the name of quintessence, raised above the powers of the elements and of nature. All created things employ all their effort to obtain it, and nature herself takes no rest until she has brought her work to it. Thus God will make his works radiant on the Last Day; thus souls free from sin and the bodies of the blessed after the Resurrection will obtain this radiance before being made blessed for eternity, and before they are united and joined by the first principle of all purity in a bond that will remain indissoluble throughout all ages.

This is only too well proved by corruption, alteration, and the death of things introduced into what is subject to it, which strive with all their strength to separate from it what causes them corruption and death, so as at last to lead them to this incorruptibility. So it is with earth, air, water, and fire, when they become rarefied and have rid themselves of the filth and excrements of their darkening matter

heavy, impure, and corruptible, laboring ceaselessly until they return to bodies resplendent with the ethereal light that is their source.

If crystals and perfect metals become spiritualized and rectified through the inward heat of sulfur and by forming a unity with spirits or luminous substances, all bodies deprived of light seek only to escape their dark dungeon and break the bonds of matter. They take no rest until they have reached their first perfection and are destined for this unhappy association only to procure some good and advantage for human beings, by perpetuating the succession of things that must be preserved and generated until, at last, with the advent of universal glorification, they arrive with blessed humanity at their first radiance, after casting into an eternal gulf all elemental impurities, the darkness of their filth, and corruptible qualities, together with the impious and Demons.

One can see not only in invisible things

some agitation, itching, or passion of matter to acquire perfection; everyone also understands the longing with which bodies, taking no rest, desire to be reunited with their souls after separation. This desire surpasses everything, and is all the more ardent as the radiance of the substances to be joined will have been perfected by their purification, because the purification of bodies or souls in the natural or supernatural order has no end but this one union and close alliance. It is a settled point among all philosophers that the conjunction or nuptials of pure and incorruptible things are eternal, while the marriage of impure and corruptible substances is perishable, momentary, and subject to every assault of alteration. This has led natural philosophers and metaphysicians to discover a means of purification: they call the place appointed to make souls radiant before they obtain complete blessedness ‘purgatory’ or ‘washing place’, to purify them of their vices. Can one then deny the immortality of the soul, since other bodies