Therefore the knowledge of the preparation of this medicine being bestowed on me from the highest, I have intended, because a man is not born for himself, briefly to deliver its preparation and use: but I will not cast pearls before swine; but I’le only shew the way to the studious searchers of the work of God and Nature, who doubtless will understand my writing, but not the ignorant and unskilful; let therefore the brevity of the preparation offend no man, because I mean not to prostitute this Art (divinely obtained, not with idleness, but with much watching, labours and pains) nor give to the unworthy a bit before chawed, but only to communicate it to the pious, who shall see with open eyes, that the thing is so. I desire therefore, the simplicity of my stile may offend no man, being not adorned with rhetorical figures, after the wonted manner, for truth wants not many and elegant words, being contented with simplicity and brevity, with which it is easier and better demonstrated, than with those intricate and sophistick discourses. ℞ of living gold one part, and three parts of quick Mercury, not of the vulgar, but the Philosophical every where to be found without charge; and labour, (thou maist also add living silver of equal weight with the gold, and indeed better than only gold, for the greater variety of colours proceeding from the mixture of male and female: but one perswaded that a better Tincture proceeds from gold alone may mix gold only, not so, one skilful of metals, who knoweth the power of the cordial union of gold and silver, dissolved in one and the same _Menstruum_) put them mixt in a Philosophical vessel to dissolve, and in the space of one quarter of an hour, those mixt metals will be radically dissolved by the Mercury, and will give a purple colour; after encrease the fire by degrees, and it will be changed into a very fine green, to which taken out, pour the water of dew to dissolve, which may be done in half an hour, filtre the solution, and abstract the water through a glass alembeck in B. which pour out again afresh, and abstract, which do three times, in the mean time that greeness will be turned into a black colour, like Ink, stinking like a carcass, and therefore odious: and it behoves sometimes to take away the water reaffused and digested, and that blackness and stink will depart in the space of forty hours, and will produce a pure milky whiteness, which appearing, take away all the moisture till it be dry, which will be a white mass, and in few hours of a pleasant colour, divers colours first appearing, it is turned into a fine greeness better than the former, to which you must affuse the spirit of wine well rectified, to the depth of two or three fingers, and that green gold dissolved will draw that spirit of wine, for the great amity, like a dry spunge drawing waters, and will communicate to it a quintessence as red as blood, by which means the greeness is deprived of its quickening tincture, the