The Signature of All Things — trans. John Ellistone (1651)

And this does not seem at all strange to the Children of Divine Mercury; for the Mysteries of Philosophy, Divinity, and Theosophy, must not be profaned, and laid open to the View of the outward Astral Reason, which turns all to its Selfish Pride, Covetousness, Envy, Wrath, and cunning Hypocrisy; and therefore a parabolical or magical Phrase or Dialect is the best and plainest Habit and Dress that Mysteries can have to travel in up and down this wicked World: And thus Parables have a double and different Respect and Use; for as they conceal and hide Secrets from the rude and vulgar Sort, who are not able or patient to bear any Thing but what suits with their common Conceits and Opinions, so likewise they sweetly lead the Mind of the true Searcher into the Depths of Wisdom's Council. They are as the cloudy Pillar of Moses; they have a dark Part, and they have a Light Part; they are dark to the Egyptians, the Pharisaical Sons of Sophistry, but Light to the true Israel, the Children of the Mystery.

And therefore whoever will be nurtured and trained up by Sophia, and learn to understand and speak the Language of Wisdom, must be born again of and in the Word of Wisdom, Christ Jesus, the Immortal Seed: The Divine Essence which God breathed into his Paradisical Soul must be revived, and he must become one again with that which he was in God before he was a Creature, and then his Eternal Spirit may enter into that which is within the Veil, and see not only the literal, but the moral, allegorical, and anagogical Meaning of the Wise, and their dark Sayings: He then will be fit to enter, not only into Solomon's Porch, the outer Court of Natural Philosophy, Sense and Reason, but likewise into the inward Court of holy and spiritual Exercises, in divine Understanding and Knowledge; and so he may Step into the most inward and holiest Place of Theosophical Mysteries, into which none are admitted to come, but those who have received the high and holy Unction.

I will now endeavour briefly to hint to the Reader what this Book contains, though in it the Spirit of Wisdom cannot be delineated with Pen and Ink, no more than a Sound can be Painted, or the Wind grasped in the Hollow of the Hand: But know, that in it he deciphers and represents in a lively Manner the Signature of all Things, and gives you the Contents of Eternity and Time, and glances at all Mysteries.

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.