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

4. The free Essence is, and gives an Oil, and the Desire's Property gives a Life of the Oil; the Oil is a Light, and the Desire's Property gives to the Light the Essence, viz. the fiery Property, so that the Light shines, as is to be seen in the Fire and Light, and the free Lubet remains yet a free Will in itself, but gives its Meekness, viz. a free Resignation into the Desire, that it comes to Essence and Lustre: Its Will is only good, it has no other Desire but only to be good, meek, and pleasant; there is also no other Possibility therein; for it is as a Nothing, wherein no Disturbance or Source can be, but it is the Meekness itself.

5. But seeing it cannot be a Nothing, by Reason that it is a Cause and Beginning of the Desire, therefore it gives itself freely, as the Sunshine freely gives itself into every Property; and the Desire conceives [or takes] this free Lubet, viz. the Lustre or Shining of the Abyss of Eternity into itself, and makes it in itself into Essence according to its Property; so much Property as is in the Desire, so much also there is of Essence: And we are to consider, that when the free Lubet gives in itself into the Hunger of the Desire, that the Desire then makes out of the free Lubet's Property a Similitude according to the Liberty, which is as if it were nothing, and yet is; this is a Water and Oil.

6. But seeing the Desire, that is, the Hunger is filled with the free Lubet, it makes its own Property in the Essence of the Liberty also into Essence; its Essence is Water, and the Essence of the free Lubet is an Oil. Thus a two-fold Property arises in one only Spirit, viz. a fiery [Property] according to the Property of the Desire, and a Joyful or lucid Property according to the Liberty.

7. The fiery gives in its Essence, viz. in its Water a Sharpness from the austere Desire, which is Saltish, or a Salt; and from the fiery Anguish a Brimstone, from whence in the Impression, and Creation of the World, are made Stones, Earth, and Metals; so also the Elements and Stars, all according to the Forms in the Desire; and the oleous Property gives its Meekness, viz. a Love-Lubet, wherein the fiery is impressed with the Desire, and makes Corporality: And the oleous gives itself out in its Meekness, and makes the vegetable Life, viz. a Springing and Growing in the fiery Impression, whereinto the Fire must give its Essence and Instigation, viz. the vehement Compunction in the Attraction of the Desire, which is the Separator in the Corporality, viz. the Distinguisher, Carver, and Cause of the Essence and Multiplicity, [or Variety.]

8. Philosophers have called this Form Mercurius, from the anxious inciting Sphere, which is the Cause of all Life and Motion, and a Faber in the oily and watery Property.

9. Thus we are to search and find out the great Mystery, how there is an Oil, Brimstone, and Salt in every Thing, and how they arise; for God has made all Things out of Nothing, and that same Nothing is Himself, viz. a Love-Lubet dwelling in itself, wherein there is no Affection: But now the Love-Lubet would not be manifest, if it remained one in the Stillness without Essence, and there would be no Joy or Moving therein, but an eternal Stillness.

10. But seeing he introduces himself into Essence through the Desire, his eternal Stillness becomes an Essence and Working Power, and that with two Properties, viz. in an Oil, in which the Working Power is a good Spirit according to the Property of the Love-Lubet, which resists the Desire's Wrath in the Brimstone, Salt, and poisonful Mercury, and appeases and heals his poisonful Hunger with the pleasant Meekness; that which Mercury destroys with the raging Sphere of his own Property, that the Lubet of the Love-Oil does again heal: And thus there is Good and Evil in each Life, and yet there is no Evil in any Thing, unless the Good, viz. the Love-Oil famishes in its own Lubet, which falls out in the Forms of the Impression of the Hunger of the Desire.