Major Elucidator or Illuminations on the Reformation of the Whole Wide World

flowery and concealed words that, among a hundred thousand, one is hardly found who could grasp something useful and wholesome from them. From this, such great incorrectness and perversion have arisen that some have labored in vain until the end of their lives with heavy expense and long-lasting effort. Others, when they see that so few people are found who truly possessed the Philosopher's Stone lapidem Philosophorum, fall into slandering, reviling, and despising, as if it were nothing but fantasies and fraud. And it has now, unfortunately, come to pass among the ignorant that the chemical art Ars chymica is a hateful thing res odiosa to them, and shameful things are said about such people who engage in this study. Indeed, some even dare to call it a work of the devil.