OF THE MINERAL WORK.

It is very well known to miners that the central and hellish fire original: "gehennalem ignem" often seeks the high places through the caverns of the mountains, heating them and there fostering and maturing metals. While they approach closer to these in search of metals, they feel such heat that they are forced to stop even against their will. This heat (which the action of growing minerals not infrequently excites, though for the most part it arises from the Central fire, and this from the Stars) leads its origin back to the stars. By what compact and reason the Stars generate this Central fire and herein minerals and metals, I shall declare to the unskilled with as much brevity as I can. The matter, therefore, stands thus.

According to Moses in Genesis 1, we read that when God founded the world from the confused Chaos, He gave the elements their first origin, assigned to each its place, and enjoined upon them the duty to be performed. Natural Philosophy demonstrates by what reason and intervening perpetual circulation they are conserved and all things are generated from them. Therefore, to treat the same here at length is not my intent; I shall merely propose, in summary, the origin and birth of metals, as far as it has become known to me, by which way the metallic genus draws its origin, increment, and augmentation from them, and how, when they have reached the highest peak of perfection, they find their end.

I demonstrated a little before that the Superior Element of Fire—that is, the Sun and Moon, along with the remaining stars—sends its invisible powers and fiery rays into the Center of the earth.