Chapter One. Nature.

Whoever understands nature has found the master key to the highest sciences and greatest mysteries. Had nature always been better understood, so many errors would not have crept into theology. Had nature always been better understood, so many absurd and contradictory propositions would not have been advanced in philosophy.

For want of such understanding, philosophers still cannot discover anything certain in many matters. Instead, as they continually undertake to devise new principles, they pass from one error into another.

Had nature always been better understood, medicine would often have proceeded differently in preparing remedies, to the greater benefit of one’s neighbour and the suffering patient.

Indeed, had nature always been better understood, so many grievous errors would not have been committed in chemistry and the Hermetic art, sometimes with the fruitless expenditure of many, many thousands of gulden. These errors have caused most people to regard this royal art as fraud and often to revile it bitterly. What more need I say? I am almost alarmed when I read the definition of nature offered even by certain Hermetic philosophers, although in other respects they have understood it sufficiently to attain their goal and successfully accomplish the priceless magistery.

All this has flowed from the pernicious principle that, whenever a question concerning nature arose, people immediately ran—as they still do—to pagan authors and consulted them, setting Holy Scripture aside. They thus preferred the fictions of those pagans to the truthful teaching and instruction of men who, inspired by the Holy Spirit himself, wrote about God’s creatures and wondrous works.

As for jurisprudence, most people do not regard it as a science. As the French are accustomed to say, “Jurisprudence is a matter of memory rather than a science.” Since it has no place here, I leave it in its own domain, although something might also be said about it.

Since an understanding of nature is more necessary to this art than to other sciences, and since I spoke of it briefly above while promising to explain it more fully in this second part, I have wished to fulfil that promise here.

First, to describe nature briefly and precisely, in the sense intended here: it is nothing other than the substance and essence of each visible creature.

Second, we must know that, when the Most High wished to reveal his divine majesty, he first created a universal nature: that is, a water uniform throughout, containing all natural powers and the seeds of every visible thing, namely the other elements and all four qualities—and containing them, I repeat, in equal proportion.

Then almighty God first separated the earth and the air, together with the invisible fire. After also creating the particular natures of light and the firmament, and distinguishing the waters by means of that firmament, the Lord God created various other particular natures: herbs, trees, and so forth. Likewise, after creating the particular nature of the lights in the firmament of heaven, he created fish, birds, animals, and the rest. Philosophers divide these, together with the metals found in mines, into animals, plants, heavenly bodies and minerals.

This creation and making took place solely through God’s Word. As Saint John says in the first chapter of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through it, and without it nothing was made that has been made.”

The Holy Spirit likewise caused this to be recorded clearly and fully in the first chapter of the first book of Moses. Concerning the particular natures—light, the firmament, the heavenly bodies, animals and plants—the text expressly says:

“And God said: Let there be light, and there was light. And God said: Let there be a firmament between the waters, and so forth; and it was so. And God said: Let the earth bring forth herbs and grass, and so forth; and it was so. And God said: Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven, and so forth; and it was so. And God said: Let the water teem with moving, living creatures, and with birds, and so forth. And God said: Let the earth bring forth living creatures, each according to its kind, and so forth; and it was so.”

Therefore, with the author of the Revelation of Divine Majesty, I exclaim: “Praised be God, that his Word immediately became a work.” Yet I may rightly ask: where, then, is the pagans’ nature? For all things are from him, in him and through him, as Saint Paul—who studied and learned his wisdom in the third heaven—testifies in Romans 11.

That no nature acts of itself—I mean nature as created—is again confirmed by this philosopher and true sage instructed in the third heaven. In Ephesians 1 he writes: “Christ fills all in all.” He also says in 1 Corinthians 12: “There are different powers, but one God works everything in everyone.”

He alone is the eternal mover, the true principle of motion and rest in all natural things. To the same effect, the irreproachable authority already mentioned says again in Acts 17: “In him we live and move and have our being.”