to dispute I seek no ones testimony no ones refutation It suffices me as a possessor of the Art to need neither the living nor the dead Experience it self hath made me a Master and hath made a certain thing more certain than was needfull for a Master to have brought to light the truth of Nature Verily I should rejoyce if they had obtain'd their end by another matter for so I should believe the divine grace through my Prayers and Industry of seeking had opened to me a new and heretosore unknown Miracle of Nature For my Salt of Nature by artifice regenerated out of my matter hath perform'd the same things which the Arcanum of the Ancients is believed at any time to have performed Therefore he that will follow me must beware of Costs and great Labour If he find the tenth opening and the matter Nature it self without manual operation will help him and make him possessor of the wonderfull earth only let him follow Nature and consider its operations all things are little easie and of no Cost But how to go forward after the possession of the true Philosophick Mercury in the knowledge of which many are deceived thinking the Mercury of the Philosophers to be the Salt of Nature regenerated is not my work now to write because I write to Philosophers not lovers of Gold Therefore in the first place learn the wisedom of the Soul which if you find all will succeed prosperously and according to your wish and your hope will not be frustrated From her cometh every good thing and infinite riches are in her hand If thou findest the true Centre of Man other things of their own accord will slow in Whosoever thou art take in good part this my admonition and follow my experience unless thou wilt be a fool with the common multitude follow others if thou wilt and read their obscure style and veiled speeches Not one of them all hath used that fidelity towards their Neighbour as I have Never any in such perspicuous words hath made the derfull matter to be drawn out of Man so manifest They may compare their Writings with their Books whoever will may bend their words to his own meaning But yet whosoever will write better and clearer things I will be thankfull to him I have received the truth freely from God In communicating of it I fear not the curses of the Philosophers for I have learned nothing out of their Writings I commit this little Book more clear than the Sun to the Divine most wise Providence For he onely gives wisedom to the wise and understanding to the prudent Things occult and deeply hidden he reveals He searches the profound abyss of darkness by his Spirit in us from which light alone all is derived I give thee thanks O God my Father who hast bestowed on me wisedom and hast revealed that thing to me for which I prayed to thee Illuminate the eyes of all men who love thee with a pure heart that they may glorifie thy Name To the Tri-une God the great mercifull Father the Son and Spirit from whom alone floweth all truth light and wisedom be honour and praise for ever and ever Help O Lord thy Servant by Jesus Christ Amen Let things transitory give place to eternal Here we see in a glass and know through a cloud but then we shall see him as he is O how vain are things which affect the Senses compared with those which make the Soul happy that he may live for ever with his Saviour FINIS Books Printed for J. Harris at the Harrow in Little Britain MEdicina Practica or Practical Physick Shewing the Method of Curing the most usual Diseases happening to Humane Bodies With the Preparation of the Praecipiolum or Vniversal Medicine of Paracelsus To which are added the Philosophical Works of Hermes Trismegistus Kalid Persicus Geber Arabs Artefius Longaevus Nicholas Flammel Roger Bachon and Geo. Ripley Together with a singular Comment upon the First Book of Hermes the most ancient of Philosophers The whole Compleated in Three Books By William Salmon M. D. Price 5 s. The Treasury of Drugs unlockt or a full and true Description of all sorts of Drugs and Chymical Preparations sold by Druggists Whereby you may know the place of their Growth and how to distinguish the Good from the Bad. The whole Alphabetically digested By Jo. Jacob Berlu of London Merchant in Drugs Price 1 s. 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saw the light might be the God and Lord of all elementary and created things only God alone should be his Lord. Thus God placed Man in the middle between that which is superiour and that which is inferiour and did inspire into him by the word Ruach Elohim noted in the Hebrew Book through the two nostrils the breath of a twofold life one whereof was the breath of the eternal word of God or of the eternal life the other was the elementary and astral airy breath or spirit and word of time Both these infused powers of life in Man divided themselves so that each formed and possessed its own Center to it self which was the continual will and desire of each of them after its first original or primordial nature Both of them desired its Mother from whence they proceeded and each desired for her self to be nourish'd by her essence So the Will as the Father did generate in the Lifes Center for himself the Appetite or Desire as his Son and Offspring from both which the Will and Desire did proceed the Spirit as the power of living by the attracting and breathing nature from God and the Airy world But the Body of the Element did also produce out of their properties the Center the Will the Desire and Power of attracting out of its Mother the Earth and Water and out of it desired to quench its thirst and suck her Breasts he eat therefore and fill d himself with her containing in himself a tripl triunity in one body of Man and living in this manner that Man might be an Image of God after his likeness But yet the Center of the Body Spirit and Soul were not compelled by any necessity to sill and satiate themselves from the Water Air and Earth but the highest liberty of Will was left unto them after the likeness of the Free-will of God It was free to the good lucid pleasant sweet will which took its beginning from the pleasant meekness to contract it self and diffuse it self in and through all circumferences over which as their Center and Ruler she held her Empire Yea it was lawfull and free to him to divide himself more or less as it pleased him He could also without any thing opposing him by a too ardent strong and vehement motion of his Seed and out-going powers from himself produce in himself another sharp pestilent appetite and malignant desire after a sharp austere and venemous food He could also shut his mouth and appetite by not attracting that aliment which was necessary for him But it would be too long and large here to tell what was the nature and condition of that food and how at that time Adam and Eve by a power and hurtfull pleasure did eat together and dyed that death which in heavenly natures happeneth in a heavenly and spiritual manner It is also not our business here to relate how they fell in their Will and kept as it were imprisoned the Appetite and Power of the good which they receiv'd from the highest good and made it unfruitful and how they closed obdurated the mouth of their soul and choaked the very good exerting it self in them because the lamentable condition of them both O! alas maketh it sufficiently known But not only the Soul in Adam and Eve did undergo the deplored condition of death but seeing all were knit together in one Body the burning fire of the Soul kindled also the Spirit and Body the Spirit and Body did infect the Air Water and Earth and compell'd them to consent and precipitated them into that miserable condition with themselves because the Body and Spirit were the Center and Universal Heart and held the potency of their Imagination in their Mother the Air Water and Earth it was of necessity it should so come to pass Like as in this time when the Heart in the Body is sick the whole Body is sick and suffers pain When self-desires go forth from the Heart according to the word of God all things pertaining to that Man contract thence some impurity Yea sometimes for the Offences of the Heart all the other Members shall be afflicted although they have done nothing but a forced duty and by a necessary obedience After the same manner the Earth ought and yet must bear for Adam's sake the horrour of the curse But let us not expatiate too much in the Field of Theology We must return to Natural Philosophy I have affirmed that Man is the Center and Compendium of all created things to him before the Fall all things in this World were obedient through the force and power of his Imagination which he exercised from the Center into all his Circumferences But as the Devil through the malignant force of his Imagination lost the right and power of the good Imagination in his first Kingdom this our World so Adam who was constituted by God in the place of the lapsed Angel which then assumed a grosser substance through the fall of Lucifer who rendred that place of a grosser substance by the like false and malign Imagination destroyed and lost the first or ancient power of the good and the right of the Divine Nature His imagination in this time and station is odious to nature and abominable neither hath it any ingress so nothing is left remaining to Man but a miserable Body which with its Spirit is heavily or with grief sustained by nature He has but a weak and slender power even to this day given to him through his judgment reason and labour of the body to bring some things in nature from worse into better and from better into worse and by this means to make some particular and gross mutations The Natural man therefore doth draw the Vital Spirit from the Air Water and Earth in a twosold manner from beneath and from above From above by the attraction of the Air or his respiration he enjoyeth the spirit power and breath of the out-flowing and out-going word to wit the gale or out-flowing spirit of the Air and turneth it into his nourishment but from beneath he partakes of the Flesh and Blood of the World The Flesh of the World Animals Vegetables and Minerals afford the Blood the Water affordeth the quintessence and spirit or most subtle breath and highest outgoing power of this Flesh and Blood Man enjoyeth That Spirit with its spiritual Salt doth not only refresh and nourish the Spirits of Men but from it also the Alchahistical dissolving power of the ferment in the Stomach derives its original the other parts of the Body do also take their ferment from thence so the Flesh and Blood of all the Macrocosm receiving a kind dissolution in the Humane Body by separating and preparing do afford and yield his Salt to the preparation of the Flesh and Blood of the Microcosm so that the thirsty and hungry particles of the Microcosm do eagerly desire and imbibe it but the excrementitious outsides do find their egress through the emunctories
of the Head the pores parts and clandestine exits beneath and above Here if thou canst from the inferiour parts of the World draw out the inward Centre or Salt of Nature or from the superior the Heart or Center most of all hidden thou shalt be to me Magnus Apollo But greater yet will I admire thee if thou canst find out the Astral and Central Salt of Nature in abundance and great plenty united in one thing as in Man If thou knowest this I will confess that thou possessest natural wisedom and I promise thee that with this light thou canst unlock the most hidden and recluse mysteries of Nature and make samiliar to thee hidden treasures He that hath the knowledge of the Microcosm cannot long be ignorant of the knowledge of the Macrocosm This is that which the Aegyptian industrious searchers of Nature so often said and loudly proclaimed that every one should know himself This speech their dull Disciples took in a moral sense and out of ignorance assixt it in their Temples But I admonish thee whosoever thou art that desirest to dive into the inmost parts of nature if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee thou wilt never find it without thee If thou knowest not the excellency of thine own house for what doest thou seek and search after the excellency of other things The universal Orb of the Earth contains not so great mysteries and excellencies as a little Man formed by God to his Image And he that desires the primacy amongst the studiers of Nature will no where find a greater and better reserve to obtain his desire than in himself Therefore I will here follow the example of the Aegyptians and from my whole heart and certain true experience proved by me speak to my Neighbour in the Aegyptians words and with a loud voice now proclaim O Man know thy self in thee is hid the treasure of treasures Thine it is by the external breath in the Air to enjoy that breath of the Firmament which the wonderfull Astrum attracting from the supercoelestial Waters hath breathed into the middle region of the Air where it by the motion of the Air suffers it self in the Air to be coagulated and incorporated with the Air. Thou O Man art he who thro' the Air enjoyest the breath and power of the Water and Earth and in thy self enjoyest both the Elements and maked them one and thy self not knowing what a treasure thou hast hidden in thee from the coagulation and consent of these powers producest an essence called by us the expert the great and miraculous mystery of the World that is the true fiery Water Eschva-mayim Hascha-mayim yea it surmounts in its power the Fire Air Earth and Water for it dissolves and radically incrudates the mature constant and very fixt fire abiding mass and matter of Gold and reduceth it into a fat and black Earth like to thick Spittle wherein we find a Water and the true Salt destitute of all ardor vehemency and corrosive nature of the Fire There is nothing in the whole world to be found which can doe this nothing is shut to it and though it is a precious thing more precious than every thing yet the poor as well as the rich has it in the same and equal plenty The Wise men have sought this thing the Wise men have found it Hermes of this thing composed his twenty and eight Books and these Books I have seen with these Eyes and the Wise men of the new World have them and keep them in their own hands without any mixture of falshood And you my Friends seek this in divers things but perhaps none of you have known its secret recesses where it is hid or have found its ways and can tell what shape it shall be of if at any time he chance to see it But it is I tell you the simple and plain truth the Spiritual Water and Watery Spirit the Water of Life which Adam and Eve brought out of Paradice with them for their consolation and which by their Offspring they left to posterity O noble Water lucid and sweet O despised Water obscure and bitter O Water comforting us till death This is that Corner-stone which the wise builders the great Phylosophers and expert Masters of Alchymie and of Israel from unskilfull ignorance neglecting rejected even to this day Sometimes at length open your Eyes O mortal Men with your whole heart love God and your Neighbour pray in Humility and Meekness that the Lord would be gracious to you and turn the darkness of your Mind into Light In these words I have openly shewed the way and to these I will add over and above this further Explication The World in which the matter of the Sophy is nighest and best to be found is Man the highest Artifice is in him his metalline Mine is to be opened the tenth time the Brass which there is dug is the best and worst in Nature the Water most precious and most vile the Water Earth together and always in themselves joyned with another thing the Son Birth and Seed of the most pure Bodies is born in Man for his profit and necessity its name is Tessa If by your industry you have found your matter seperate the pure from the impure without fire or admixtion of any other thing prepare a Virgin-earth which ought to be without Odour without Tast without Colour seperate from that the Central Salt the Microcosmick Vitriol the Philosophick Venus the Mercury of the Microcosm the Philosophick Luna purifie and produce out of it a Son more noble than his Parents Then thou wilt see the causes and reasons that imprest the Egyptians that they gave the Signature of Luna and Venus to Argent Vive why they put beneath the sign of Copper the character of Luna above The uppermost or Astral Salt is most volatile sweet and shines and glisters like pure Silver and it s nothing else than the Silver of the Sophy and the Mercurial Saline Spirit But the central Salt is a Vitriol of infinite wonderfull and ineffable Virtue which coagulates the Argent Vive and changes it into pure Silver But Venus is inclosed in Saturn's Vestment from which she must be freed that she may appear Naked in her Beauty to the Eyes of the Artist From these two kinds of Salt all the Metals are generated and there is the same reason of the Microcosm as of the Macrocosm So I have shewn you the Metalliue Mine in your own Body and have demonstrated to you how out of it with the addition of no other thing you may prepare Gold Argent Vive Copper Lead c. I shew you the way which I my self have gone for I have seen with a moderate and due fire produced out of this matter the medicine of the 〈◊〉 Minerals and Animals concerning which so many Books have been disperst about Whether the ancient or modern Phylosophers have gone in this way it 's not my business now