the miracle of all miracles, furnishing certain, evident proof that the entire divine power is wholly occupied in accomplishing this admirable mystery. In this sacrament the elements’ powers are forbidden to exercise their functions; nature does violence to itself; every creature is made to obey its Creator’s word. Finally, all creatures except humanity do unheard-of things, never hitherto seen, to honor, praise, and glorify, each in its own manner, Jesus Christ’s exalted and immense presence, which finds itself bounded. The impious person may not know that, despite the infernal furies’ efforts and operations, God enclosed within this small consecrated host every means by which mortal humanity can see its Creator with faith’s eyes, contemplate, know, love, and honor him, and converse familiarly with him. He may not know it. But because this sacrament surpasses angels’ keen, penetrating intelligence and all demons’ subtlety, God wished to leave upon earth, within this admirable and more than divine sacrament, a perfect image of

himself, known to everyone—to pagans, heretics, and even Jesus Christ’s disciples—so that no one might despair of salvation or fear to love him, and everyone might enjoy him whenever desired and in time of need. Thus we rise, as by degrees, from creature to Creator; for this is how God manifests himself to people who otherwise could not endure his majesty and brilliance. Thus he is said formerly to have spoken to Moses and his servants in the burning bush, and at other times in a cloud amid lightning, so that we might know that God cannot be reached without an intermediary. In this way God made the stone’s mystery upon earth, through which, as through a cloud, burning bush, and word representing him, we might see his sacred, divine works. Is anything, I ask you, worthier of our admiration than seeing the same thing simultaneously vegetable, animal, and mineral? That it should be

body, soul, and spirit at the same time; finally form or matter, air, fire, water, and earth, seed, mother, matter and nurse, surface and center, all heaven, all stars—in a word, everything! What is more admirable in nature? Nevertheless it is so, and has been accomplished in the same way in him in whom all things exist, to manifest everything enclosed in this sacrament. To disbelieve it is a crime, even punishable by fire, since one would attribute it to the creature rather than the Creator. Yet lest you imagine that I have proposed anything false or contrary to truth here, I have resolved to say no more, nor more than can be believed.

I can certainly add that it is a plant above all plants, since it contains more germinative, nutritive, and augmentative spirit than every herb and plant in the world. Thus, if it were possible for it to perish and cease to exist throughout all

nature, an inexhaustible source would issue from it and spread a second time over the universe to spiritualize this vegetable being.

No one doubts that it is also animal, since upon earth it is called life’s source and first origin. By restoring spirits of the sperm extinguished within the animal and repairing all losses caused by disease, it prolongs its species for infinitely many years. No one doubts that this stone is also mineral and may even more properly be called a metal. It not only bears metal’s name but possesses its nature, powers, and faculties. For an ounce of this stone contains more fixed spirit than other stones and is more truly a mine and matrix of gold than even gold’s marcasites, because it is wholly gold and wholly nature, and more than gold and nature, since it generates and produces gold indefinitely.

We said above that it possesses qualities

more powerful than fire, water, air, and earth, because it encloses their matters, forms, and qualities. No one acquainted with nature’s secrets will deny that a single ounce possesses more fiery power than the universal fire of the whole world, since it burns more than all the universe’s fire and acts upon gold’s incorruptible body as elemental fire acts upon wood. Nor will anyone deny that it contains more germinative, nutritive, corruptive, and augmentative liquor than all other humid substances. These can in a moment cause gold and silver, a dying plant, and a sterile animal to generate and germinate and produce their likeness—something nature would not accomplish in a thousand years, or ever. Moreover, it can supply the sperms of all things, being wholly air and wholly earth, spirit and body together. No one doubts it, since it possesses not only air’s and spirit’s penetrability and subtlety but also body’s and earth’s fixity and permanence

far above all other bodies. It contains not only every passive power and quality of spirit, soul, and glorified body, as we may say, but also their active powers and qualities, since it can glorify and spiritualize imperfect bodies. Through subtlety and penetrability it intimately penetrates, to their very marrow, all the hardest, most opaque bodies of metals and crystal. It traverses all their parts and, insinuating itself within them, converts and transforms them indefinitely into its own perfect nature or another equally perfect. It now remains to explain how this occurs.

Do you still doubt, O heretic, and are you not ashamed to be instructed by nature itself? Let the chemists’ black coals not frighten you; let their name still less make you flee; and cease regarding them askance as humanity’s most declared enemies. Do you not perceive

that their art, disclosing so many secrets and mysteries to you, is almost divine? Let fear of chemistry no longer terrify your minds. First understand that I am not speaking of that spagyric chemistry occupied almost solely with coals and fire and false, empty tinctures of metals, which always deceives everyone—if not quickly, at least certainly. I speak instead of the chemistry whose constant object is God and truth, and meditation upon and knowledge of that truth. It does not fill and nourish people’s minds with hope of empty glory, boundless ambition, or infinite riches, but secretly and generously imparts nature’s hidden secrets and those of moral and Christian philosophy held deep within its heart. Until now you have been frightened by the common name of chemistry. Lay down this fear, I implore you, so that you may have the satisfaction of knowing at least the forms, species, individuals, genera, qualities, faculties, and powers that are

hidden within the common accidents of ordinary, elemental water or earth, such as bodies’ parts and their seeds, all together and at a glance, distinctly and without confusion, so as really and actually to possess its form of gold with all its accidents: its brilliance, malleability, and extension, not merely but indefinitely. O inconceivable prodigy! These accidents are not enclosed merely virtually within our stone, as some have imagined; it contains them effectively and really, just as the apple still upon the tree and the animal possess within their seed their own power to regenerate. Its nature differs in no respect from that which forms gold in mines. According to some, gold deserves neither the name nor title of true gold unless condensed or coagulated through fire; they regard this worked gold as a dead body useless to the work. But what surpasses the reach of the most sublime minds, and by its light’s brilliance

dazzles the keenest eyes so that they can scarcely fix their gaze upon it, is the manner in which one and the same matter is plant and stone, metal and mineral, body and soul, element, heaven, star, and everything, yet one without contradiction.

Farewell.