Also the Stars are a cause of what we treat of, and this cause is not to be contemned, although I, nor you, know not how to comprehend the Celestial Influences of them in our mind.  Nor are the Plants, which the Earth supplies us with, to be rejected, although I; or you, from the External Signature of them, know not how to judge aright of the Effect of Virtues ingenited in them, which they notoriously exercise, according to their power, in healing and conserving Humane bodies.  Therefore, since all others are also offended at the Internal Light, being ignorant of all abstruse things, of which you, or I, want the Science, how can the same Virtues be deduced into art, according to the end for which they were created?  A thousand other like things might be instanced.  Although you know not the Splendour in Angels, the Candour in the Heavens, the Perspicuity in the Air, Limpitude in Waters, the variety of Colours in Flowers, hardness of Metals and Stones, Proportion in Animals, the Image of god in regenerate Men, Faith in Believers, and Reason in the Soul; yet in them there is such a beauty, as hath been throughly beheld, and fully known by very few Mortals.

Although in the Stone of Philosophers there be so potent a virtue, and the same hath been seen by me, yet I would not therefore have any man to think, that my primary Scope, and intention, is to perswade the worthy, or unworthy Sons of this Age, to labour in this work, no, not at all:  but I shall rather dehort all, and every of the curious Indagators of this Art, that they seriously abstain from this most perilous Arcanum, as from a certain Sanctum Sanctorum; yea, and I would admonish the Studious of this Arcanum, accurately to take heed to himself, and beware of the Lectures, and Association of false Philosophers.  But I hope I shall satisfie the curious Naturalists, or investigators of Physical Arcanums, by communicating and publishing in this present Discourse, all which passed between Elias the Artist, and Me, touching the Nature of the Stone of Philosophers.  For that is an Ens more Effulgent than the Morning, or a Carbuncle:  more splendid, than the Sun, or Gold:  more fair, than the Moon, or Silver:  so very Recreable, and Amiable, was the sight of this Light, and most pleasing Object to me, as out of my inward Mind, it cannot be obliterated, or extinguished by any Oblivion; although the same be credited by none of the fatuate Learned, or illiterate ignorant Asses, and such as glory only in the praise of ambitious Eloquence.  For in this malignant ulcerated age of the world, nothing is so safe and secure from Calumnies, but it is taken in a wrong Sense, and perverted unworthily by the Idiotick Ignorance of mad-brain’d CacoZelots.  So very farr do all these dark-sighted men deviate from the true rule of Verity, as in success of time, they, intangled with their own Errors, will miserably wast away and expire; but our Assertion, built on the Eternal Foundation of Triumphing Verity, shall