The Signature of All Things — trans. John Ellistone (1651)
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The translator’s English as printed (John Ellistone). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
4. This Watch-Work consists of seven Forms, or Properties (as is before mention-ed), which make in themselves a threefold Spirit, viz. a vegetative, sensitive, and rational: The vegetative consists in the four Elements; the sensitive in the seven Forms of Nature, and the Reasoning Power in the Constellation; but the Under-standing proceeds only from God, for it rises out of the eternal Nature; all Life whatever, which has its limit in the expressed Word, consists in Sal, Sulphur, and Mercury; for therein consist the seven Properties of every Life of this World; and also the Spirit of Vegetation, Sensation, and Reason.
5. Sulphur is the Mother of all Spirituality and Corporality; Mercury Manages the Dominion therein; and Sal is the House of its Habitation, which Mercury itself makes in Sulphur: Reason arises in the Oil of the Sulphur, whereinto the Constellation gives its Desire, viz. the Essence of its Property, from whence immediately the Senses and Thoughts arise; but the Understanding proceeds from the Oil of the Element, viz. in the free Lubet in the speaking Mercury.
6. Now then, seeing it is very necessary for us poor Children of Eve to know from whence the Disease and Enmity of our Life arise, and what that is in us which makes us our own Enemies, and vex, perplex, and plague us in ourselves; much more necessary it is to know the Cure, whereby we may Cure ourselves in our Self-hood, and bring ourselves into the Limit of Rest.
7. This we will delineate and declare, if there be any one that has a Mind to enter upon it, and truly prove and try it; and we will set forth from whence Evil and Good arise originally, and how they arise, and give Occasion to the understanding Searcher to seek: And we will shew how the Will to Evil and Good arises, and how the Evil is the Death of the Good, and on the contrary the Good the Death of the Evil.
8. When we consider what the Mercurial Life is, then we find that it consists in Sulphur; for Sulphur is a dry Hunger after Matter, which makes an austere Impression, and in its austere Impression it has the Fire, and also in its Impression the Oil, from whence the Life burns. Now the Impression makes Coldness, and its Compunction or Attraction makes Heat, so that now there is a cold Fire and an hot Fire in one Thing; the Cold makes in itself Hardness and Darkness, and the Heat makes in itself the Light, and yet there could be no Light, if the Oil in the Sulphur did not die in hot Anguish, as the Candle in the Fire.
9. Now there is a twofold Dying in Sulphur, from whence also a twofold Life is generated; First, the Impression or Desire does draw in, contract, enclose, make hard, cold, thick; and the Hardness, viz. the enclosed, causes a Death in the enclosed Being, and yet in that Spirit there is no Death, but a pricking, raging, and anxious cold Fire-Life, which is generated with the Impression, and is the Life of the Darkness.
10. Secondly, in the same Anguish, in the austere Desire, the hot Fire is generated, which consumes the Substance, which the Coldness, viz. the Impression of the Desire to Nature makes: Thus there remains in the Fire the Contention betwixt the Cold and Heat; the cold will have its Life according to its Property, and in that it strives for Life, it enkindles the Heat in its Impression, and immediately the Heat deprives the Cold of its Might, and consumes the cold Substance, and then also the Fire-Spirit cannot subsist; for unless it has Substance it goes out, therefore it must continually, and without Intermission, die in itself in the fiery anxious Desire: So long as it has the Cold's Substance to live upon, its Life arises, and yet it is Nothing but a constant Dying and consuming, and in its devouring is the greatest Hunger after Substance; this same [Hunger] passes forth through and with the devouring out of the Dying of the Fire, and dwells in the Nothing, yet it may not be a Nothing, and also it cannot be a Nothing, therefore it draws the Fire again into itself; for its own Desire is bent towards its Mother: But seeing it is once dead to the Fire-Source, it cannot die any more in the Fire of the Heat or Cold, but it continually proceeds forth from the Fire, and the Fire draws it again continually into itself, and so it is the Life of the Fire; and this is the Air, which in the Fire is rightly called Wind, by Reason of the Strength and Force; and in that which is proceeded forth it is properly called Air, by Reason of its Life of Meekness.