On the Consideration of the Quintessence

In the bowels of the earth, and to them, the sun, by flowing in, grants its own [virtue], and for its color and incorruptibility and substance—not above, but it is called more capacious—it is the essence of the natural color; and the sun adorned [it], and just as the sun adorns the heaven, and through these two joined together, there is an influence in us. Two, to you, do not seem of the radiant color of heaven, through the philosophers; in the celestial, he says, it is possible that all things by natural aid are conserved, by the restoration of which, and by the renewing of youth, [it] is possible to perish and it will give the abundance of the desired health.

You see our stars adorned in

our heaven for assisting the influence

of our heaven and of the sun for influencing the prin-

ciple which is in us.

Thus also, chastely, the grace of Solomon of the said things, difficult, which man can know, man can explain; the reasons, however, of all that he sought, he calls marvelous in this world, highly stupendous, and no less to be admired, whether they be herbs or medicinal flowers, they have the power of attracting superfluous humors from a good member and not from another, as is serapinum, which, he says, takes humors from the neck to the belly as far as the navel, and not below; and others [take them] from below and not above, as they said of the fasting [humors]; and how and why this happens is as difficult even to the greatest philosophers, such as Johannes Helenus, as it is from his own [writings].