Collection of Alchemical Treatises

cause Moderns have had it and still have it at present, whereof it would serve only confusion to recount; who all generally in one accord say—and as by the will of God I have seen and known by experience—that all metals are nothing but mercury, and mercury is found only in metals, for all are generated from it, since they can be returned into mercury; which mercury and metals are thickened and cooked by a slight natural heat within the depths of the mines, as all the philosophers have taught in their Testaments and final books; and this is believed through experience by those who extract gold and silver from the mines, and I myself have wished to satisfy myself and seek to know this nature, because I am moved to the service of Your Royal Majesty, and of which I am [a servant], in those [mines] where there is some [heat], which heat Aristotle says

in his Metaphysics, as do Raymond Lully, Villanova, Bernard of Treves, and infinite others: that this heat comes into the mines because of the movements of the celestial bodies, and engenders a continual and slight heat; and for this reason mercury, before it is reduced into metallic and prolific matter, remains for a long time cooking by its own innate heat. And for this, the art which imitates nature, we cause the metallic and mercurial substance to cook by artifice for nine to ten months, which nature cannot do except through a very great length of time. Now I wish to declare the perfection and imperfection of metals, both perfect and imperfect, and their accidental complexions occurring within the mines, although of the perfect metals we