Theatrum chemicum, praecipuos selectorum auctorum tractatus de chemiae et lapidis philosophici antiquitate, veritate, iure, praestantia, & operationibus, continens: in gratiam verae chemiae, et medicinae chemicae studiosorum ... congestum, et in sex partes seu volumina digestum; singulis voluminibus, suo auctorum et librorum catalogo primis pagellis: rerum vero & verborum indice postremis annexo. Volumen primum [- sextum]

Science has no enemy except the ignorant.

and for the innumerable goods of nature granted to men. Furthermore, so that you may not fall into the trifles, verbosity, and writings of certain slanderers of this most precious art, who, when they have turned over some books written about this art through a lattice and ignorantly for a long time, like desperate men, miserably despise it, and strive to dishonor it with their writings, with their various and false recipes for making potable gold. For they despise what they do not know, or perhaps deceived by impostors and sophists, or clinging to their own human wisdom and eloquence, they have falsely persuaded themselves that they can understand that Chemical art, written obscurely by the industry of ancient philosophers, indeed divinely.

Panormitanus the jurist on the 5th book of the Decretals, title On Sorceries, chap. 2, Ex tuarum tenore.

For in the same place, Panormitanus says that Alchemy is a true art, and not forbidden: but that sophisticalizers and forgers are to be reprobated. And he cites Oldradus and Joan. Andreas. Furthermore, he adds that B. Thomas must be seen in 2.2, question 77. And concerning this, through Baldus in law 1, quae sunt rega. in the uses of feuds. And the Abbot must be seen, and Hier. de Zanetinis in the repetition of chapter 1, De accu.

The ancients read it thus.

There is, however, in medicine a certain heavenly gift.

Lullius flourished in the year of our Lord 141. In the practice of the testament, ch. 27. On simples, lib. 9, ch. 59.

Hippocrates, book 1 of Prognostics, chap. 1.

It is therefore necessary to recognize the nature of such affections, how much is beyond the strength of the body, and likewise if anything divine is found in diseases, to learn the providence of that as well. It is ascribed to Galen that he spoke of that highest and hidden medicine in the third Canon of the Tegni (as they call it), but the utility of both. Furthermore, Galen doubts whether mercury, or quicksilver, can be adapted for driving away diseases, because he confesses to have been ignorant of its power and hidden nature, for the reason that he asserts he did not make a trial of it: neither that it kills if it is devoured, nor when it is applied externally.

Avicenna, book 2, tract. 1, chap. 4. On the operations of singular medicines.

The virtue, however, which divides and places each complexion to the part which it deserves, so that it does not place a resolutive virtue in the part of the matter which is poured out to the limb, nor a cooling one in the side of the matter poured out from it, is nature taught to obey the sublime and glorious creator.

The same in the booklet On Minerals, which is commonly called the fourth Meteorology of Aristotle.

Let the artists of Alchemy know that the species or forms of metals cannot be truly transmuted, unless perhaps they are reduced to their first matter, and thus changed into something other than before. This theorem, whether it is Avicenna's or Aristotle's, you should understand thus: into the first matter, that is, that which is closest to the metallic genus. But that