Page 27 - Treatise on Salt

8 Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of justice; for theirs
is the kingdom of Heaven.

He that shall overcome, shall obtain all things by an hereditary right;
and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

Let us then, my brethren, resume by the grace of our merciful God, a
laborious spirit, that we may fight a good battle: for he who shall not
have duly fought, shall not be crowned, because God does not grant us
his temporal gifts, but by dint of sweat, and labour, according to the
universal testimony of all the philosophers, and even of Hermes himself,
who assures, that to obtain this blessed Diana, and this lunary, as white
as the very milk, he had suffered many labours of the mind, as anybody
may easily conjecture. For as our salt is at the beginning a terrestrial
subject, heavy, rude, impure; chaotic, gummy, viscous, and a body which
has the form of nebulous water, it is requisite it should be dissolved, that
it should be separated from its impurity, from all its terrestrial, and
aqueous accidents, and from its thick and gross shadow; and above all,
that it should be extremely sublimed, to the end, that this crystalline salt
of the metals, free from all faeces, purged from all its blackness,
putrefaction and leprosy, may become most pure, and sovereignly
clarified, white as the snow, melting and running like wax.

Discourse translated from verse.

The salt is the sole and only key,
Without salt our art can no wise subsist.
And although this salt (that I may advertise you thereof)
Has not the appearance of salt at the beginning,
Yet nevertheless it is truly a salt, which without doubt,
Is altogether black and stinking at first,
But which in the operation, and by labour,
Will have the resemblance of the ferous part of the blood;
And afterwards will become altogether white and clear.
By its own dissolution and proper fermentation.

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