The Lover of Truth Illustrated

Puffers original: "Ciniflones," literally "ash-blowers," a derogatory term for amateur alchemists who spent all their time at the bellows, men of every sort, build furnaces, gather a great heap of minerals, and—to obtain the stone—they leave no stone unturned, day and night, until they bring home an empty purse at their own loss. They lament their lost riches, and eventually, those from the common folk devote themselves to base trades, hardly to be freed from that sweet persuasion of making gold. For they carry these gold-making ideas so firmly impressed upon their brains that often they cannot be erased or wiped away even by a sponge or lye. You would sooner bring a melancholic madman, a raging maniac, or any other person suffering from brain fever back to the right path than you would these brainless boilers original: "decoctores," a Latin pun meaning both those who boil substances and those who go bankrupt.

Yet Alchemy has not ceased to be cultivated, nor has it deserved to be rejected, condemned, or outlawed. Abuse does not take away the use; otherwise, honor would have to be stripped from Astrology and Philosophy, and indeed from the remaining highest peaks of divine and human knowledge. One must philosophize soberly in this study, which is the most ancient, most noble, and most useful.

Those who try to deny its antiquity strive in vain, a fact which Reinesius Thomas Reinesius (1587–1667), a German physician and philologist and Borrichius Olaus Borrichius (1626–1690), a Danish polymath who wrote extensively on the history of alchemy especially have sufficiently proven. And here, besides other supreme gifts which he shared with himself and others, he had obtained a manuscript codex of ancient Greek chemists from Morhof Daniel Georg Morhof (1639–1691); this was indeed from the Court Library of Gotha of the late FREDERICK, the most wise Duke of Saxony, our most merciful Lord, along with

a most learned preface, written in the native language German by Reinesius; indeed, it contained his polished corrections throughout. It seems that on this occasion, Reinesius especially wrote his Conspectus of Illustrious Chemical Writers. He reviews those Greek authors there as well as the others, introducing a general overview through knowledge of the authors, along with excellent advice. I call to witness the man himself, who on pages 9, 8, and 13 cites Reinesius, whom it was necessary to read; and those who remain in that most praised Court are aware with me of this history.

Nor are these all the writers; indeed, Borel Pierre Borel (c. 1620–1671), who published the first major bibliography of alchemy attempted to list them in an entire library, though even he did not know or see them all. Since we are only skimming the matter summarily at this time, we pass over these things and touch upon the Nobility of the art in a single word. For it leads to the secrets of Nature, and to the admiration of Divine Majesty, and to genuine wisdom. Far be it from us, however, to approve of what some chemists distort here; carried away by their own fantasies, they either turn Sacred Scripture into their own allegories (from which even our Philalethes did not entirely abstain), or they apply the principles of matter—Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury—to the very mysteries of the Divinity, where nothing material has a place or should even be conceived.

But what shall we say of its Utility? True chemists are content with the knowledge of the Art, and not for one reason alone...