Thesauri et armamentarii medico-chymici appendix [...] Testamentum Hadrianeum

...when Midas the king who turned everything to gold but showed poor judgment, the little ruler, deserved the laughable ears of an ass. Truly, that man never approves of anything unless it responds to his own deeds and is related to his own brain. This is a flock of men unworthy of such secrets, which industry obtains through many prayers by the grant of the nourishing Divine Power—industry not exhausted by immense labor, nor broken by the darts of envy or the bites of the hydra the many-headed monster, here representing complex obstacles. O, how often have I wrestled with various Chimaeras mythological monsters, representing false or impossible paths while the divine Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom and craft led me to her art! What tricks envy throws in the way, what frauds dire calumny objects! She does this so that the wicked might withdraw from the sacred undertakings. Yet the Love of truth conquers, nourishing Science conquers. O Science, chosen by me before the innumerable gifts of the divine power, and why not? Since it is more excellent than all things which even the richest King ever held in any chest. Great once were the riches of Solomon, great was the wealth of Croesus; the half-man King Sardanapalus possessed great heaps of gold in the Assyrian court. Other great Kings and Leaders held great treasures; but this one alone excels them all, as much as a living spring excels a stagnant marsh.
  Therefore, whoever you are who desires these streams of the Gold-flowing Fountain to bubble up for you, and desires to draw the sacred juices of perennial Ambrosia the food or drink of the gods: let go of the innards of vegetable or animal nature, in which the fool persists. Let go of the manifold investigation of various things;