Intentions and varieties of alchemy

Meaning

The conclusion warns that people commonly called alchemists do not all pursue the same intention. Sectirer marks divergent adherents within disciplines; it does not identify a list of named religious sects here. This distinction follows an objection about dissolute possessors of tinctures. The author leaves their acquisition undisputed in this argument but refuses to believe that they themselves made the true tincture he has described. English “intention” retains intent as a difference of aim, not merely skill or recipe. The passage therefore distinguishes common naming, possession and manufacture rather than conceding that impious manufacture fulfils the treatise’s account.