Two Treatises on the Nature of the Elements and the Fifth Essence

...are we to do? It certainly behooves us to be grateful, and to learn humility from the Son of God, and that summary of the law: Above all, love God, and your neighbor as yourself. This is the doctrine of the Apostles and Prophets; indeed, GOD has taught us these same things through nature, so that no one should perish by the second death (secunda morte).

Furthermore, when I weighed within my mind how wretchedly idleness (desidia) seduces man to all the worst things, and blocks his path so that he is less able to understand TEACHING NATURE (DOCTRICEM NATVRAM); when I likewise saw how great the labors were that mortals often expended on things of either small or no importance, then indeed I began to prize and love TEACHING NATURE; and to acknowledge God perfectly from His Creatures (Creaturis), which I gazed upon not without admiration and amazement of mind. I began indeed to turn over the Elements (Elementa), which pointed out to me, as if with a finger, the nature of Earth (Telluris), whose crystalline Spirit (Spiritum crystallinus) I contemplated in the manner of some mist, her Soul (Animam) indeed as if stained with blood, and finally her Body (Corpus) stable and un[...]