On the Secret Works of Art and Nature and the Nullity of Magic

A few years thereafter, an investigation of the Helias Artista the alchemical restorer appeared under the name Heliophili a Percis a pseudonym meaning 'Lover of the Sun from Persia'. Even though the author therein refutes very clearly and thoroughly the miserable objections of two Jesuits against the transmutation of metals, he has executed his main theme so little that, regarding the truth of the story of Helias, he has merely appealed to the testimony of Theophrastus. Finally, in the year 1615, a little book appeared in print under the title Mysterium Arithmeticum Arithmetic Mystery. Although I understood little of it, I still wondered who those highly enlightened and wise Rosicrucian brothers must be, to whom it is attributed. For I was certainly assured that they could not be of the dissolute rabble of the lazy monks in the Papacy, since such great praises were bestowed upon them: that they waited upon their calling so diligently, that they were insightful judges in the face of new, difficult, and wonderful inventions, that they walked in promised love, that they were endowed with the most glorious virtues and with qualities that breathed nothing but grace, that they were adorned with the divine clarity of their understanding, with the eternal source of wisdom, indeed with the purity of the eternal light, and that one could not encounter any more worthy, pleasant, and desirable people