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...made them known. For there were those who thought such a man had never existed in human affairs; others maintained that some great Priest of Nature original: "Naturae Mysten." A 'mystes' is an initiate or one who presides over sacred mysteries; here it refers to a master of the secrets of the natural world. had donned this name as a persona. Even the great Wedel Georg Wolfgang Wedel (1645–1721) was a famous German physician and professor at Jena, known for trying to find a middle ground between traditional Galenic medicine and the new chemical medicine., a fair evaluator of chemical study, although he dared not pronounce anything certain regarding the man's life—given the cautious modesty he usually displays in writing—yet he easily concedes that among the English, he is well enough known by that very name. Therefore, since many things concerning the Author,

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his way of life, and the monuments of his genius—both published and unpublished—became clear to me; the discovery of which proved most pleasant during my stay in London. Furthermore, I did not entirely recoil from that hidden, divine art of Alchemy, as I had become accustomed to both admire and investigate it following the example of the greatest men. I held the view that one should neither pour immoderate expenses into it A common warning in early modern chemistry was to avoid "blowing the coals" (wasting one's entire fortune) on the pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone., nor utterly despise it as vain and trifling after the fashion of the common folk. Thus, I finally turned my mind,