Gold Not Gold

Jur. Athen.
Muret. l. 2.
Rex Platon. p
150. &c.

to settle medical disputes, not merely philosophical, theological, or juridical ones, and to establish laws so that you may hear both sides and pronounce judgment according to the written laws. What of the fact that your Own lightning bolt struck and felled the "Potable Gold," by which Chrysopoeia the art of making gold was struck down at Oxford: just as here the little giant Antony rebels and fights against God again.

Riol. apol. in
Qu. ex. c. 5.
Turet. Liba.
trium, p. 230.

Therefore, regarding him as he approaches and dares, it is no wonder if you should justly receive him as King Henry III of France received a certain Parisian President twenty years ago, whom alchemy had reduced from a Croesus to a Codrus from a rich man to a pauper. He wrote a book about Potable Gold (as this man does), in which he prophesied that Adam had lived so long; he offered it to the King (as this man does), promising him Nestorian years if he used it. The wise King replied, Keep the potion for yourself, by which you may preserve your own life. The wretch died in the flower of his youth, consumed by hunger: as many alchemists die in the bend of their path, from wasting disease; if not sooner, on the gallows. May Your Prudence provide well enough for itself, lest, like James V of happy memory, your Grandfather, while agreeing to the words of multiplication, you be cheated of huge sums of money by the Abbot of Tunland.

Morel. ep ad
Reg.
p. 105.
106.

Let it be enough as an example to others, lest Count Trevisanus waste his vast fortune on alchemical tricks, and turn only to that: lest a Carthusian prior hide in poverty among his own: lest Zacharias of Paris live in exile in Lausanne away from France, his goods squandered: lest the Dukes of Saxony and Etruria, at an annual cost of many thousands, and the certain loss of money and time, make much of chemists. Let him who has adulterated gold as a swindler die in imperial chains; at least let him give ears to the art: by which the Scot burns the Englishman with a brand, with a harsher sarcasm.

Cens. 10. Ven.
1488. Sep. 17.
Riol. ap. in
Qu. p. 34.
Fallop.
Lib. l. 1. ep.
chy. 1.
Rex Plat. p.
153
200.

Let the Venetian Senate banish such goldsmiths to the crows, the prisons, or the executioners; the Senate was wise to drive out Bragadinus, and just to torture him. Let the decrees of Emperors and Magistrates condemn the chemists: let their books be sacrificed to Vulcan fire. We do not believe that Solomon was enriched by Alchemical gold, as they boast; but by gold sought from afar and transported, as Your Sacred Majesty most divinely demonstrated at Oxford from the Holy Scriptures: