THIS Book is a true mystical Mirror of the highest Wisdom. The best Treasure that a Man can attain unto in this World is true Knowledge; even the Knowledge of himself: For Man is the great Mystery of God, the microcosm, or the complete Abridgment of the whole Universe: He is the Mirandum Dei opus, God's Masterpiece, a living Emblem and Hieroglyphic of Eternity and Time; and therefore to know whence he is, and what his temporal and eternal Being and Well-being are, must needs be that ONE necessary Thing, to which all our chief Study should aim, and in comparison of which all the Wealth of this World is but Dross, and a Loss to us. Herein the Author sets forth fundamentally the Birth, Sympathy, and Antipathy of all Beings; how all Beings originally arise out of one Eternal Mystery, and how that same Mystery begets itself in itself from Eternity to Eternity; and likewise how all Things, which take their Original out of this Eternal Mystery, may be changed into Evil, and again out of Evil into Good; with a clear and manifest Demonstration how Man has turned himself out of the Good into the Evil, and how his Transmutation is again out of the Evil into the Good: Moreover, herein is declared the outward Cure of the Body; how the outward Life may be freed from Sickness by its Likeness or Assimulate, and be again introduced into its first Essence; where also, by Way of Parable and Similitude, the Philosophers Stone is with great Life described for the Temporal Cure; and along with it the Holy Corner Stone, Christ alone, for the Everlasting Cure, Regeneration, and perfect Restitution of all the true, faithful, eternal Souls. In a Word, his Intent is to let you know the inward Power and Property by the outward Sign; for Nature has given Marks and Notes to every Thing, whereby it may be known; and this is the Language of Nature, which signifies for what everything is good and profitable: And herein lies the Mystery, or central Science of the high Philosophical Work in the true Spagiric Art, which consummates the Cure, not only for the Body, but for the Soul.
