Many will not believe this, esteeming it impossible, despise and vilifie these Mysteries, which they understand not in the least, they may remain Fools and Idiots till an illumination follows, which cannot be without Gods Will; but remains till the time predestinate. But wise and discreet, men who have truly shed the sweat of their Brows, will be my sufficient witnesses, and confirm the Truth, and indeed believe and hold for a truth all that which I write in this case, as true as Heaven and Hell are preordained, and proposed as Rewards of good and evil to the Elect and Reprobate. Now I write not only with my hands, but my Mind, Will and heart constrain me to it: Those who are highly conceited, illuminated, and world-wise, hate, envy, scandalize, defame and persecute this Mystery to the utmost Rind, or innermost Kernel, which hath its beginning out of the Center; but I know assuredly, there will come a time, when my Marrow is wasted, and my Bones dried up, that some will take my part heartily, after I am in the Pit; and if God would permit it, they would willingly raise me from the dead; but that cannot be; wherefore I have left them my Writings, that their Faith and Hope may have a Seal of Certainty and Truth, to testifie of me what my last Will and Testament was, which I ordained for the poor, and all the Lovers of Mysteries, though it did not behove me to have wrote so much, yet I could not refrain without prejudice to my Soul, but to drive a Light or Flash through a Cloud, that the Day might be observed, and the dark Night, thick and gloomy, rainy Weather expelled.
Now how the _Archæus_ operates further by the Spirit of _Mercury_ in the Earth, or Veins of the Earth, take this Advice, that after the spiritual Seed is formed by the impression of the Stars from above, and fed by the Elements, it is a Seed, and turns it self into a _Mercurial_ Water, as first of all the great World was made of nothing, for when the Spirit moved upon the Water, the Celestial Heat must needs raise a Life in the cold watrish and earthly Creatures; in the great World it was Gods Power, and the Operation of the Celestial Lights; in the little World it is likewise Gods Power, and the Operation to work into the Earth by his Divine and Holy Breath. Moreover the Almighty gave and Ordained means to accomplish it, that one Creature had obtained power to operate in the other, and the one to help and assist the other, to perform and fulfil all the Works of the Lord; and so an influence was permitted the Earth to bring forth by the Lights of Heaven, as also an internal Heat, to warm and digest that which was too cold for the Earth, by reason of its humidity, as unto every Creature a peculiar fashion according to its kind; so that a subtile sulphurous Vapour, is stired up by the Starry Heaven, not the common, but another more clarified and pure Vapour, distinct from others, which unites it self with the _Mercurial_ Substance; by whose warm property, in process of time, the superfluous Moisture is dryed up, and then when the foulish property comes to it, which gives a preservation to the Body and Balsam, operating first into the Earth by a spiritual and sydereal influence, then are Metals generated of it, as it pleaseth the Mixture of the three Principles, the Body being formed according as it assumes unto it the greatest part of those three. But if the Spirit of _Mercury_ be intended and qualified from above upon Animals, it becomes an Animal Substance; if it goes upon Vegetables by order, it becomes a Vegetable Work; but if, by reason of its infused nature, it fall on Minerals, it becomes Minerals and Metals, yet each one hath its distinction as they are wrought, the Animals for themselves, the Vegetables, on another manner and form by themselves, and so likewise the Minerals, each one a several way, whereof to write particularly would be too tedious, and yield large and various Narrations.