Chemical-Philosophical Treatise on Natural and Supernatural Things

I do not think there will be a lack of those to whose faith these things will be entirely alien, who will scorn and vilify such mysteries as being removed from their intellect. Let them remain rude asses and insipid men until illumination follows, which is granted to no one without the will of GOD, but is suspended until His permission. But those who are knowledgeable and experienced in affairs, having finished with much sweat of the brow, will not defraud me of their testimonies, and will so consolidate the truth that they will truly approve all my writings and judge them to be as true as heaven and hell are truly proposed to the elect and the damned according to the merit of evil and good. Now I write not only with the hand, but by the impulse of the mind and heart, because many counterfeiting and most arrogant Doctors pursue these mysteries with hatred, envy, abuse, disgrace, and extreme contumely, attacking them to the very marrow, which seeks its beginning and origin from the center. But I certainly know that a time will eventually come, when my bones have long since rotted into marrow, when men will want to vindicate me in the sepulcher and willingly, if it could be done, resuscitate me from the dead. But in vain: wherefore I have left my writings to them, by which their faith will have the seal of truth, testifying to my supreme will, which I did not envy to the poor and all cultivators of the mysteries, although it would have been least fitting for me to publish so many writings. Yet, without injury to the soul, I could not but send a ray of light through the cloud, so that the day might be observed and the dark night with the turbid and gloomy tempest might be dispelled.