived in the time of Leo X., all constructed nativities of Christ, but
Cardan makes no mention of these horoscopists, and, according to the view
of Naude, poses as the inventor of this form of impiety, and is
consequently guilty of literary dishonesty, a worse sin, in his critics'
eyes, than the framing of the horoscope itself.

That there was in Cardan's practice enough of curiosity and independence
to provoke suspicion of his orthodoxy in the minds of the leaders of the
post-Tridentine revival, is abundantly possible; but there is nothing in
all his life and works to show that he was, according to the standard of
every age, anything else than a spiritually-minded man.[285] It would be
hard to find words more instinct with the true feeling of piety, than the
following taken from the fifty-third chapter of the _De Vita Propria_,--"I
love solitude, for I never seem to be so entirely with those who are
especially dear to me as when I am alone. I love God and the spirit of
good, and when I am by myself I let my thoughts dwell on these, their
immeasurable beneficence; the eternal wisdom, the source and origin of
clearest light, that true joy within us which never fears that God will
forsake us; that groundwork of truth; that willing love; and the Maker of
us all, who is blessed in Himself, and likewise the desire and safeguard
of all the blessed. Ah, what depth and what height of righteousness,
mindful of the dead and not forgetting the living. He is the Spirit who
protects me by His commands, my good and merciful counsellor, my helper
and consoler in misfortune."