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 ...

Between these two in quality contrarious, Ingendred is a mean most marvellous, Which is our Mercury and Menstrue un∣ctuous; Our secret Sulphur working invisibly, More fierce then Fire burning the Body, Dissolving Metals into Water Mineral, Which Night for darkness in the North we do call.

FOr with their Homogeneity, they have withall such a Contrariety in opposite qualities, that they do no sooner feel the Fire, but they are stirred up to Work, and boiling and circulating in a continual Ebullition or Vapour, they do mingle their homogeneal qualities toge∣ther: by reason of which there is a strange medium, of an unnatural Fire and a putrefying Bath ingendred, then the

Sulphur or Fire of the Gold, which is the Fire of Nature, and the Sulphur of the Water, do embrace one another, and these two make an unnatural Fire, in which the Humidity appears, and the Sulphur being hidden to the eye, appears in its effects only to sight, and that is, it burns, destroys and conquers the Bodies, which common Fire never could do, making them to be no Bodies, but a Fume of Mineral Vapour; and in this Operation the Elements are confused, and make our Chaos which is void and dark, for here the Lights of the World are eclipsed, the Sun is darkned, and the Moon sheweth not its light: which watrishness of the Compositions, for its abundance of moi∣sture, and privation of light, we call Winter, and Night, and the North Lati∣tude of our Stone.