Page 10 - Book of quintessence

The Book of Quinte Essence

Or the Fifth Being

That is to say,

Man’s Heaven

Book I

With the might, wisdom, and grace of the Holy Trinity, I write to
you a treatise in English brie fly drawn out of the book of quintessence in
Latin that Hermes the prophet and king of Egypt, after the flood of Noah,
father of philosophers, had by revelation of an angel of God to him sent,
that the wisdom and the sign of his book should not perish, but be kept
and preserved, unto the end of the world, of all holy men from all wicked
people and tyrants, for great perils that might fall thereof. For within this
brief treatise, with the grace of God, I will more determine of practice
than of theory, yet being both needful, the first and sovereign secret that
God, maker of mankind, ordained for man’s need, how that old
evangelical men, and feeble in kind, might be restored, and have again
their first strength of youth in the same degree that is in all mankind. And
be made whole perfectly, except the stroke of the thunder blast, and
violent injuries and oppressing all of too much fasting. Also perilous
falling off high places, too much abstinence, and other evil governance
against mankind. And also the term that is set of God, that no man may
escape. As Job says in Latin “Human lives are few in days”.

Forsooth philosophers call the purest substance of many corruptible
things elemental quinta essentia, that is to say, man’s heaven, drawn out

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