Preface

natural as well as spiritual and Divine things, which he has brought forth and bore witness to therein. However, for this reason alone, we do not desire that you should hold it in higher regard than is fitting, nor accept anything without testing it. No; instead, we gladly allow the saying of the Apostle Paul to apply here, where he says in 1 Thessalonians 5:21: Test all things, and hold fast to that which is good. For just as no wheat grows from the earth without having its chaff with it, so we also believe that the good kernels of truth in this book are still provided or mixed with some chaff and prickly awns The "awn" is the hair-like needle or "beard" found on ears of wheat or barley; the publisher uses this agricultural metaphor to explain that the reader must separate the essential truths from the less important or "thorny" parts of the text., which a person of understanding will easily know how to blow away in order to make the good little grains useful to himself. And so, we leave it entirely to each person’s own testing and judgment, without taking any of it upon ourselves in the slightest.

Regarding the appendix, we have had it translated from the Latin manuscripts original: Lateinischen Manuscriptis that a good friend shared with us for this purpose, and have had it printed with the work in the hope that it will also serve someone; not that we sought thereby to infect anyone with the gold-fever The original German is Goldsucht, literally "gold-sickness" or "gold-addiction." In the context of 18th-century alchemy, this was a common warning against seeking only material wealth (transmuting lead into gold) rather than spiritual transformation. which is already rampant everywhere. No; rather, we wish from our hearts that all people might seek and find God instead of gold. However, because we are well aware that every person gladly strives and searches for something, we also consider it permissible, with proper modesty, to strive for such a noble art—of which we know for certain that God communicates it to some whom He recognizes as faithful to Him, and who also walk the right path to attain it and seek Him for it in humility. Yet, we do not present such small works as being of higher value than they are, and we leave them, just as with the others, entirely to each person’s own testing and judgment. With this, we heartily commend the beloved reader to the grace of God.