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 we dissolve into Water which wetteth no hand; For when the Earth is integratly incinerate, Then is the Water congeal'd: This under∣stand, For our Elements are so together concatenate, That when thy Body from its first form is alterate, A new form is indued immediately, Since nothing being without all form is ut∣terly.

SO we in our Work dissolve our Body, which is Gold, in its own Water, in which it is softned as a Seed in its proper ground, and being softned it relents into Water, not diaphanous, such as is the Waters of the Clouds, or of Fountains,

but Mineral, even Mercury which wet∣teth no hand, nor cleaves to any thing but that which is of its own substance and essence.

So that then in our Work, our two Principals work not according to their single dispositions, but as conjunct; the one, saith the Philosopher, dyeth not without its Brother: therefore when thou calcinest the Earth, thou dost in it and with it calcine the Water, and in this the Souls of both are tyed together, to the end that they may serve the wise Phi∣losophers. Therefore let all thy study be to unite Natures, which thou canst never do, unless thou separate first their Souls by Sublimation, and afterwards unite them in blackness, which a continual Cir∣culation of thy Water upon the Earth will produce.

Now know, that when thou seest thy Water and thy Body boil together, so as to thicken one another, and to congeal one another, that then thy science is true, and then thy Body which thus thickens, is not the same which thou puttest in, but a middle coagulate, a terra Adamica, a

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Limus and Chaos, for one form being taken away, a second necessarily follows immediately; for as no Body can at any time have more than one form, so can it never be void of all form.