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TO THE GENTLE READER.

[Large decorative initial A] That Alchemy (most courteous Reader) excels in variety, nobility, and dignity among all those arts which human reason has discovered for the use of life, no one, unless unjustly, would call into doubt: all philosophers, as if with one voice (though in diverse tongues), crying out that this art is not only true, but also that nothing after the divine law, in which is the salvation of the soul, has been granted by the highest God in this world to the human race, neither more magnificent nor more sublime; and therefore proclaiming that it is to be investigated with the utmost diligence and sought with every effort. But just as noble wine does not need a suspended ivy sign, so neither does this art need praise, whose not only undoubted truth, but also its supreme and widespread usefulness throughout the life of all men, which is especially observed in this art, as much in Medicine as in pharmaceutical art and many other sciences, especially in the transmutation of metals, is so clear and evident, that it seems by no means to desire the ornaments of speech or the light of eloquence. Lest anything