The Great Elucidator: Or Enlightenment on the Reformation of the Whole Wide World

Now, it might easily cause one to wonder how the philosophi philosophers came to be, and still are, so entirely secretive and wrote about the aforementioned secretum secret in such dark words. But whoever knows the materiam lapidis matter of the stone and understands the power and effect of the same, can easily judge that they have quite significant reasons for this. For it is once and for all certain and true that if such secretum naturæ secret of nature were to be made known throughout the world, such a confusio confusion and shameful abuse would arise from it that God the Almighty, according to Theophrasti Paracelsus prophecy, might so rumble among men with sword, hunger, and pestilence that only the fourth part of them would remain. Yet, because there are still many pious, God-fearing hearts