Ripley reviv'd, or, An exposition upon Sir George Ripley's hermetico-poetical works containing the plainest and most excellent discoveries of the most hidden secrets of the ancient philosophers, that were ever yet published / written by Eirenæus Philalethes ...

But not the Common, called Quick-silver by name.

YEt the difficulty is not over when once it is known that the whole Secret consisteth in Mercury; for what more frequent among the Sophisters than to cry, Our Mercury, &c. and yet in the Work of Nature they are as blind as Moles? The cause is, for that Nature hath produced a Mineral Juice in the bowels of the Earth, which doth answer to most of the Philosophical Descriptions of their Water; as namely, that it is mine∣ral, quick, current, without humectation, ponderous, and the like; which when the vulgar Alchymists read, they apply it to this naughty Mercury, which for in∣ward

Qualities hath nothing in it like ours.

Some there are, who trusting to the Sentence of most of the Wise Men who have written concerning this Art, do re∣ject Mercury vulgar in word, when as in∣deed they dote as much upon it as others, whenas by their mock-purgations they handle Mercuries divers ways by Subli∣mation, Precipitation, Calcination Ma∣nual, even to a black substance, like to Soot or Lamp-black, by distillation from sundry Faeces, after grinding with Vine∣gar, by Calcination with Waters-fort, by Lotions innumerable, changing Mer∣cury into sundry forms, and after quick∣ning him: By all which Operations they imagine themselves secure of the Secret of our Mercury, whenas all such ways indeed are but Sophisms; and yet Mer∣cury so abused is one and the same vulgar Mercury.

So that upon this Rock more have stumbled than upon any other, & yet will stumble, till they know how to distinguish our Mercury from Common, and our pre∣parations from that of the vulgar Sophi∣sters,

which have no likeness one to another.