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

22. Thus by God's Curse, or Withdrawing, the heavenly Body was shut up, and the Anger-Source set open, and so [the heavenly Body] lies still shut up: But seeing Man by the eternal Mercury, that is, by the Word of divine Power, was in one Part Formed out of Eternity into Body and Soul, none could disclose the Poison-Death, and destroy the mortal Mercury, and change it again into the Light's-Source, viz. into the Source of the divine Joyfulness, but only the very divine Mercury, viz. the Power and the Word of Life itself: For the Serpent's poisonful earthly Property was manifest and stirred up in Man; therefore when God's Word did pity the Corruption of Man and did again embrace him, he said, The Seed of the Woman shall bruise the Serpent’s Head, and thou understand the Serpent's Poison or Fire) shalt Sting him in the Heel.

23. Herein now lies the Philosophers Stone, [to know] how the Seed of the Woman bruises the Serpent's Head, which is done in the Spirit and Essence temporally and eternally, the Sting of the Serpent is God's Anger-Fire, and the Woman’s Seed is God’s Love-Fire, which must be again awakened, and illustrate the Anger, and deprive the Wrath of its Might, and put it into the divine Joyfulness, and then the dead soul, which lay immersed in God's Curie, does arise: When the poisonful Mercury, which resembles God's Anger, is tinctured with Love, then the Death's Anguish m Mercury is changed into the highest Joyfulness and Desire of Love, which does again make a Love- Essence in itself, viz. an heavenly Body out of the earthly: When Mercury is changed into an heavenly Source, it desires no longer [or more] the earthly mortal Life; [it desires] not the four Elements, but only the one, wherein the four are contained, as it were swallowed up; as the Light holds the Darkness swallowed up in itself, and yet the Darkness is in it, but not manifest in the Light; as God dwells in Time, and the Time comprehends him not, unless it be translated and wrapped up into Eternity, that the divine Light does again mine in its Source, and then the Time is manifest with its Wonders in the Eternity.

24. In this Manner also is the Process of the wise Men with the precious Stone: There is no nearer Consideration of the same than to consider [and know] how the eternal Word, viz. the heavenly divine Mercury in the divine Power is become Man, and has slain Death, and the Anger in Man, viz. changed the Mercury into the divine Joyfulness, whereby the human Mercury, which before lay shut up in God's Anger, viz. in the Source of Death, does with its new enkindled Desire, which now is called Faith in the Holy Ghost, attract divine Essentiality, viz. Christ's Body to itself, and sets itself in divine Power and Light above the Anger of God, and the Poison of the Serpent, and bruise die Head of the Anger, viz. the Poison of Death with the Life of divine Joyfulness: That is, the Anger was Master, but in the Light it became a Servant, which now must be a Cause of the Joyfulness, as it is most plain, clear, and Manifestly made known and shewn to us in the Mercurial Life.

25. Now observe the Process, and meditate on it, ye dear Children of Wisdom, and then you shall have enough temporally and eternally; do not as Babel does, which amuses and comforts itself with the Philosophers Stone, and boasts of it, but keeps only a gross Mason's Stone shut up in Poison and Death, instead of the precious Philosophers Stone: What is it for Babel to have the Stone, when it lies wholly shut up in Babel? It is as if a Lord bestowed a Country upon me, which indeed was mine, but I could not take Possession of it, and remained still a poor Man notwithstanding, and yet I boasted of the Dominion, and so had the Name, and not the Power: Even thus it goes with Babel about the precious Stone of the New-Birth in Christ Jesus.