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

46. Yet the poor Captive has need of Deliverance; and though Men have not the high Universal, which reaches the Centre, and brings the Wheel of Life into its first Property, yet Men must take from the Mercurial Walm of the Earth its Fruits thereunto, seeing the Body is also become earthly: A Man must Accord (or assimulate) one Likeness with another, one Salt with another, according as the Inflammation is in the Salt of the Body: For observe, in what Property the Brimstone is enkindled, either in Heat or Cold, in Melancholy or falling Sickness (whether the Brimstone be burnt too in the Body and putrified, or whether it be yet fresh and burning), even such an Herb, such a Brimstone belongs to the Cure, lest the Heat or cold be terrified in the Salniter, where the Salt arises, by a strange Might which comes into it, and generates a mort Salt, and sets open more and more the House of Sadness: But it is not sufficient and powerful enough in its wild Nature and Property as it grows out of the Walm of the Earth; it is not able to Master the Root of the enkindled Mercury in the Brimstone, but it does more vehemently enkindle it in such a Source and Property.

47. That which thou desirest should happen to the Body, the same must first happen to that which shall Cure the Body: To the Cure of a foul Sickness there belongs a foul Brimstone, and so to a cold or hot Sickness the like is to be understood; for look in what Degree of the Fire or cold Mercury is enkindled, and in what Form among the seven Properties of Nature; that is, what Salt soever among the seven Salts is enkindled, such a Salt belongs to the Cure: For Sickness is Nothing else but an Hunger; now the Hunger desires Nothing else but its Likeness; but now the Property of that Life, which in its Beginning of its rise stood in Joy, is the Root; and the Sickness is its immoderate Enkindling, whereby the Order [or Temperature] is broken and divided: Thus the Root desires in its Hunger the Likeness, but the Inflammation has taken it away; now the Inflammation is stronger than the Root, therefore the Hunger of the Inflammation must be appeased, and that which itself is must be administered to it.

48. But as God cured us with his Love, and restored to us the Salvation of the Soul, when we had enkindled the same in the poisonful Mercury of his Anger; in like Manner also this Likeness must be first cured and circulated in the Mercurial Wheel, and freed from the Heat and cold; indeed not taken away from them (this cannot be, and it were also unprofitable), but it must be brought into his highest Joy, and then it will make such a Property in the Body in the Mercury of the Brimstone and Salt; for the Root of Life does again quicken itself therein, and lifts up the first Desire, so that now the Hunger vanishes in the Fall of the Inflammation.

49. Now it behoves the Physician to know how he may deal with the Medicaments in the Likeness, so that he does not enrage them, and bring them into another Property; for in their Property they are even as a Man's Life is: He must take Care that they remain in their Degree, as they are originally brought forth in their Mother; for Nothing can come higher than it is in the Centre of its Original according to the Hiddenness; but if it shall come higher, then it must assume another Property to itself; and so it is not in its own Degree, and has not its proper Virtue, but an improper one; which indeed may very well be, but it has lost its Nature-Right, wherein it stands in Joy, and is not able to effect any proper operation in the assimulate of its own Nature.

50. Therefore there is Nothing better than to let everything remain in its innate genuine Virtue; only its Wrath must be changed into its own Joy, that so its own Virtue according to the good Part may be advanced into its Dominion, and then in the Likeness it is powerful enough in all Sicknesses without any other Mixture: For the Original in the Life desires no other Multiplicity, but only its Likeness, that it may stand, live, and burn in its own Power and Property.