Page 15 - Charnock alchemical letter

That most excellent princess I have briefly revealed unto your royal
majesty the great error which so great a number of practisers do follow,
who take the false science of Alchemy to be the true work to the
obtaining of the philosophers’ stone.

Secondly I have opened unto your majesty, that the science of natural
philosophy is a science most true, by the which may be wrought in length
of time that precious and rich jewel named the philosophers’ stone,
which being finished in his third degree, it is more worth and precious
for a princes dignity, than if he had three of his ships come from
Hispaniola, the Coast of Guinea, or the islands of Majorca, laden with
gold, precious stones, pearl, ivory, pepper, and all kind of spices not for
the hope of the attaining to so many hundred pound weights of gold, but
that it is the greatest cordial in the world.

Thirdly your highness may now perceive why it is so seldom found, that
scarce five in fifteen kingdoms can attain unto the true perfection of the
same, as for lack of the secrets which never was written nor it never shall
be.

Fourthly that when it shall please God for any one man to attain unto that
high secret and gift of God, either taught to him by some master or given
him of God by grace and good living, it cannot such a one as soon as he
would desire, accomplish the end of this miraculous long and tedious
work, without he be a man given to great solitariness, and can be patient
and not too hasty to finish his work, but suffer nature a little and a little,
at her own leisure to make generation passing the substance of Embrion.
And to such a one God hath not only yielded to him the secrets, but also
the accomplishing of the most precious stone of the world, at the last to
his great joy and comfort, and also to his perpetual fame and memory.

Now most excellent princess this my unlettered Epistle being finished I
was in a great muse by what means it might be presented unto your
highness, and hath troubled my head as much as the study in making the
whole book, yet hoping to the best, I determined with myself, to request
some worshipful or honourable, retaining to your majesty’s most royal
court, that if it were possible to have so much friendship that this my
epistle which the confabulation following might be presented unto your
royal majesty, trusting that it shall come fortunately into your graces
hands which when it is perused either by your highness, or any of your
honourable council, then I commit this my enterprise unto your majesty’s
high discretion. And thus not knowing how your majesty will delight the

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