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 ...

And thus thy Work must be begun, In figure of the Trinity, Three of the Body, and of the Spirit three; And for the unity of the substance spiritual, One more then of the substance corporal.

ANd thus thy Work is brought to the true Touch-stone, and that is Trinity in Unity; for in this pondus of your Mercury you have a potential Body, which is one part of three of the Mercury, which may by Art be made appear. This potential Body is to be reckoned to your actual Body, and that makes with it two, and so in potentia you have two of the Body to one of the Spirit, which is three to three, and one to one. And this poten∣tial Body is at first spiritual and volatile, (in manifesto) for unity sake, without which could be no unity. Thus then a potential Body, but an actual Spirit, is joyned with an actual Body, by which means the actual Body, when it is actually dissolved and made no Body, but a Spi∣rit or Spiritual Body, then this potential Spiritual Body (which was in the Water

before) receives this potentialized Body, and both unite and congeal together, and is endowed with a double nature and virtue, that is, Spiritual and Corpo∣ral, Heavenly and Earthly. And thus is made an union, of which the proportion of the Water in its first preparation, and its due mixing with its Body, was the moving cause, really though hiddenly en∣forcing the Compound by the necessity of its end, which it could not have done had it not been so proportioned.