Page 14 - Charnock alchemical letter

similitudes, and allegories, because it should not be understood but of
verus [true] philosophers, and that covetous nor wicked men should not
attain unto this science, for therewith they would be more ready to
maintain wicked works than to do good deeds.

And although, that which the philosophers have written, is so mystically
written that no man’s wit is sufficient to conceive their meaning of this
most secret science, and have written here of whole libraries of books,
yet the secret have they left out, and conclude with this like sentence,
saying: now we have revealed unto you all things saving the secret of the
science, which we ought to reveal unto no man, but have yielded it up
into the hands of God, unto whom it pleases him to give it, and from
whom it shall please him to take it away. And another philosopher
sayeth, we have not said all things which are necessary unto this work,
for there is some things which ought not to be written nor told to no man,
and it is impossible this secret to know, except it be given him from God,
or of a master who shall teach him.

Which high and great secret your majesty shall understand that it was
revealed unto me in the third and fifth year of the reign of Philip and
Mary, under a most sacred and dreadful oath, by a spiritual man some
time religious, who seeing he could not live long for age, as indeed he
died shortly after, and knowing that I had not only studied this science
above twenty years, but also that I had given my self to a continual travel
through out all English ground for the obtaining of the same, he made me
his heir in that great secret. If for all this your highness must conceive,
that I, nor if no man else who hath this rare and seldom secret, is ever the
near of this most rich and precious stone, without great grace and
patience in long continuance of time, which the work will ask from his
beginning or that it be ended and brought to the third degree of his
perfection.

And this is the principal cause most mighty princess of the secrets once
known, why they cannot attain unto the true and perfect making of the
same, because they are ever desirous and hasty to see a short end, and
will not suffer nature at her own leisure to make her operation, for they
do change their minds from their work some in a year, some in a quarter,
yea and some in a month, because they cannot see that at the first, which
will appear at the last, such mutable minded men sayeth the philosophers
shall never perfectly finish our science, but where such fools do leave
there wise men begin.

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