Marengus — Secrets of Chemical Pallas Revealed, ca. 1700

On the contrary, very many men venerable for their knowledge of Christ and their probity, and worthy of faith in their doctrine, attest that the said transmutation of metals can be done and has often been done. And certainly, I, the least of them, while I was staying in Vienna, Austria, saw common mercury turned and transmuted into most perfect gold within a quarter of an hour. This happened while a certain medicine was infused into it while heated in the presence of the unconquered Emperor Ferdinand III. No one, however, knew how to compose it, because it had been found in the house of a certain goldsmith who had died a few days before. Thus, if Princes do not perform this transmutation of metals now, it should not be inferred from this that the art does not exist, but only that it is unknown, and that wise and prudent workers are not found among them.

Therefore, although we do not have the specific mercury, sulfur, and earth that nature uses to produce metals in the bowels of the earth, we can nevertheless extract these three components from the metals themselves by art. We can mix them perfectly and decoct them, and thus make the best medicine for the said transmutation. These components are not drawn out of metals as they exist when we receive them, but from those metals when they are putrefied, refined, purified, and reduced to their first matter or to the nature of mercury.

It is indeed indubitable that it belongs to God alone to create metals and their seeds. But to putrefy and multiply those created things is also a matter of art. It is of art by handling them, but of nature by working through the components themselves. We effect nothing intrinsically, but it is the nature of the components themselves that works, and we only assist nature. A farmer does not produce or multiply grain, but he assists the nature of the seed of the wheat putrefied within the earth so that it may produce and multiply grain. We, therefore, do not produce the seed of gold, but we receive that produced by God and by nature. But where

where nature has finished, we begin there. By proceeding backward, we rediscover the gold, putrefy it, refine it, and finally separate the components from one another. We join those purged things anew and thus, by decocting, we make the transmuting Lapidem Stone.

The objection concerning Solomon is of no weight. It is not established that this transmutatory art was divinely infused into him, even if God inspired him to recognize the virtues and properties of natural things. He was indeed most wise, yet he did not therefore know everything that is knowable. But let us grant that Solomon knew this art. From this, it is not permitted to infer that because he did not use it, therefore it does not exist. That most wise King knew many things that he did not perform. It should not be inferred that he was ignorant of them, or that they cannot be done, because he himself did not do them. For God knows and can do infinitely many things that He does not perform. Yet no one of sound mind will dare to infer that whatever God has not done or will not do is therefore not known or cannot be done.

Even if this transmutatory science was not unknown to Solomon, nevertheless he prudently did not practice it, since without it he could easily have gold and other metals in abundance. Nor are reasons lacking why the most prudent Solomon ought to have used gold dug from mines rather than gold made by art in the building of the Temple. For in this way, he fulfilled the testamentary will of his father David, who had collected and left behind immense treasures for this purpose. Nor could anyone suspect the ornaments of the Temple were constructed of sophisticated gold. Beyond this, by adorning the Temple from the common treasury of the whole kingdom, the entire people were more affected toward it, as it was constructed at their expense. Also, by everyone contributing to the House of God, all alike worshipped God in a peculiar way, in whose honor such a magnificent and sacred Temple was erected.