Major Elucidator or Illuminations on the Reformation of the Whole Wide World

Now it might easily surprise one how the philosophers original: "Philosophi" came to it, and still do, that they kept the aforementioned secret original: "secretum" so entirely hidden and wrote about it with such dark words. But whoever knows the matter of the stone original: "materiam lapidis" and understands its power and effect, to him it is easy to judge that they have quite significant reasons for this. For it is once and for all certain and true that if such a secret of nature original: "secretum naturæ" were to be made known to the world everywhere, such a confusion original: "confusio" and shameful abuse would arise from it that God the Almighty, according to the prophecy of Theophrastus original: "Theophrasti Weissagung", might well stir among men with sword, hunger, and pestilence, such that only the fourth part of them would remain.

Yet because there are nevertheless many pious...