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 if it true were that profit might be, In things which are not Metalline.

I But some will say, How will you an∣swer the Philosophers, who affirm that their Stone is in all things, though in some things nearer, and in some things at grea∣ter distance, yet in all things according to the rule of (propinquius & remotius?) To such I answer, I grant and know that all things originally owe all their princi∣ple material unto Water, and their for∣mal unto Light; and according to the congress of these two principles, through the command of the Architect, this Light doth illuminate the material Water in a singular way, according to the Ideal spe∣cies which were before in the Archetype: So then the Matter resides in Water, the Informing in Light, and the determina∣tion of the Form, which is as I may say the Form's formality, is in the will of the

Creator, first impressed or sealed in the word (fiat,) and ratified in his command (producat unumquodque juxta speciem suam.) Now to apply this to our present purpose, in Water and Light all things agree, in the determination of Illumina∣tion they differ. This determinative sen∣tence of the Almighty, sealed a great va∣riety in the products of the Matter and Form, which are in themselves general, and being thus sealed, not any thing can pass from its kind to mix with another kind, but it will cause a product parta∣king of either Parent, nor can mixture be made but in the same genus or species; as an Apple may be graffed on a Crab-tree, a Man may (though abominably) mix with a Beast, (licentia naturali) but out of genus or species nothing can mix. There are also many particular exceptions of things in one genus, for many Trees I know which the Art of man cannot in∣graff one in another, so as to grow, will yet grow well ingraffed elsewhere; so a Dog and a Mouse cannot mix, being one so disproportionable to another. But this by the by.

To return to our intention, we say, that as all things are by the will and power of God specificated, so with the destruction of that species, the Form (as to that individual) perishing, (for no intire species can perish) things may both by Nature and Art return to their first stable principle material, which is Water, of which Nature, if it found it in a con∣venient place, might (impregnating it with a Metalline Seed) produce a Me∣talline Sperm, or viscosity, which then might be a Metal by decoction, and yield unto our work a profitable subject.