FOOTNOTES:
[66]
——— nec Babylonios Tentaris numeros.—Lib, 1. ad XI.
That is, consult not the tables of planetary calculations used by astrologers of Babylonish origin.
[67] This conjectural science is divided into natural and judicial. The first is confined to the study of exploring natural effects, as change of weather, winds and storms—hurricanes, thunder, floods, earthquakes, and the like. In this sense it is admitted to be a part of natural philosophy. It was under this view that Mr. Good, Mr. Boyle, and Dr. Mead pleaded for its use. The first endeavours to account for the diversity of seasons from the situations, habitudes, and motions of the planets; and to explain an infinity of phenomena by the contemplation of the stars. The honourable Mr. Boyle admitted, that all physical bodies are influenced by the heavenly bodies; and the doctor's opinion, in his treatise concerning the power of the sun and moon, etc. is in favour of the doctrine. But these predictions and influence are ridiculed, and entirely exploded by the most esteemed modern philosophers, of which the reader may have a learned specimen in Rohault's Tract. Physic. pt. II. c 27.
[68] By aspect is to be understood an angle formed by the rays of two planets meeting on the earth, able to execute some natural power or influence.
[69] Those who wish to read a curious monument of the follies of the alchymists, may consult the diary of Elias Ashmole, who is rather the historian of this vain science, than an adept. It may amuse literary leisure to turn over his quarto volume, in which he has collected the works of several English alchymists, to which he has subjoined his commentary. It affords curious specimens of Rosicrucian mysteries; and he relates stories, which vie for the miraculous, with the wildest fancies of Arabian invention.
[70] Alcahest, in chemistry, (an obsolete term,) means a most pure and universal menstruum or dissolvent, with which some chemists have pretended to resolve all bodies into their first elements, and perform other extraordinary and unaccountable operations.
[71] In this writer we find the following passage: "Such as are skilled in the ways of nature, can take; silver and tin, and changing their nature, can turn them into gold." He also tells us that he was "wont to call himself a gold-melter and a chemist."
[72] The principal Authors on alchymy are Geber, the Arab, Friar Bacon, Sully, John and Isaac Hallendus, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, Van Zuchter, and Sendirogius.
[73] Corringius calls this statement in question, and asks how Suidas, who lived but five hundred yours between them, should know what happened eight hundred years before him? To which Borrichius the Dane, answers, that he had learnt it of Eudemus, Helladius, Zozimus, Pamphilius, and others, as Suidas himself relates.
[74] It does not appear that the Egyptians transmuted gold; they had ways of separating it from all kinds of bodies, from the very mud of the Nile, and stones of all kinds: but, adds Kercher, these secrets were never written down, or made public, but confined to the royal family, and handed down traditionally from father to son.