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 ...

For so together they may be circulate, That is, the base oyl and vegetable Menstrual, So that it be by labour exuberate, And made by craft a Stone celestial.

YEt doth not wisdom come naked, but with her she brings riches and length of days; for this exuberate Mer∣cury is an Hermaphrodite, and may with∣out taking out of the Glass be circulated into a fifth Essence.

Now the union between the two Prin∣ciples, is the very true cause of this cir∣culation; for though in this last Men∣struum there is an inseparable oneness, yet the Components do give each their most noble quality to exalt the transcen∣dency of our Medicine. The extreme Components of this third Menstruum, are the Sulphur and Mercuriality of the second; as the first Menstrue, and Sol our Body, were the extremes of the se∣cond. The base oyl, our Sulphur is called, for he is the unctuous Dragon, or Earth which lyes at bottom without wings, and is the Basis as it were of the Work. The

Mercury is called Vegetable, for that it flyes and returns, and makes the Earth to sprout and bud with tender branches. These two (the base oyl or Sulphur, and the vegetable Menstrue) at last make one intire indivisible substance, which is of an Hermaphroditical quality, the Man is the Woman, and the Woman the Man; the Sulphur the Mercury, and the Mercury is the Sulphur; in this respect the Earth flyeth as if it were Heaven, and at length the Heaven will precipitate in the form of Earth, and then is our work at an end, there is the Harvest in the South, when the glorified Soul is become a spiritual Body, which is called our Stone of Pa∣radise.