To the extent possible under law, the Text Creation Partnership has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above, according to the terms of the CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). This waiver does not extend to any page images or other supplementary files associated with this work, which may be protected by copyright or other license restrictions. Please go to http://www.textcreationpartnership.org/ for more information.
ANd now indeed if any be ignorant, let him be ignorant; I know not what more to say, and not transgress the silence of Pythagoras. I have told you that our matter is two-fold, crude and fixed; the fixed is by Nature perfected to our hands, and we need only to have it made more
then most perfect, which Nature alone could never perform; nor is there any thing that can thus exalt Tinctures, but our dissolving Water, which I told you floweth from three Springs; the one is a common Well at which all draw, and of which Water many use; this Well hath in it a Saturnine drossiness, which make the Waters unuseful; these frigid superflui∣ties are purged by two other Springs, through which the Water of this Well is artificially caused to run: these Springs make but one Well, whose Waters appear dry, the humidity being sealed; the Well it self is surrounded with an Arsenical Wall, the slimy bottom abounds with the First Ens of Mineral Salt and Sulphur, which acuate the Water of the first Well, whose primary quality is Coldness; be∣ing thus acuated, it becomes so powerful a Menstruum, and so pleasant to the Me∣tals, that for its peculiar Vertue it is cho∣sen for to be the Bath of the Sun and Moon.