My Friend, whatsoever you have spoken no less regularly, than fundamentally, touching the Operation of the Universal Medicine, I indeed cherefully, and willingly grant, but as long as I am ignorant of preparing the same rightly, I do no other than attempt to carry my Boat from a very small Lake, into the Vast Ocean, because it will certainly be driven back to the Shore, without any Fruit. For although many of those illustrious Men have written somewhat touching that laudable preparation, yet they involved that in such a Wrapper of shadowed Caution, as the Footsteps of them latently demonstrated, can be known by few or none of the most diligent Readers, who should follow them so far, as until they come where they would be. Also, who is so wealthy, and well informed, as to be able, and to know where to buy all those Books, in which, here, and there an Hypothesis of this kind is handled: betides, you may consume the greatest part of your life, before you can gather thence any sufficient knowledge, or the direct manual Operation. Therefore it is best for us to abide patiently in our Laboratory, praying to the blessed God, according to that Saying:
You argue rightly enough Sir. For, from the writings of Philosophers, this Art of Arts is most rarely learned; but the Sense them is very well, and clearely understood by the Manuduction of some Adept Philosopher. But let us hence pass to the Transmutative Effect of this most noble Tincture, touching which, the possessors, or many of the Adept, have written many Books, and the most of their Genuine Disciples, labouring much in the Fire, did at length compleatly attain to the wished End of their Arcanum,
I perceive your Mastership takes pleasure in passing from the use of the Medicine, to the infinite Transmutation of Metals. Although I could easily believe the possibility of Art, viz. that a Chymical Experiment of that kind was in the Adept, as I have also made mention above, touching that Experiment of Dr. Kifflerus who, with the Tincture of one ounce of Gold transmuted 1 ounce & half of Silver into the best Gold, not to mention the Experiment of Helmont; nor of Scotus, which he made in the most famous Cities of Colonia, and Hanovia; nor much to insist on that illustrious, and well known Example, manifested at Prague, before Cæsar Ferdinando the third, himself; where with one only grain of the Tincture, three pounds Mercury were transmuted into most noble Gold; insomuch that I am brought no less into a neccessity, than into a Will of believing, that the Art may be true; yet I cannot to this hour sufficiently receive it without some doubt, because with these my Eyes, I never in all my Life saw the Man, who was the true possessor thereof.