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 ...

A Toad full ruddy I saw.—

HEre we have a Toad described, and in it the whole secret of Philosophers: The Toad is Gold; so called, because it is an Earthly Body, but most especially for the black stinking venenosity which this operation comes to in the first days of its preparation, before the whiteness ap∣pear; during the Rule of Saturn, therefore it is called the ruddy Toad.

To this Authors assent with one ac∣cord; when they say our stone is nothing else but Gold digested unto the highest degree, to which Nature and Art, can bring it; and again the first work, saith a∣nother Philosopher, is to sublime Mercury, and then into clean Mercury to put clean bodies: many witnesses I could bring, yea the whole current of writers run this way: And what if some subtle Philosophers seem to deny this, on purpose to deceive the unwary? We shall not make it our work to reconcile them; (though we might) for many of them wrote very enviously, on purpose to ensnare; all of them wrote

mysteriously, as much as they could to darken the truth: and at the best none of them were but men, and described things according to their apprehensions in Philosophy, none of them wrote in every thing the naked truth; for then the Art would become so easie, that it would be contemned. But what needs words? we know the Truth, and we know by a se∣cret Character, true Writers from So∣phisters; and we need no Arguments being eye-witnesses our selves, and know that there is but one truth; nor but one path, even the beaten path in which all who ever have attained this Art have troden, nor can we be deceived our selves; nor would we deceive others.